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SDF Q2 2023 quarterly review covering Soroban smart contracts platform progress toward mainnet launch, MoneyGram access milestone reaching one year, Franklin Templeton's on-chain money fund surpassing $270M AUM, and ecosystem growth with 70+ projects building on Soroban.

Chad Ostrovsky from AhaLabs discusses smart contract developer tooling for Soroban, comparing Rust-based development approaches across Near, Soroban, and Cosmwasm. He explains Rain, an ABI system and interactive documentation tool, and explores the philosophy behind Soroban's no-std constraint and performance optimization.

Carol House, former White House NSC director for cybersecurity and digital assets, discusses her career spanning national security, FinCEN, and crypto policy. She explains how blockchain's public ledger benefits law enforcement, why regulation protects rather than crushes innovation, and why the U.S. remains critical for responsible crypto development.

Airtm, a Stellar-powered digital wallet and payments platform, demonstrates how it solves last-mile payments for the digital economy by enabling freelancers, content creators, and online taskers to receive earnings globally and cash out locally through 400+ payment methods, peer-to-peer matching, and direct fiat connections.

Cubist co-founders Fraser Brown and Riyadh Wabi discuss their cross-chain dApp development toolkit, the state of zero-knowledge proofs, and why Soroban's testing infrastructure sets a new standard for blockchain developer experience.

Franklin Templeton CEO discusses the Benji Money Market Fund built on Stellar blockchain, highlighting how tokenization enables new investment opportunities like fractional ownership of cultural assets and real-world assets, while emphasizing the importance of regulatory collaboration and public blockchain transparency.

Stellar Core developers discussed replacing the variable rent balance system with a fixed expiration ledger approach for state expiration. The new model simplifies user experience and downstream system integration by storing a single expiration ledger per entry instead of periodically deducting variable rent fees.

Stellar Development Foundation unveiled Stellar Aid Assist, a blockchain-based platform enabling organizations to distribute cash assistance to displaced people and vulnerable populations at scale. The system processes bulk payments via USDC and MoneyGram's global network, already deployed by UNHCR and International Rescue Committee in Ukraine.

Soroban design discussion on state expiration and storage. Team proposes unified storage interface combining temporary and restorable entries with rent-based model, automatic rent bumps on access, and optional manual bumps. Short-term entries (15 min) charged at lower rate than long-term (30 days) to incentivize temporary storage use.

Sergei Gurbanov, CEO of Axelar, discusses how the decentralized interoperability protocol connects multiple blockchains through a plug-and-play gateway model. Axelar is integrating with Stellar's Soroban smart contract platform and launching a virtual machine to scale cross-chain development.

Stellar Development Foundation's Q1 2023 quarterly review covering network growth to 7.3M accounts, $419M relevant asset transaction volume, Sorobon smart contract platform progress with two preview releases, and ecosystem initiatives including the $100M Sorobon Adoption Fund supporting developer adoption.

Soroban Developer Workshop livestream featuring Paul from SDF and Morgan from useSoroban.app demonstrating how to write your first smart contract on Soroban, including Hello World examples and stateful contract development with storage operations.

SDF hosted the Stellar Community Fund 12 project pitch event featuring 10 Soroban and Stellar ecosystem projects presenting their proof of intent deliverables, including developer tools, DeFi protocols, infrastructure, and financial inclusion applications.

Stellar Community Fund hosts an info session for the Asia Pacific SCF startup bootcamp, a five-day virtual program using design sprint methodology to help teams accelerate from idea to MVP. The bootcamp features mentorship, workshops, investor demo day, and prizes totaling 30,000 XLM.

Stellar core developers discuss three approaches for storing scalable network configuration settings in dedicated ledger entries instead of the ledger header, with approach two using Soroban emerging as the preferred option for simplicity and flexibility.

Lightecho is a crypto exchange rate search engine that helps traders find the best prices across decentralized, centralized, and instant exchanges for pairs like XLM, XRP, and stablecoins, emphasizing self-custody and security.

SDF launched the Stellar Asset Sandbox, a no-code toolkit built with Cheesecake Labs for exploring tokenization on Stellar testnet. The sandbox enables users to issue custom assets, manage supply, and control asset permissions through features like account freezing and clawback.

Stellar Development Foundation hosts detailed walkthrough of SCF submission process, covering eligibility requirements, project information, deliverables, budgeting, team qualifications, and submission platform features for Round 12.

Developer walkthrough of Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, a Soroban smart contract coding game that teaches optimization through competitive challenges. The host covers the game engine, testing strategies, and Rust development practices for building efficient contracts.

Anke Liu from the Stellar Development Foundation presented updates to the Stellar Community Fund, announcing a new four-week submission cycle for awards up to $150,000 XLM, a virtual startup bootcamp launching in April, and a tiered verified member system with governance roles.

SDF Q4 2022 quarterly review covering network growth to 7.4M accounts, Soroban smart contracts launching on FutureNet with mainnet planned for H1 2023, Stellar Aid Assist deployment in Ukraine, and the 2023 roadmap focused on utility as the growth exponent.

Aaron Tyson from the Stellar Development Foundation presents Bucket List DB, a next-generation database replacing SQL for Stellar Core storage. The new system reduces disk usage by 50%, improves read performance 2.6-4.2x, and eliminates data duplication while maintaining fast hashing for consensus.

Soroban design discussion on Authnext proposal covering account abstraction, standardized signature payloads, and invocation authorization. Dima presented the two-component system enabling flexible authentication while maintaining protocol standardization for contract interoperability.

UNHCR treasurer Carmen Hurt discusses the organization's blockchain initiative on Stellar to deliver cash assistance to 100 million displaced people globally. The project uses USDC, Circle, MoneyGram, and the Stellar Disbursement Platform to provide refugees with financial autonomy and transparency.