Stellar Ecosystem
News

The Stellar Development Foundation participated in the National Briefing of Women of Color in Blockchain, highlighting the need for greater diversity in blockchain leadership and discussing how blockchain technology can drive financial inclusion for underserved communities and small businesses.

Bidali launched a pilot in Bermuda enabling residents to purchase rum with digital Bermuda dollars on the Stellar network, marking progress toward the island's comprehensive crypto payments system.

Stellar Development Foundation will partner with Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation to develop the country's CBDC and virtual asset infrastructure, including stablecoin regulation. The collaboration marks SDF's continued expansion into government digital currency projects across multiple countries.

The Stellar Development Foundation invested $3 million in Settle Network, a Latin American cross-border payment platform, to support its stablecoin exchange StableX. This marks SDF's fourth Enterprise Fund investment this fiscal year.

Settle Network and Stellar launched ARST and BRLT stablecoins pegged to Argentine peso and Brazilian real respectively, enabling fast cross-border remittances between Latin America's two largest economies and addressing financial inclusion for millions of unbanked citizens.

SendIt is a user-friendly wallet built on the Stellar blockchain that enables sending and receiving payments via email addresses, eliminating the need for public keys or technical blockchain knowledge. It supports stablecoins, XLM, and asset swaps like USD to NGN for instant cross-border transfers via Stellar anchors. The testnet is live, with mainnet launch planned in two months to drive mass adoption and financial inclusion.

Stellar CEO Denelle Dixon will speak on a panel at the IMF's annual meeting about the private sector's role in cross-border payments, alongside leaders from eCurrency, Mastercard, and Celo. The panel will be webcast on October 19.

SDF board members discuss strategies for achieving network effects in blockchain, emphasizing the importance of critical mass, user trust, and open networks like Stellar to serve underbanked populations in developing markets.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced Meridian 2020, its second annual virtual conference (November 16-20), designed as a global forum to address systemic challenges through diverse perspectives and collaborative action on financial inclusion, cross-border payments, and equitable access to financial systems.

The Stellar Development Foundation will present at Consensus: Distributed on May 12, featuring CEO Denelle Dixon and co-founder Jed McCaleb discussing Stellar's 2020 roadmap, network health metrics, and ecosystem businesses including DSTOQ, Keybase, and Cowrie.

The Stellar Development Foundation appointed Lin-Hua Wu (Dropbox CCO) and Ronaldo Lemos (Brazilian tech lawyer and academic) to its board of directors in April 2020, bringing expertise in communications, technology policy, and emerging markets to guide Stellar's mission of financial inclusion.

SDF hosted a webinar featuring Cowrie Integrated Systems, a Nigerian fintech company using Stellar to enable low-cost, instant payments into and out of Nigerian bank accounts via their NGNT stablecoin and anchor integration.

Stellar Development Foundation invested $715,000 in DSTOQ, a security token platform built on Stellar that tokenizes global assets like stocks for emerging market investors. This marks SDF's first enterprise fund investment.

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced a major restructuring at the Meridian event in Mexico City, burning 55 billion XLM to reduce total supply to 50 billion. They ended large giveaway programs and redirected remaining lumens to core development, ecosystem support, use-case investments, and targeted user acquisition. This new mandate focuses SDF on making Stellar the global payments standard through efficient, transparent spending.

The Stellar Development Foundation outlines its vision for financial inclusion, emphasizing how Stellar's blockchain infrastructure enables local fintech entrepreneurs to reduce costs, accelerate go-to-market speed, and access global markets. The post features three companies building inclusion solutions on Stellar: Seamless Money, FinClusive, and Wala.

Singapore-based TransferTo is partnering with Stellar to enable low-cost blockchain-based cross-border remittances for underbanked populations in emerging markets, with plans to send regular payments across the Stellar network by Q4 2018 using Lumens as the settlement currency.

Pundi X, a cryptocurrency POS provider, partnered with Stellar to become an Indonesian Rupiah anchor on the network, enabling faster and cheaper cross-border payments while supporting XLM in its retail payment platform.

IBM and Stellar announced a partnership settling real cross-border payments using lumens as a bridge currency across Pacific currencies. The platform integrates private and public blockchain, with IBM handling transaction clearing while Stellar's blockchain conducts settlement.

Joyce Kim, co-founder of Stellar, resigned as executive director in May 2016, passing the role to co-founder Jed McCaleb while remaining as board chairperson. Kim cited slow legal changes and specialized product design as factors in her decision, planning to explore microfinance work in developing regions.

Stellar.org outlines a three-phase strategy to achieve financial inclusion: building the Stellar network infrastructure, establishing anchor partnerships to connect financial institutions, and creating a platform for developers to build financial services for underbanked populations.

Stellar co-founder Joyce Kim discusses the project's launch challenges, consensus protocol issues being addressed by Chief Scientist David Mazières, and efforts to drive developer adoption and financial inclusion in emerging markets like Nicaragua and Vietnam.

The Future of Money & Technology Summit in San Francisco featured a dedicated digital currency track with discussions on bitcoin, blockchain, and Stellar. Panelists highlighted emerging markets as key to cryptocurrency adoption and discussed innovations like sidechains.