The Stellar Development Foundation named José Fernández da Ponte its president and chief growth officer on July 16, 2025, the foundation announced on its own blog1. CoinDesk confirmed the move independently on July 16, 2025. Fernández da Ponte had left PayPal, where he led the company's blockchain unit and oversaw the rollout of its PYUSD stablecoin2. Denelle Dixon, the foundation's chief executive, wrote that he would focus on scaling adoption at the protocol layer.
The second executive hire at the Stellar Development Foundation on the record since 2025
Every move CryptoLately has verified there, by the day it became public
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| March 14, 2019 | Dixon became CEO. Denelle Dixon was named Executive Director and CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation |
| March 14, 2019 | McCaleb left as Executive Director. Jed McCaleb left as Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation |
| March 9, 2023 | Hirji joined the board. Asiff Hirji joined the board of the Stellar Development Foundation |
| July 16, 2025 | da Ponte became President. José Fernández da Ponte was named President and Chief Growth Officer of the Stellar Development Foundation |
| July 16, 2025 | Karsh became CMO. Jason Karsh was named Chief Marketing Officer of the Stellar Development Foundation |
59 executive hires on the record in 2025, the most of any year
Executive hires CryptoLately has verified, by year; 2026 through Oct. 2, 2026
- 2025: 59
- 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2026
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 11 |
| 2020 | 12 |
| 2021 | 27 |
| 2022 | 37 |
| 2023 | 20 |
| 2024 | 39 |
| 2025 | 59 |
| 2026 | 45 |
The move
Fernández da Ponte described his decision to CoinDesk in his own words. “I believe that blockchains are an artifact for a community of people working together in a decentralized way to fix problems,” he said. “And if the problem that you're trying to work on is financial inclusion, which is the problem I am interested in, then there's no better place than Stellar to work on that,” he told the outlet2. He framed the move as a step toward infrastructure. "The stablecoin wars are going to be interesting," he said. “But we need to have the technology primitives for those stablecoins to be useful, and that's why working at the blockchain level is so important,” Fernández da Ponte said.
Dixon's post credited him with "unmatched experience in scaling financial infrastructure." It pointed to his PYUSD launch at PayPal and his work across fintech and policy before that1. CoinDesk added that Stellar's lumen token had risen 38 percent for the year to that point. That gain ran ahead of the 27 percent rise in the CoinDesk 20 Index it belongs to2.
Before and after the hire
A cash on- and off-ramp network through MoneyGram already ran on Stellar before Fernández da Ponte's hire. So did a tokenization partnership with Franklin Templeton, CoinDesk reported2. His own career started in traditional finance. He worked at Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, then McKinsey, then PayPal, CoinDesk said, overseeing digital currencies and stablecoins before the move. The same announcement brought Jason Karsh in as chief marketing officer, a separate hire the foundation made on July 16, 20251.
What came next
The Stellar Development Foundation's own year-end review, published Dec. 31, 2025, said Fernández da Ponte remained president and chief growth officer through the close of the year. In it, the foundation credited him with "deep institutional and regulatory experience" that would speed enterprise adoption3. That same review reported PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin went live on Stellar in the third quarter of 2025. Stellar became PYUSD's fourth supported blockchain, after Ethereum, Solana and Arbitrum. Stellar's real-world asset volume grew 172 percent year over year, the review added. PYUSD reached Stellar in the third quarter of 2025, the quarter Fernández da Ponte arrived from PayPal.
Sources
- Denelle Dixon, "Scaling What's Proven: José Fernández da Ponte Joins SDF as President & Chief Growth Officer," Stellar Development Foundation, July 16, 2025, https://stellar.org/blog/foundation-news/welcoming-jose-fdaponte-president-chief-growth-officer-at-sdf
- Ian Allison, "PayPal (PYPL) Blockchain Lead José Fernández da Ponte Joins Stellar," CoinDesk, July 16, 2025, https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/07/16/paypal-s-blockchain-lead-jose-fernandez-da-ponte-joins-stellar
- Stellar Development Foundation, "Stellar 2025: A Podium Finish," Stellar Development Foundation, Dec. 31, 2025, https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMib0FVX3lxTE9yNkdTeHBTS1VCcUtOUzZuN0Q4US1FMnVITFhlYTNvT3BsQWxZUTBEUS1lOEd6WEFoUlFFS0FSM2NxWjRQSEpoSHltZVY5Qjl0UFlRX0xabWdsNzZZX0RCeWhWTWtuanFWQVdaa0NFQQ?oc=5