DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
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.
Aquarius shares a progress update on their Stellar-based project, highlighting a successful airdrop using claimable balances that reached 272,980 wallets with over 918 million AQUA claimed. They've developed a Rewards Engine and Voting Tool to boost liquidity on the Stellar DEX (SDEX), with testing starting soon and community voting to follow. The protocol will integrate with upcoming AMMs, advancing their roadmap ahead of schedule.
Stellar Protocol 18 introduces breaking changes including Automated Market Makers (AMMs) and liquidity pools. Developers and node operators must upgrade Stellar Core, Horizon, and all SDKs before the November 3, 2021 upgrade vote to ensure compatibility.
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 relaunched its demo wallet with a unified interface consolidating separate protocol testing tools. The redesigned wallet now supports multiple SEPs including deposits, withdrawals, cross-border payments, and regulated assets, serving both developers and non-technical users learning Stellar protocols.
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.
The Stellar Development Foundation announces Protocol 17 upgrade with a new Asset Clawback feature. Developers and node operators must update Stellar Core, Horizon, and SDKs before the June 1, 2021 network upgrade vote.
SDF reported strong Q1 2021 results across all strategic pillars, including USDC launch on Stellar, $6.5M in Enterprise Fund investments, and record network growth with 160% increase in payments and 196% increase in DEX volume.
Stellar network upgraded to Protocol 16 on April 10, 2021 following a network incident. Node operators must update to Stellar Core v16.0.0 and Horizon v2.1.0 to restore service and rejoin the network.
Horizon 2.0 introduces a modular architecture that decouples Horizon from Stellar Core, enabling developers to run infrastructure with significantly fewer resources, faster ingestion times, and greater flexibility. The new Captive Core approach reduces disk requirements by hundreds of gigabytes and cuts ingestion time from weeks to about a day.
A comprehensive FAQ addressing common transaction submission errors on Stellar, particularly 504 timeout errors. The article explains how dynamic fees work, surge pricing mechanics, ledger limits, and provides practical guidance for developers to optimize transaction submission and avoid timeouts.
This article explains the Stellar DEX pricing limitation for indivisible NFT tokens due to INT32 constraints and presents Litemint's solution using synthetic assets and path payments. It details how small stroop amounts cause offer price overflows and demonstrates a workaround for high-value NFT trades. The post includes JavaScript code examples for implementing bids and offers that automatically handle the limitation.
Stellar Development Foundation released an updated analytics dataset with 5-minute refresh intervals and open-sourced its data pipeline tooling, including stellar-etl and Apache Airflow orchestration, enabling developers to build real-time Stellar data pipelines.
Stellar public network upgraded to Protocol 15 at 1600 UTC, introducing Claimable Balances and Sponsored Reserves features to enable more user-friendly app development on the network.
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.
Stellar is skipping Protocol 14 and upgrading the public network to Protocol 15 on November 23, 2020. The change addresses a rare bug discovered during testnet testing that could have caused validator crashes. Developers running Stellar Core or Horizon must install updated versions before the upgrade.
Stellar's SEP-24 and SEP-31 standards define how anchors integrate with wallets and each other for fiat on/off-ramps and cross-border payments. SEP-24 enables direct user deposits/withdrawals through wallet interfaces, while SEP-31 allows anchor-to-anchor bank transfers without end-user involvement.
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.
Samsung Galaxy smartphones now support Stellar blockchain through integration with Samsung Blockchain Keystore, enabling users to store Stellar private keys and developers to build blockchain apps for Galaxy devices.
The Stellar Development Foundation announced integration of Stellar blockchain into Samsung Blockchain Keystore, enabling secure private key storage on select Galaxy smartphones. Four ecosystem partners committed to supporting the integration.
Stellar Development Foundation launched redesigned developer documentation at developers.stellar.org, featuring improved navigation, updated content, and new learning paths for asset issuance, anchor services, and app development.
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.
Stellar Core Protocol 13 introduces three major features: fee bumps for flexible transaction fee management, fine-grained asset authorization for regulated assets, and multiplexed accounts with built-in memos for custodial services. The public network will vote to upgrade on June 18, requiring all ecosystem participants to update their software.
The Stellar Development Foundation released a daily-updated analytics dataset on Google BigQuery, enabling 10-100x faster queries across the entire history of Stellar network transactions. The dataset includes accounts, ledgers, operations, trades, and other ledger state information, with free trial access available through Google Cloud.
Kelp GUI v1.9.0 pre-release is now available, bringing a user-friendly interface to the open-source Stellar trading bot. The GUI eliminates the need for command-line configuration, offering bot management, real-time balances, and access to 100+ exchanges on testnet.
Stellar Protocol 13 upgrade is coming to mainnet on 06/18/2020. Developers must update Horizon, SDKs, and custom integrations before the network votes to upgrade, or their software will break.
The Stellar Development Foundation's web products team is seeking community feedback on a redesigned version of the Stellar developer documentation and API reference. The new docs feature improved navigation, modular learning paths, and updated content while maintaining existing functionality.
The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q1 2020 quarterly report, highlighting progress on strategic growth pillars including Horizon API improvements, policy advocacy, marketing initiatives, and a strategic investment in DSTOQ to expand financial access in emerging markets.