Stellar Ecosystem
News

Soroban, Stellar's native smart contract platform, learns from Ethereum's design mistakes to offer better developer experience. Key improvements include native XLM token integration without wrapping, built-in event emissions, re-entrancy attack prevention, checksummed addresses, and single-transaction token transfers.

An overview of the Stellar network, its foundation, and thriving ecosystem. The article explains Stellar's blockchain technology, the Stellar Development Foundation's role in supporting growth, and highlights real-world applications across various sectors.

Source of Tales releases early access for Windows, Linux, and Android, featuring Stellar wallet login via Albedo. Funded by Stellar Community Fund #10 grant from Stellar Development Foundation, it implements blockchain-based authentication using a custom Mana Stellar Bridge. Further Stellar integrations for character data storage are planned.

Soroban offers developers a compelling alternative to Ethereum and Solana through inclusive technology choices like WebAssembly and Rust, a greenfield ecosystem, global financial reach with diverse stablecoins, superior network reliability, and a streamlined developer experience.

The Stellar Community Fund published guidance on three best practices for successful SCF applications: demonstrate technical expertise with Soroban/Stellar, prove ecosystem impact, and define clear 3-month roadmaps with specific deliverables.

The Stellar Newsletter highlights Q1 achievements including Franklin Templeton's OnChain Fund surpassing $270M AUM on Stellar blockchain, SDF's strategic progress, and new board member Asiff Hirji. It covers partnerships like Arf, Cebuana Lhuillier, and blockchain remittances, plus Soroban smart contracts developments and community spotlights. Upcoming Meridian 2023 in Madrid is announced.

Tomer Weller from Stellar Development Foundation interviews Sergey Gorbunov, co-founder of Axelar, to discuss cross-chain communication protocols and how both teams approach interoperability challenges for developers.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q1 2023 report, highlighting progress on Soroban smart contracts, Stellar Core scaling improvements, Freighter wallet enhancements, and the launch of the Soroban Adoption Fund and Stellar Asset Sandbox to support developer adoption.

Elliot Voris has joined the Stellar Development Foundation as a DevRel team member after years of community contributions. He discovered Stellar through Stellar Quest during COVID and has since become a key contributor to community education, Soroban documentation, and developer tools.

Blend is a new liquidity protocol primitive for Stellar, enabling anyone to create insured lending pools with Soroban smart contracts. It provides lending and borrowing capabilities, adapting to market conditions while protecting suppliers via a backstop module. The protocol enhances Stellar's ecosystem for fintech, trading, DAOs, and DeFi applications.

Litemint has launched a fully non-custodial ERC-721 compliant bridge for Stellar NFTs to Ethereum, enabling secure use as profile pictures on Web3 services like Twitter. The bridge locks Stellar assets and mints corresponding non-transferable NFTs on Ethereum, with decentralized recovery mechanisms. It leverages Stellar's SEP-39 for metadata and ensures high security without relying on central entities.

The Stellar Newsletter highlights the Soroban Adoption Fund with $100M in opportunities, including a $10M Stellar Community Fund program for Soroban projects and developer initiatives like Sorobanathon. It covers UNHCR's nomination for blockchain impact award using Stellar for aid in Ukraine, partnerships like Beans App with MoneyGram, and technical updates on Pull Mode and Ubuntu upgrades. Community events, policy priorities, and developer resources are also featured.

Synced's February 2023 development log details progress on dashboard integration and familiarity with Stellar's Soroban platform via Hacka-Soroban-athon. March aims include adding description and chat features to dashboards, completing web redesign, and releasing to live app. Additional plans involve migrating from MongoDB.

The Stellar Development Foundation outlines three active programs under the $100M Soroban Adoption Fund: Stellar Quest Live Series 6 for competitive learning, Sorobanathon: Equinox for experimentation and content creation, and the Stellar Community Fund for building full products. Each targets different developer skill levels with varying award structures.

This article explains Pull Mode, a feature introduced in Stellar Core releases 19.4.0 and mandated in 19.7.0 that reduces redundant transaction broadcasting between validators. By having validators request transaction hashes before sending full transactions, Pull Mode decreased computational overhead and increased maximum TPS by 72% in testing.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced the deprecation of stellar-core Ubuntu 18.04 package support in favor of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, requiring users to either upgrade, switch to Docker images, or manually compile the software.

The Stellar Development Foundation and Cheesecake Labs showcased 14 Soroban smart contract projects from a week-long internal hackathon, including a naming service, DAO governance tool, recurring payments contract, and NFT implementation. The projects demonstrate Soroban's flexibility and are open for community collaboration ahead of mainnet launch.

Stellar Quest Live Series 6 launches February 15th with monthly Soroban-based challenges. Participants compete across three categories (Fast, Cheap, Out of Control) for USDC rewards and NFT badges, with leaderboards remaining open indefinitely.

Stellar Development Foundation announced a $10 million Soroban-focused awards program through the Stellar Community Fund, offering developers up to $150,000 in XLM to build smart contracts, DeFi protocols, and dApps on Soroban ahead of its mainnet launch.

The Stellar Newsletter highlights the 2023 roadmap emphasizing utility through tools like Stellar Aid Assist and Soroban smart contracts. It introduces the Stellar Asset Sandbox for easy testnet asset issuance, reviews Q4 2022 achievements, and announces Sorobanathon: Equinox. Additional updates cover TASCOMBANK's blockchain pilot in Ukraine, SDF's CFTC involvement, network growth milestones, and developer resources.

The Stellar Development Foundation launched Sorobanathon: Equinox, the next phase of its $100M Soroban Adoption Fund. Running from February 3 to April 1, developers can earn 25 to 10,000 XLM for submitting Soroban tools, tutorials, bug reports, and content.

This article explains why Stellar requires rigorous testing of blockchain upgrades before deployment to mainnet, and details how Stellar Supercluster—an automated testing framework—enables developers to validate code changes in simulated network environments.