Working with Stellar
Stellar's architecture is powerful but differs from EVM chains in ways that matter for compliance. Tooling built for EVM often mishandles these structures and silently produces incomplete results. Here's what correct handling requires.
- SEP-23
- Memos
- SEP-1 · 10 · 12 · 31
- 8 min read
Muxed accounts
A muxed account lets one Stellar account represent many distinct users behind one address. Exchanges, custodians and anchors use this all the time.
The pitfall: generic tools see the shared address as one entity and lose the sub-identity. Screening, Travel Rule and record-keeping all depend on knowing who the counterparty actually is.
What correct handling requires: recognising muxed addresses, resolving them to the right underlying identifier, and carrying that distinction through every downstream check and record.
MA5ZSEJYB37JRC5AVCIA5MOP4RHTM335X2KGX3IHOJAPP5RE34K4KAAAAAAAAAAAFJOYK
SEP standards
Stellar Ecosystem Proposals define much of how real-world value moves on Stellar: anchors, deposits and withdrawals, and authorization flows.
Compliance tooling has to understand the relevant SEPs to interpret transactions correctly, instead of treating them as opaque transfers.
How an anchor is found
- SEP-1Account sets
home_domain, domain publishes stellar.toml - VerifiedThe toml lists the account back, so the claim is verified
- SEP-10Authentication endpoint
- SEP-12KYC fields, mapped to IVMS101
- SEP-31Cross-border payments between anchors
Memos
Stellar transactions often carry memos that matter operationally, for example routing funds to one end user at a shared address.
Ignoring or mishandling memos can mean missing the real counterparty. Hera scores the memo's own transfers separately from the shared account.
SHARED ACCOUNT GBXK…Q2LM
- memo id 1001score 30 · medium
- memo id 1002score 4 · low
- memo id 1003score 6 · low
Three customers, three different answers. Screening the account alone would average them away.
The takeaway for builders
If you build on Stellar and your tooling was designed for EVM, assume these areas need explicit attention. They aren't edge cases. They're how value actually moves on the network, and getting them wrong undermines everything built on top.