DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
SEP-29 enables exchanges and wallets to solve the "forgotten memo" problem on Stellar. Exchanges can now require memos by setting a simple data entry flag, while wallets upgraded to the latest SDK will automatically prevent memo-less payments to those addresses.
Horizon 1.0, Stellar's open-source API, launches with a new ingestion engine that makes queries faster, more consistent, and less dependent on Stellar-Core. The major release includes breaking changes and new endpoints for asset trustlines, multi-sig account discovery, and network-wide offer filtering.
Stellar Development Foundation revamped Stellar.org with a new project directory, updated SDF mandate detailing treasury deployment, and lumen supply metrics documentation to improve ecosystem transparency and support for builders.
Stellar.org's new homepage features runnable code samples for network features like payments and asset issuance. To handle testnet resets every 3 months, the team built an automated script that checks for account existence and recreates necessary accounts, plus a function to return unused testnet lumens to Friendbot to prevent resource depletion.
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.
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.
Gauntlet announced partnerships with Stellar, Celo, and Compound to provide consulting and stress-testing services. The firm will help Stellar prevent network disruptions, assist Compound with market risk modeling, and support Celo's stablecoin stability mechanisms.
The Stellar Monthly Roundup for September 2019 covers ecosystem updates including collaborations, AMAs, new hires at SDF, developer releases, community fund proposals, and ecosystem projects like Cowrie Systems and Bitbond. Highlights include the upcoming Meridian conference in Mexico City and a proposal to disable inflation. New features on stellarbeat.io and protocol upgrades prepare the network for future improvements.
Stellar has released Horizon v0.22.1 with support for Stellar-core v12.0.0 and Protocol 12. This update introduces path_payment_strict_send offers and disables the inflation mechanism. Users are urged to update their software ahead of the public network upgrade vote on October 28, 2019.
Stellar-core v12.0.0 and Horizon v0.21.0 have been released with significant protocol upgrades. The core release implements three Core Advancement Proposals including PATH_PAYMENT_STRICT_SEND, bucket list optimizations, and inflation mechanism disabling, with a validator vote scheduled for October 28th.
Stellar Development Foundation released Horizon v0.20.1 with a new ingestion system that addresses architectural issues by building a full copy of ledger state from history archives instead of relying on Stellar-Core's database. The update enables new features like "Accounts for Signers" and significantly improves path-finding performance by up to 10x.
Stellar Development Foundation launched a redesigned stellar.org website featuring improved developer tools, clearer messaging about the network's capabilities in asset issuance and payments, and a new interactive Runkit for getting started.
Stellar's Decentralized Exchange faces a liquidity problem that market makers can solve. The SDF built Kelp, a free open-source trading bot in Golang that automates market-making strategies on Stellar's DEX and centralized exchanges, with v1.7.1 now available.
Stellar Development Foundation released stellar-core v11.2 with automatic quorum configuration and a quorum intersection checker to help validators manage Byzantine Agreement Systems more easily and safely.
Stellar Development Foundation's new leadership outlines five strategic priorities: achieving financial inclusion through technology focus, building products that prove Stellar's value, engaging on policy matters, and increasing communication. SDF is launching a dollar savings app for Latin America and hosting its first Meridian conference in Mexico City.
Stellar public network Protocol 11 upgrade scheduled for June 10, 2019 at 1600 UTC. Developers must upgrade SDKs, Horizon instances, and Stellar Core to ensure compatibility.
On May 15th, the Stellar network halted for 67 minutes due to consensus failure, but the ledger state remained safe and consistent. The outage revealed the need for better validator monitoring, faster restart procedures, and improved community standards around validator maintenance and configuration.
The Stellar Development Foundation announced a new ticker API providing real-time market data about assets, markets, and issuers on the Stellar Network. The API offers enhanced functionality including OHLC values, orderbook statistics, and a GraphQL interface, with the previous SDF-hosted ticker instance decommissioned on January 3, 2024.
Stellar Development Foundation announces ZkVM, an experimental zero-knowledge virtual machine for scalable and confidential smart contracts. The research explores sidechain architectures to enhance Stellar with privacy features and flexible contract capabilities.
The Stellar Development Foundation announces the release of a new Go SDK for the Stellar network, featuring horizonclient for Horizon server access and txnbuild for transaction construction. This is the third official SDK alongside JavaScript and Java, designed with Go-specific idioms and improved developer experience.
The Stellar Development Foundation announces a new roadmap organizing 2019 projects across five teams: Horizon, Stellar Core, Product, Ecosystem, and Organization. The roadmap will eventually become a living document tracking progress on multiple initiatives.
SDF announces the Stellar Developer Program, replacing the Build Challenge format with monthly funding for long-term projects, plus new wallet guidelines and a developer mailing list to improve ecosystem collaboration.
Chain, a blockchain infrastructure company backed by Visa and Nasdaq, has been acquired by Lightyear.io in an undisclosed deal. The combined entity, called Interstellar, will be led by Chain CEO Adam Ludwin and Stellar creator Jed McCaleb, merging enterprise blockchain expertise with Stellar protocol capabilities.
The 7th Stellar Build Challenge concluded with 107 submissions and 3.52M lumens in total awards. StellarGuard and dotnet-stellar-sdk contributions won top honors, with 53 projects receiving recognition across multiple categories including wallets, SDKs, tutorials, and trading applications.
A developer created 'stcli', a simple, single-file Python REPL command-line wallet for Stellar-based assets like ETH, BTC, and EURT. It emphasizes code transparency, ease of review, and support for testing Stellar remittance functions including federation and compliance. The wallet addresses gaps in existing options by being Linux CLI-friendly and fully auditable.
Stellar Build Challenge 7 launches with two submission routes: contributing to open-source Stellar projects or building one of four new cornerstone apps (quorum explorer, trade bot maker, social trading, peer-to-peer wallet). Submissions open June 1st with awards based on merit.
The 6th Stellar Build Challenge concluded with record submissions and a 5x prize pool increase to 2.7M XLM. Winners include Soneso's iOS SDK, Stellarport.io exchange, and Python SDK documentation improvements, with 113 total projects receiving awards.
Stellar Development Foundation publishes technical specifications and roadmap for implementing Lightning Network on Stellar, enabling instant, low-fee off-chain payments through state channels and payment channels.
Stellar's 2018 roadmap focuses on two main goals: launching SDEX, a world-class decentralized exchange front-end for on-chain token trading, and integrating the Lightning Network to improve scalability and privacy. The foundation also plans ecosystem improvements including better documentation and developer tools.