The Stellar Development Foundation defines a Stellar Ecosystem Proposal (SEP) as the structure designed to create interoperability between products and services across the Stellar Network. To date, there are currently forty-three SEPs.
SEP 1 concerns the Stellar info file. It originated on October 30, 2017, but was more recently updated in May 2022 to include NFT as an anchor asset type.
Just as stocks listed on the stock exchange provide public information about the company for investors to review, toml files provide this information to potential investors on the Stellar Network. If you know the domain of the asset you are interested in buying, you can investigate its toml file by visiting https://DOMAIN/.well-known/stellar.toml
Some of the original domain names have changed since the ICOs were first minted. Many, in fact, do not provide a link to a domain name at all. There have been hacking incidents which caused the developers to move the asset to a new domain. Unfortunately, an investor may not be able to locate the new domain name to access the TOML file.
As a result, it stands to reason that most of these assets will not see liquidity until such time as their TOML files become available. To attract most of the public, the developer will need to garner trust by providing this basic information for the investor to evaluate.
The TOML File
Stellar.toml is a file type that provides common information about the asset type readable both by humans and robots. TOML stands for Tom’s Obvious, Minimal Language format, a file type commonly used to load configuration settings.
According to Stellar.org1, the steps for verifying the toml file upon account creation are as follows:
- Account creates and signs a transaction
- Account resolves asset information and detects that it’s an asset requiring authorization by checking the authorization flags of the asset issuer’s account. Account finds the approval server via the issuer’s SEP-1 stellar.toml, sends the transaction to the approval
- Account finds the approval server via the issuer’s SEP-1 stellar.toml, and sends the transaction to the approval server
What’s in a TOML file?
An asset issuer will publish important information about that asset in the toml file to demonstrate its legitimacy. This includes general information such as network passphrase and federation server, organization documentation such as business location, contact information, currency documentation, etc.
Some of the details include:
- Type of asset anchored. This can be fiat, crypto, NFT, stock, bond, commodity, real estate, or other.
- If anchored token, code / symbol for asset that token is anchored to. E.g. USD, BTC, SBUX, Address of real-estate investment property.
SEP 1 supports all known asset types providing the structure for the Stellar Network to serve as the global system for the entire world’s finances in the future.
