Ground Adds RWAs as Stephanie Vaughan joins Executive Team

Stablecoins have moved from experiment to infrastructure. In June alone, adjusted transaction volume hit $1.79 trillion, up 63% from May and 125% year over year. Use cases are multiplying, and with the GENIUS Act signed, the regulatory picture is finally taking shape. That growth is now pulling stablecoin demand into new crypto-earn products, but every new asset class brings its own counterparties, custody constraints, compliance, disclosures, regulations and plumbing. Building a usable interface is costly, time consuming, complex and quickly becoming a bottle neck for the industry. The next wave of onchain products is stalling the same way e-commerce and online checkout did before Shopify or Stripe.

Enter Ground: one API, one operations surface, and ledger-ready output, so any financial platform can integrate onchain finance without becoming a blockchain specialist. Ground started with yield, since it maps cleanly onto the balance every financial product already carries. Now we’re extending that same interface to real-world assets, or RWAs: tokenized versions of assets that already exist off-chain.

Tokenizing non-crypto-native assets is where blockchain technology has the most leverage, and where the opportunity is largest. RWAs sit outside the crypto-native yield loop, and bring their own return profiles, disclosures, and investor bases with them. Stablecoins were the proof of concept, providing a familiar instrument made programmable, unlocking new settlement, distribution, and yield behaviors. That same pattern is now tracking up the risk curve into tokenized Treasuries, structured credit, and beyond.

Fintechs, wealth platforms, and asset managers are asking the next question: how do you bring these assets into a product in a way that meets clients’ expectations on security, risk-adjusted yield, and liquidity, all at once? Building these in-house means recruiting smart contract engineers, sourcing counterparties, and rebuilding operations from scratch.

Ground makes this easy by providing access to desirable RWA yield sources and enabling clients to pre-configure the allocations and handle the operations the way institutions expect with familiar controls, clear risk parameters, and an audit trail. Ground is beginning with tokenization infrastructure leaders Centrifuge and Superstate as core integration partners, starting with their tokenized T-bill funds managed by Janus Henderson (JTRSY) and Invesco (USTB), respectively, AAA CLO strategy managed by Janus Henderson (JAAA), and crypto basis strategy managed by Bitwise (USCC).

Once a platform is onchain for RWAs, the same Ground interface opens the door to crypto-native resources offering composability across yield sources, dynamic allocation, and for platforms that want it, the ability to layer strategies on top of positions they already hold. Start with RWAs, end up with a full onchain balance sheet running quietly in the background.

We’re not just broadening and deepening the product surface but also the team. Today we’re welcoming Stephanie Vaughan as COO, joining Ground to lead operations and go-to-market as we scale.

Stephanie joins Ground from Veda, where she was Co-Founder and COO. Before Veda, she also co-founded and ran Seven Seas Capital as COO and Managing Partner. At Veda, she tried to solve this interface problem with a vault infrastructure for institutional partners. But while vault infrastructure abstracts the complexity of decentralized finance, it also limits the depth, control, and transparency that customers increasingly want. Earlier in her career, she was Head of Operations at Sommelier and has held C-suite roles across a range of Web3 projects, including xx Network, David Chaum’s quantum-resistant, privacy-focused blockchain ecosystem. Her path into crypto ran through traditional finance, with investment banking at Houlihan Lokey, and before that, five years of active duty as a Captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, including service in Operation Enduring Freedom. She holds a B.S. in Quantitative Economics from the U.S. Naval Academy and an MBA from Columbia. She’s joining Ground to solve the interface problem, making onchain finance accessible to the financial platforms and asset managers that already move trillions of dollars in customer balances.

With Stephanie on board, Ground gains significant institutional expertise across operations, partnerships, and go-to-market execution.

Ground is growing, and the surface is widening from crypto-native yield to a full spectrum of onchain tokenized assets. If you are a fintech, wealth platform, or asset manager thinking about how to bring RWAs and onchain yield into your product sign up and start building.