Crypto: Rails Taps Stellar To Launch Onchain Vaults For Institutional...

Rails is betting that Stellar‑based smart contract vaults, onchain proofs and segregated collateral can make high‑speed perpetuals more palatable to institutions.

Institutional crypto derivatives provider Rails announced the launch of “Institutional-Grade Vaults” on the Stellar network on Tuesday, allowing brokerages, fintechs and other intermediaries to plug into crypto perpetuals via a single backend. The company aims for options trading in Q2 2026.

Satraj Bambra, CEO of Rails, told Cointelegraph that the core idea was to separate matching from money. “The critical difference is custody and verifiability,” he said.

Rails runs a centralized matching engine, while client assets will sit in audited smart contract vaults on Stellar. Every 30 seconds of profit and loss (PnL), fees and liabilities are committed onchain, as Merkle roots that institutions can independently reconcile against their own records.

Related: Crypto derivatives exchange Paradex reports outage, cancels open orders

A core design claim is that vaults lower counterparty and operational risk by ring‑fencing client collateral from market-making capital and Rails’ own operating funds.

Bambra framed this as a direct response to prior exchange implosions, where assets sat in an omnibus account, and clients had to trust their internal ledger.

“If they fail, you become an unsecured creditor in bankruptcy,” he said. “This is exactly what happened to FTX customers.”

He said that the lesson here was clear: “Separate execution from custody,” and stressed that user funds remain in onchain smart contracts rather than on Rails’ balance sheet.

According to Bambra, the company decided on the Stellar network for its fast settlement finality and a decade of work with banks, remittance providers and tokenized asset platforms.

Source: CoinTelegraph