Provider guide
Top Stellar development companies: how to choose
Compare Metlabs, Cheesecake Labs and Nethermind for Stellar development: payments, issued assets, product integration and specialist engineering.
In a Stellar payment application, confirming a network transfer and delivering money to its recipient can be separate stages. The product needs to identify the asset being moved, its issuer and the service completing the movement into or out of the network. Choosing a development team means assessing that full journey alongside the code submitting a transaction.
This Metlabs commercial selection brings together our integration approach, Cheesecake Labs’ Stellar product offering and a specialist engineering reference from Nethermind. Inclusion follows documented scopes in public sources. The guide is not an independent ranking of quality, pricing or outcomes, and it distinguishes payment integration from specialised cryptographic development.
Define the payment and its external dependencies
Stellar asset documentation identifies classic issued assets by code and issuer. Sharing a name such as USD does not make two issuances equivalent. Project scope should record that identity and the requirements for accounts participating in an operation.
Ramps or anchors connect the network to external systems through ecosystem interfaces. When assessing a proposal, distinguish the on-chain transfer from deposit, withdrawal or delivery status. Our Stellar technology page expands on architecture choices and Soroban where the product needs contracts.
Metlabs: connect transfers to business operations
Our blockchain development approach uses the user journey to define integrations and product states. For Stellar, the proposal should explain who initiates a payment, who authorises it and which evidence lets operations mark it complete. Native functions and custom contracts are selected according to the rule that needs to execute.
Consider an application distributing funds to several recipients and allowing withdrawal through a ramp. Some users may have received the asset in their accounts while external withdrawal remains pending. Operations needs to distinguish these stages, retain references and prevent retries from duplicating instructions. This example helps assess reconciliation and recovery before agreeing scope.
If a Soroban contract is developed, agree its permissions, maintenance and rule testing. Also identify processes belonging to third parties: identity verification, conversion and delivery outside the network. Adopting an ecosystem interface does not independently establish that a product meets every applicable requirement.
Compare the Metlabs proposal against that application delivery, its dependencies and the demonstrable capability of the assigned team. Cryptographic privacy or infrastructure modification requires specialist assessment with its own boundaries and components.
Cheesecake Labs: payment products and wallets
Cheesecake Labs advertises contract and wallet integration services and publishes a reference for work on MoneyGram’s Stellar wallet. That provides evidence for examining its product integration profile. It does not establish which team is available or transfer the outcomes of that project to another engagement.
For a product combining a wallet and a ramp, request a responsibility map covering the application, signing, external service and reconciliation. References should match the proposed scope, including integration maintenance and failure handling. A commercial case presentation provides a starting point for that review, not a delivery guarantee.
Nethermind: specialist Stellar engineering
Nethermind documents Stellar Private Payments, developed in collaboration with Stellar Development Foundation. Its July 16, 2026 publication describes a testnet deployment. This is included as a reference for cryptographic work on Stellar, without presenting it as automatically available in any application or as evidence of current mainnet deployment.
That profile can be relevant when requirements call for studying privacy and data access controls. Request the available components, unfinished work, deployment environment and review scope. Published control features should be assessed within the actual design; they do not establish legal compliance automatically.
What a team should demonstrate before handover
Compare proposals against the same payment flow with the asset and external services identified. A demonstration should let you trace both a completed operation and one requiring intervention by the operations team.
- Asset: code and issuer, permissions and recipient account requirements.
- Payment: authorisation, on-chain confirmation and external delivery or withdrawal status.
- Recovery: reconciliation references, repeated notifications, retries and incident handling.
- Contracts and specialist components: version, tests, deployment environment and committed maintenance.
Our general blockchain development company guide provides broader commercial assessment criteria. A Stellar proposal should establish where the network transaction ends and who takes responsibility for the remaining movement of money.
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