Let me share a few reflections and answers to a few top of mind ecosystem questions:
The context.
Axelar is one of the leading interoperability solutions. The partnership was announced almost two years ago (!). Since then, we’ve signed contracts, invested significant effort and resources, and even gone out of our way to recommend to them a strong team we’ve worked with, just to help speed up their side of progress. On our side, everything has been fully built, audited, and tested. Ready to go. And it has been so for months now. Yet, somehow, it’s still not live. Sometimes progress just feels absurd. Why?
The hard reality.
Any new integration requires the Axelar team to review, audit, and deeply embed the module into their core architecture. Security is paramount. In interoperability, if one chain is compromised, that breach can cascade across all others. This makes the process extremely sensitive and slow. Some of their non-EVM integrations have taken two years to complete. Absurd? Yes. Necessary? Also yes.
The good part.
This is arguably one big milestone that would unlock a lot for the ecosystem. But it has been a long, tedious, chaotic, frustrating and confusing journey**.** You now see why this matters so much, and why it has been so frustrating, for us, for you, and everyone involved. For over six months, we’ve been in constant dialogue with the Axelar team - pinging them on every possible channel, stressing how much we want to push this out, and finalize a step that feels and is so close to a potential finish line. For the past three months, I’ve personally reached out to them every 2–3 days, to track what’s missing and move things forward. We’ve met with their founders, their teams, provided resources, mapped obstacles, and literally done everything possible to push this final step across the line. We are now 95% done. The devil has lived in the last 5–10% for far too long. But step by step, we are driving it out. During the last week, both Lucian and myself met again with their team, our team, and the Buidly team, to map and narrow in on every open gap that still needs a push. We are now awaiting what is hopefully a last confirmation from Axelar based on our last assessment. Our transparent and internal goal is to do whatever we can to have this integration live and completed during Q4 of this year. Our part is ready. We are now doing what we can, to also proactively help the Axelar team.
The maze and the treasure.
How do you speak about something like this in public, without it seeming absurd? This is the challenge of building in the open. The world is messy. Deals fall apart even when 99% done. What do you bet on in such a world? For me, this has always been a secret hidden in plain sight: people who are simply relentless, hard to kill, refuse to be taken down, who rise again and again, and display an unstoppable energy in overcoming any thing the world might throw at them. They are the ones who eventually prevail and win.
Here lies one of the most important treasures of our ecosystem, and perhaps one of the most relevant companies in Europe and the world: xMoney.
While others chased shortcuts and grey backroom deals, we chose the difficult, costly, and principled road, regulation, real utility, integrity. Years of patient work with regulators, building real foundations. Four years that often felt like walking through hell and fire. And yet, out of this, something durable has taken shape.
Now, we stand on the threshold. A global payment processor, strategic regulated licenses, facilitating a native Stablecoin issuer, born within the MultiversX ecosystem, ready to unlock a new horizon of utility, partnerships, and growth. For our ecosystem, and much beyond that.
Operating in a regulated environment has been very sensitive and very frustrating. You cannot move or share anything before approvals are in place with central banks and regulators. This has been one of our hard challenges. Yet this slow, meticulous process is what now turns into one of the most valuable advantages and growth engines.
The team at xMoney has already achieved several significant milestones, and has begun sharing some of them, step by step, building up the momentum.
On Monday, they will share a good status checkpoint, and shed some light on the future ahead.