Stellar Ecosystem
News

Aquarius announces the Signers Guild to decentralize control over key AQUA wallets on the Stellar network, using native multisignature capabilities with up to 20 community members. The guild will manage 75%+ of uncirculated AQUA supply, including liquidity rewards, airdrops, and DAO funds, requiring majority approval for transactions. This initiative supports Aquarius's goals of enhancing SDEX and AMM liquidity through community governance.

YieldBlox announces updates to its YBX airdrop due to bot activity, introducing day-zero staking with a 10x multiplier for genuine users and staggering payouts over six weeks. The testnet beta saw over 472,000 YBX farmed, revealing key insights into user strategies and protocol improvements on Stellar. Upcoming changes include UX enhancements, smart contract fixes, and mainnet launch by late November.

THORWallet now supports Stellar asset management with single and multisig wallets, enabling XLM and USDC swaps on mobile. The integration includes Blend protocol access for yield generation, bringing institutional-grade DeFi security to Stellar.

Project Venus is a DeFi protocol on Stellar using Turing Signing Servers (TSS) to enable trustless smart contracts without an on-chain VM. It implements short-term FX forwards to improve capital efficiency for Stellar-based financial institutions like remittance companies. TSS leverages off-chain servers (turrets) combined with Stellar's multi-sig for efficient DeFi.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced changes to its Debian package distribution for Stellar Core and Horizon nodes. Support for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS has ended, and operators must upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04 LTS, with SDF committing to support all future Ubuntu LTS releases.

This article explains how to use the Stellar network for everyday payments and remittances, emphasizing its speed, low cost, and ecological benefits over traditional banking. It covers wallet options like Keybase, Lobstr, Freighter, and hardware wallets, security best practices, and methods to spend XLM via exchanges or crypto debit cards. The author shares personal experiences sending XLM to family members.

The Stellar Development Foundation executed a Protocol 16 upgrade on April 10 after an outage on April 6 caused validator and Horizon nodes to go offline. The upgrade fixed the issue affecting multiple nodes without impacting network stability.

Stellar Development Foundation validator nodes and Horizon API went offline April 6, 2021, causing transaction processing delays and exchange withdrawal halts at Binance, Bitfinex, and Bitstamp. The network recovered within hours with SDF restoring services by April 7.

The article details a 'Stellar Staking Marathon' email-phishing scam targeting Stellar (XLM) users, linked to the 2020 Ledger.com database breach that exposed over 1 million emails and personal data of 270,000 individuals. Stellarscam.report connects this to memo-phishing bots on the Stellar Network, noting pattern changes coinciding with the breach. Users are urged to check haveibeenpwned.com and report scams.

Stellar Development Foundation disclosed a phishing attack on November 29 targeting community members with fake emails impersonating SDF. The attackers compromised third-party email service API keys but did not access Stellar network infrastructure or user accounts; SDF emphasized it never requests secret keys.

SDF redesigned the Stellar Account Viewer with improved security features, hardware wallet support, and a new browser wallet called Freighter. The updated AV now emphasizes key management best practices and offers a better mobile experience.

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 ecosystem leaders debate custodial vs. non-custodial key management approaches in a roundtable discussion, exploring how CAP-27 and SEP-30 support different solutions and which the SDF should prioritize for financial inclusion and adoption.

The article recounts the origin of Stellarscam.report, created to combat 'memo-phishing' scams on the Stellar Network where scammers send malicious memos with tiny XLM amounts to trick users into revealing secret keys. The author, frustrated by repeated scam reports on r/Stellar, developed a bot in mid-May 2020 to automatically send warning transactions to victims. Monthly stats show the bot countered tens of thousands of scam transactions, highlighting ongoing community efforts against persistent fraud.

Stellar Development Foundation announced that Protocol 14 will be skipped in favor of Protocol 15 due to a critical bug discovered during testnet testing. The public network upgrade vote has been rescheduled to November 23, 2020, with detailed upgrade instructions provided for validators, Horizon operators, and SDK users.

SEP-30 enables user-friendly non-custodial wallets by eliminating recovery phrases and passwords. Users log in with just a phone number while maintaining full account control through device keys and distributed recovery servers. Vesseo, a USD savings app on Stellar, demonstrates this approach in production.

Part two of a key management series explains how Stellar accounts work, covering public/secret keys, master keys, multi-signature capabilities, and common wallet strategies. The post introduces SEP-30 as a better approach to user-friendly key management and account recovery.

StellarTerm announces major updates including a redesigned onboarding process, renewed Send form with SEP-0029 support, full Deposit/Withdraw functionality via SEP-0024, improved trading interface, desktop builds, hardware wallet support, and a new Help Center.

The Stellar public network successfully upgraded to Protocol 13, introducing new features like fee-bump transactions and fine-grained asset authorization. Developers must update their software to avoid compatibility errors.

Ledger Wallet offers a secure way to buy over 80 cryptocurrencies, including Stellar, directly into users' non-custodial hardware wallets using fiat or crypto. It aggregates providers like Moonpay and Ramp for competitive pricing and ensures self-custody from the start. The feature emphasizes ease-of-use, clear transaction signing, and hardware-level security to prevent common risks associated with centralized exchanges.

Protocol 13 introduces fee-bump transactions to the Stellar network, allowing users to increase transaction fees without requiring new signatures from all parties. This solves the problem of pre-signed transactions becoming unexecutable when network fees rise unexpectedly.

The Stellar Foundation partnered with blockchain forensics firm Elliptic to help Stellar-based businesses screen transactions for money laundering, sanctions, and compliance risks. The service is optional for businesses; XLM wallet users won't be automatically surveilled. Stellar argues regulatory compliance and privacy can coexist.

The Stellar Winter Roundup 2019 recaps key achievements and events from December through October, including ecosystem expansion, the Meridian conference, lumen distribution updates, and new partnerships. Highlights feature SDF's new mandate, Horizon and Core releases, Stellar Community Fund voting, and integrations like Travala.com and BitGo support for XLM. It also announces new hires and job opportunities at SDF.

Keybase and Stellar's 2 billion XLM airdrop ended early after attracting massive spam and bot activity. The program distributed only 300 million XLM instead of the planned amount, as fraudsters exploited verification methods to claim free tokens at scale.

StellarTerm is an open-source trading client for the Stellar Decentralized Exchange (SDEX) with local key storage for enhanced security. It offers instant login via secret key, Ledger hardware wallet support, multisig accounts, and advanced trading features like real-time charts and notifications. Desktop apps are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.