Stellar Anchor Platform Tutorial

Anchors serve as bridges between traditional finance and blockchain technology.

They enable users to move money seamlessly between their bank accounts and the Stellar network. Without Anchors, integrating traditional financial systems with blockchain would be significantly more complex.

Anchors make decentralized finance more accessible by providing liquidity and facilitating on/off ramps for users.

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Types of Stellar Anchors

There are four main types of Stellar Anchors, each serving a unique role within the ecosystem:

• Fiat On/Off Ramps – These Anchors allow users to deposit and withdraw fiat currencies by converting them to and from digital tokens on the Stellar network.
• Stablecoin Issuers – Entities that issue stablecoins backed by reserves held in custodial bank accounts.
• Remittance Anchors – Specialized in international money transfers, enabling seamless cross-border payments.
• Crypto On/Off Ramps – Provide bridges between other blockchain networks and Stellar, allowing assets to move across chains.

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The Stellar Anchor Platform

The Stellar Anchor Platform is a ready-to-use software solution developed by the Stellar Development Foundation. It provides a standardized way for companies to become Anchors without having to build everything from scratch. This platform simplifies the integration process by handling compliance, KYC checks, transaction monitoring, and user interfaces for deposits and withdrawals.

At a high level, the platform consists of several essential components:

• The Stellar Blockchain – A decentralized ledger where transactions occur.
• The Anchor Backend – Middleware that connects a business’s internal systems to Stellar.
• Compliance and KYC Modules – Handle identity verification and regulatory requirements.
• Deposit and Withdrawal APIs – Enable users to transfer funds between their bank accounts and the Stellar network.

The platform is designed to be modular and scalable, allowing businesses of any size to efficiently leverage Stellar’s capabilities.

Step-by-Step Process:

1. A user initiates a deposit request through a front-end interface (such as a banking app or remittance service).
2. The Anchor Platform verifies the user’s identity via KYC checks.
3. The user sends fiat currency to the Anchor using traditional payment methods like bank transfers.
4. The Anchor issues an equivalent amount of digital tokens on the Stellar network, credited to the user’s Stellar wallet.
5. When withdrawing, the user burns the Stellar token, and the Anchor sends fiat currency to their bank account.

This entire process is significantly faster than traditional banking systems, typically taking seconds or minutes instead of days.

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Deploying Docker Containers

Let’s set up the standard containers which will act as a starting point for the integration.

First install docker and clone the Github repo:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
sudo dockerd &
git clone https://github.com/stellar/anchor-platform.git

The main configuration file is ./docker-compose.yaml and this provides a list of services that will be deployed.

Let’s fire these up with the following command:

docker compose --profile v2-stable up -d

We can now test the service is running using netcat.

nc -v localhost 8080

From here we can configure the services we need to integrate the Anchor protocol into our business.

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Anchor Platform Demo

There is an example test server here: https://anchor-sep-server-testanchor.stellar.org/.well-known/stellar.toml

We can use the demo testnet wallet to interact with this at https://demo-wallet.stellar.org/

Setup temporary keys and then add an asset with the following details:

Asset code	USDC
Anchor home domain	https://anchor-sep-server-testanchor.stellar.org
Issuer public key	GDQOE23CFSUMSVQK4Y5JHPPYK73VYCNHZHA7ENKCV37P6SUEO6XQBKPP

We can use this to test out the flow for depositing funds as if it was a real on/off ramp.