Stellar Ecosystem
News

Jay Malve has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer at Normal after just four months as a Full Stack Engineer. His contributions include architecting onchain index funds built on Stellar and enhancing the company's engineering culture. Jay outlines his vision for seamless crypto adoption across chains with intuitive products.

Stronghold's SHx token is now tradeable on Uphold, a multi-asset platform supporting both Stellar and Ethereum. The listing expands retail access to SHx, which powers payments, settlements, and governance within Stronghold's ecosystem.

Stellar has partnered with Chainlink to integrate CCIP, Data Feeds, and Data Streams into the Stellar ecosystem, enabling secure cross-chain asset transfers and institutional-grade tokenization while advancing financial inclusion for underbanked populations.

Stellar has announced plans to join Chainlink's Scale program and integrate Chainlink's Data Feeds, Data Streams, and Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) to expand developer and institutional capabilities on the network. This integration will enable secure cross-chain connectivity and trusted data access, strengthening Stellar's position as a bridge between real-world assets and DeFi.

A Stellar ambassador recounts their experience at the Avalanche Build hackathon, emphasizing collaboration, community, and interoperability across blockchain ecosystems. They highlight learning from diverse participants, using tools like Vibecoding and AI, and their team's 3rd place finish. The event reinforced the value of open communities bridging networks like Stellar and Avalanche for real-world impact.

Stellar partnered with Rise In to host Hack Pera, Turkey’s largest IRL Web3 hackathon during Istanbul Blockchain Week in June 2025, attracting 200+ developers and resulting in 72 projects. Ten teams won shares of $25,000 in prizes, with one launching on Stellar mainnet and gaining 100+ users immediately. The event featured strong mentorship, high participant satisfaction (4.86/5), and a focus on building real on-chain value in the Stellar ecosystem.

Stronghold's SHx utility token launched on Kraken exchange, marking its first U.S. listing. The token powers payments, settlements, and governance on Stellar, with new multi-chain capabilities via the SHx Bridge connecting Stellar and Ethereum through Axelar.

The Stellar i³ Awards 2025 recognized three standout projects at Stellar Meridian: Decaf won Impact for its non-custodial stablecoin app with 50k users, Etherfuse won Innovation for tokenized government treasuries and peso stablecoins, and DeFindex won Interoperability for its plug-and-play DeFi API for wallets.

This article analyzes McKinsey's 2025 Global Payments Report, highlighting stablecoins like USDC and PYUSD on the Stellar network as key to future payment rails amid margin compression, rail fragmentation, and AI-driven edge intelligence. It outlines practical applications for remittances, merchant settlements, B2B treasury, and agentic commerce. Stellar's low fees, Soroban smart contracts, and MoneyGram integrations position it as a pragmatic, programmable settlement layer.

Stellar processes an average of 252k USDC transactions daily, totaling nearly $50 million in volume, supporting both microtransactions and institutional flows. Analysis reveals EMEA-aligned transaction peaks, whale-dominated volume, and growing cross-chain activity via bridges like Decaf to Solana and Base. The network also faces scam token risks, but excels in real-world stablecoin money movement.

Meridian 2025, held in Rio de Janeiro, showcased the Stellar ecosystem's collaborative blueprint for building open financial infrastructure. The conference featured major announcements from PayPal, Ondo, Mercado Bitcoin, Centrifuge, and others, alongside HackMeridian where 400+ builders created 110+ projects across innovation and composability tracks.

Normal Finance is building a platform to provide one-click diversified crypto exposure across chains without bridges or CEXs, solving fragmentation for everyday investors. They chose Stellar for its low costs, speed, scalability, global accessibility, and focus on real financial solutions over speculation. Currently, Normal has a live testnet and is preparing for mainnet launch on Stellar.

The article argues that Web3, including blockchain technologies, may succeed like cloud computing by becoming invisible infrastructure for developers rather than a consumer-facing product like ChatGPT. It outlines key barriers to adoption such as poor UX, fragmentation, unclear regulations, and onboarding challenges, and emphasizes the need for unique value propositions like trustless coordination. A linked post highlights Stellar's role in bridging assets with Near intents, tying into broader interoperability discussions.

Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) V2 is launching on Stellar, enabling seamless USDC transfers between Stellar and 15 other blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, and Base. This upgrade enhances interoperability, unlocks deeper liquidity, and provides developers with programmable cross-chain capabilities.

Centrifuge announced the launch of deRWA on Stellar, introducing tokenized real-world asset strategies including deJTRSY (Treasury) and deJAAA (CLO) with $20M anchor investment. The initiative integrates with Stellar DeFi partners like Aquarius, Soroswap, Blend, and DeFIndex to distribute institutional-grade yield products through consumer apps in emerging markets.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #38 round received 83 submissions and awarded $2,568,750 worth of XLM to 24 innovative projects. Funded initiatives span DeFi platforms, wallets, payment solutions, real-world applications like food delivery and remittances, and developer tools for the Stellar ecosystem. This round highlights the rapid evolution and community commitment to building practical utility on Stellar.

Range's Stablecoin Explorer provides a unified view of stablecoin transactions across 100+ chains including Stellar, and 21 bridges, solving cross-chain visibility issues for wallets, dApps, and bridges. It offers one-step integration with full transaction lifecycle tracking, entity enrichment, and blacklist integration. Teams can link users to a single explorer for improved UX without engineering overhead.

Range launches Stablecoin Explorer, the first dedicated cross-chain and intra-chain tracker for over 20 stablecoins across 100+ chains and 21 bridges. It offers real-time transaction details, public analytics, entity labeling, and integrated sanctions blacklists. Stellar is highlighted as a major hub for intra-chain stablecoin activity.

Range announces a partnership with zeroShadow to integrate forensic-grade incident intelligence into its blockchain security platform. This collaboration enhances threat detection and incident response for ecosystems including Stellar. Real-time data from zeroShadow's investigations will improve Range's Transaction Security and Risk API products.

July was a landmark month for Stellar, featuring new SDF leadership appointments, major integrations with Visa for stablecoin settlement, and significant ecosystem advances in DeFi, cross-chain communication, and developer tooling. The network celebrated its 11th birthday while the community engaged in global hackathons and grant programs.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #36 round received 53 submissions and awarded $2,088,654 worth of XLM to 23 innovative projects. Funded initiatives span stablecoin payments, DeFi infrastructure, cross-border remittances, compliance tools, and Soroban smart contract enhancements. Highlights include Stables, Splyce Finance, and Uniblock, showcasing the ecosystem's growing sophistication.

Balanced protocol is transitioning post-merger with ICON into SODAX on Sonic, with PARROT9 taking over the app. They've added Stellar support for intent-based trades, fixed bugs, and supported Stellar campaigns. Q3 plans include money market demos, full intent trades, and shipping Balanced v2.

Range announces a partnership with Peersyst to bring its cross-chain monitoring, security, and intelligence tools to the XRPL EVM sidechain launching in 2025. XRPL EVM introduces Ethereum-compatible smart contracts to the XRP ecosystem while preserving XRPL's speed and low costs, enabling DeFi, staking, and interoperability via IBC, Axelar, and Wormhole. Range will provide day-one support including its Cross-Chain Explorer, Monitoring and Alerts, and Trail forensic tool.

Protocol 23 introduces eight Core Advancement Proposals (CAPs) to the Stellar network, featuring major performance improvements for Soroban including reduced costs, parallel transaction execution, and automatic state restoration. The mainnet vote is scheduled for September 3, 2025.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #35 round received 77 submissions and awarded $1,840,348 worth of XLM to 21 innovative projects. Funded initiatives span payments, DeFi, cross-chain infrastructure, wallets, and developer tools on the Stellar network. Highlights include AirGap's secure cold wallet, Wirex Pay's Visa-supported payment solution, and Cobo's institutional custody integration.

The Axelar Foundation and Stellar Development Foundation co-authored an article examining how blockchain interoperability is essential for retail payments to achieve the seamlessness of traditional payment systems. The piece highlights Stellar's payment innovations and argues for decentralized interoperability solutions like Axelar over custodial bridges.