Stellar Ecosystem
News

The Stellar Development Foundation announced Protocol 20, which brings Soroban smart contracts to Stellar. The network will adopt a phased rollout approach to gradually increase smart contract capacity while monitoring network stability and performance.

Dropzey is a new platform revolutionizing airdrops on the Stellar blockchain. It leverages Stellar's Soroban smart contracts to automate eligibility verification, streamline token distributions, and enhance engagement for creators and participants. The platform addresses traditional airdrop challenges like verification complexities and limited visibility.

Stellar Community Fund launches SCF 5.0 with Neural Quorum Governance, a reputation-based voting mechanism built on Soroban. The fund deployed $10M to 130+ projects in 2023 and introduces streamlined Activation and Community Awards up to $50K and $100K respectively.

RPCiege: Siege 5, Space Continuum launches December 4th with four Soroban smart contract challenges focused on state archival. Players can earn NFT cards and XLM rewards (up to 500 XLM for first place on each skirmish).

Range partners with Oak Security to deliver end-to-end security for Cosmos projects, extending audits into continuous monitoring. This addresses limitations like dynamic codebases and third-party risks. Range, trusted by Stellar among others, provides customized real-time security tools.

This article explains stablecoins, their types, growth, risks, and regulatory challenges in crypto markets. It highlights issues like centralization and past failures such as TerraUSD. Range is introduced as a leading platform for cross-chain stablecoin intelligence, trusted by Stellar and others.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced the winners of Sorobanathon: Road to Mainnet, a month-long virtual hackathon held September-October 2023. Four projects were awarded: Cowchain Farm (gaming), Divify (expense management), Kwickbit & Paltalabs (compliance), and Soro-Shark (tokenization), with SDF planning additional hackathons for 2024.

The Stellar Development Foundation submitted a comprehensive response to the French financial regulator AMF's DeFi discussion paper, advocating for regulatory frameworks that balance innovation with consumer protection through open source technology and decentralization principles.

Stellar's Protocol 20 upgrade, which enables Soroban smart contracts on Mainnet, is approaching a validator vote. The upgrade implements 12 Core Advancement Proposals and unlocks new possibilities for developers while maintaining Stellar's existing capabilities.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) has launched its fifth iteration with major upgrades including Neural Quorum Governance, a new reputation-based voting mechanism built on Soroban, and a redesigned website with improved transparency and user experience. The updated award structure now offers Activation Awards (up to $50K) for new projects and Community Awards (up to $100K) for continued development.

RPCiege: Axe & Ember is a text-based adventure game built on Soroban smart contracts. Getting started guides show how to play via Gitpod, GitHub Codespaces, or local CLI setup, with NFT rewards available for players who connect a Stellar wallet.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q3 2023 report highlighting major progress on its roadmap, including Soroban's advancement toward Mainnet launch, security partnerships with Certora, enhancements to the Anchor Platform and Wallet SDK, and significant ecosystem milestones like Circle's EURC stablecoin launch and MoneyGram's planned wallet integration.

This article explores the history and advantages of asset tokenization on the Stellar network, highlighting how institutions like Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and the Bank for International Settlements leverage Stellar's native asset control features for issuing securities, money market funds, and bonds with operational efficiency, transparency, and sustainability benefits.

The Stellar Development Foundation highlights five outstanding submissions from the Sorobounty Spectacular program, a content bounty initiative that encouraged developers to build Soroban dapps with educational tutorials. Featured projects include a regulated assets dapp, a snooker game, a farming game, a payment streaming app, and a Bitcoin price oracle.

Stellar is launching Soroban, a smart-contract platform built with Rust and WebAssembly, to compete with Ethereum and other chains. The upgrade, expected by year-end, includes a $100M adoption fund and partnership with Certora for security verification.

Stellar Development Foundation partners with Certora to conduct security audits for Soroban, its upcoming WebAssembly-based smart contracts platform. The formal verification tools will provide continuous integration security checks as the platform approaches mainnet launch in early 2025.

Stellar's Testnet upgraded to Protocol 20 on September 20, enabling Soroban smart contract support. Developers can now test DeFi applications in a sandbox environment, with Mainnet upgrade expected before year-end. This unlocks cash-to-DeFi opportunities through partnerships like Moneygram.

Meridian 2023, the annual Stellar conference held in Madrid, showcased major ecosystem developments including MoneyGram's non-custodial wallet launch, Circle's EURC stablecoin deployment, and significant upgrades to developer tools like the Anchor Platform and Stellar Disbursement Platform.

Beans app announces partnership with Blend, a DeFi lending and borrowing protocol on the Stellar blockchain. They demoed the integration at Meridian 2023, showcasing seamless DeFi features. The integration is in proof-of-concept phase with plans for a safe release soon.

The article explores the evolution of trust and identity authentication from historical paper documents to modern decentralized solutions like Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs). It highlights the limitations of centralized systems and the benefits of self-sovereign identity for privacy, security, and interoperability. It teases upcoming content on implementing DIDs on the Stellar network.

This article explains the importance of swap functionality and Automated Market Makers (AMMs) for financial inclusion, detailing how AMMs work, their advantages, and challenges like impermanent loss. It highlights how Soroban smart contracts on Stellar enable developers to build sophisticated AMM protocols for trustless, incentivized liquidity provision.

AssetDesk has secured an R&D grant from the Stellar Community Fund to develop the AssetDesk protocol, a new money markets protocol for Stellar's Soroban smart contracts platform. The protocol enables decentralized borrowing and lending with features like margin trading, flash loans, NFT lending, and stablecoin markets. It aims to enhance capital efficiency in Stellar's DeFi ecosystem.

RPCiege Siege 4 launches with three new Soroban Rust coding challenges (Skirmish 8-10) designed to teach smart contract development while gamifying the learning experience with a fantasy narrative.

This article explains how decentralized finance (DeFi) lending and borrowing markets work, contrasting them with traditional banking by highlighting their accessibility, trustlessness, and use of smart contracts. It covers the mechanics of liquidity pools, collateral requirements, and integration with oracles and AMMs, while discussing risks like liquidation and price volatility.