DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
Blend is a DeFi protocol primitive on Stellar that enables permissionless creation of isolated lending pools with customizable parameters, backstop modules for risk mitigation, and BLND token governance. The article explains Blend's core components and highlights its integration with Meru wallet to provide financial inclusion for Latin American freelancers and SMEs.
This article explains composability in DeFi—the ability to combine different protocols and smart contracts to create innovative financial products. It highlights how Stellar's existing features like its DEX, multi-asset support, and path payments enable developers to build connected applications, contrasting DeFi's permissionless, transparent approach with traditional finance's siloed systems.
Untangled introduces an Embedded Yield Layer to simplify access to fragmented DeFi and RWA yields across multiple blockchains. It features modular components like Untangled Vault, Credio, and Untangled Pool for automated capital allocation, risk management, and private credit tokenization. Products like USDyc are live on Stellar, Celo, and Polygon, enabling seamless yield for users and institutions.
A step-by-step guide for asset issuers to list their assets on the Stellar Reflector Oracle, ensuring reliable price tracking across the Stellar network. The process involves establishing liquidity, maintaining trading activity, gathering community feedback, submitting a DAO proposal, and ongoing monitoring.
This article explains composability in DeFi and blockchain development using a hot rod analogy, detailing how different protocols and smart contracts can integrate seamlessly on Stellar to create more powerful financial systems. It covers DeFi building blocks, composability benefits, TVL growth, and practical considerations for building composable projects on Stellar.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #33 round awarded $1,033,620 in XLM to 14 projects across Build Awards. Highlights include Stellarcarbon for carbon offsetting, CodeLnPay for cross-border payments, and Warmancer: Black Friday for blockchain gaming. The round introduced SCF 6.1 updates streamlining submissions for future rounds.
Coala Pay, an SCF-funded project by anthropologist Melyn McKay, is a public aid funding marketplace and weather oracle built on Stellar to accelerate humanitarian aid delivery in regions like Somalia. The platform enables organizations to manage programs and payments through private marketplaces while a weather oracle allows preemptive crisis response funding in under 24 hours.
ficc.ai has received a grant from the Stellar Development Foundation to develop a blockchain-based pricing oracle for municipal bonds and U.S. Agency Mortgage-Backed Securities on the Stellar network. The initiative aims to enhance transparency and accessibility in fixed-income markets by distributing AI-driven pricing data onchain.
DIA launches xReal, the first oracle suite designed specifically for Real-World Asset (RWA) applications on-chain, featuring over 100 price feeds for assets like stocks, commodities, and ETFs. It bridges TradFi and DeFi, supporting key partners including Stellar and Ripple for RWA tokenization. xReal enables innovative dApps such as RWA-backed stablecoins, tokenized stock trading, and on-chain index funds.
PaltaLabs won the Best Oracle-Based Smart Contract Award at the 2nd Reflector Dev Contest for Trustless Portfolio Manager, an automated DeFi portfolio rebalancing tool built on Soroban that combines Reflector price feeds, DeFindex vaults, and Soroswap AMM functionality.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #32 awarded $1,377,495 worth of XLM to 17 projects, including wallets, DeFi platforms, payment solutions, and developer tools. The round received 78 submissions, with 40 being first-time applicants, demonstrating continued ecosystem growth and innovation.
Reflector DAO has voted to add Lightsail and CreitTech as node providers, expanding its quorum to seven trusted participants. This decentralization strengthens Reflector's oracle infrastructure for providing secure price feeds to the Stellar ecosystem.
DIA has deployed its price oracle infrastructure on Stellar's Soroban testnet, enabling developers to build DeFi applications with real-time market data feeds. The deployment was supported by a Stellar Community Fund award and provides access to price feeds for over 2,500 cryptocurrency tokens.
A tutorial demonstrating how to build a Soroban smart contract that automates savings by fetching real-time XLM prices from Reflector Oracles and triggering conversions when price thresholds are met.
A detailed recap of Meridian 2024's Dev Underground stage in London, where 80+ Stellar Community Fund winners pitched their projects over two days in a casual, collaborative environment. The article highlights standout projects, community collaborations, and the vibrant energy of builders across the Stellar ecosystem.
Balanced Network's Q3 2024 update details progress on cross-chain expansions including audits and deployments on Stellar, Solana, and Sui. Key achievements include launching cross-chain loans, a soft liquidation model, and new collateral types. Upcoming Q4 plans feature full Stellar launch alongside intent-based trading and more blockchain integrations.
Reflector has launched its 2nd developer contest with a 120,000 xRF prize pool across multiple categories including oracle-based smart contracts, subscription apps, and creative implementations. The contest also includes separate prizes for content creators and runs from October 16 to December 15, 2024.
The xRF token, utility cryptocurrency for the Reflector Oracle Network, is now available on Soroswap.Finance, the first DEX on the Soroban blockchain. It enables governance, rewards for node operators, and subscriptions for price feeds. This integration leverages Stellar's ecosystem for efficient DeFi trading.
Reflector is a decentralized oracle protocol for Stellar that provides reliable price feeds for smart contracts and DeFi applications. The protocol is governed by the Reflector DAO using the xRF utility token, which enables governance, rewards cluster operators, and provides access to advanced price feed subscriptions.
Rob Durst announces Digicus, a visual block-based IDE for Soroban smart contract development that aims to lower the barrier to entry for developers. The tool allows developers to visualize, understand, and edit Soroban contracts without requiring deep Rust expertise.
Huma Finance publishes a comprehensive overview of PayFi (Payment Finance), a new frontier in real-world assets that combines stablecoins with financing mechanisms to enable scalable, compliant payment solutions. The article introduces the PayFi Stack—a framework with six layers (Transaction, Currency, Custody, Financing, Compliance, Application)—and highlights Stellar's role alongside Solana in providing high-throughput, low-cost transaction infrastructure for payments.
Reflector hosted an AMA with Tomer Weller from the Stellar Development Foundation covering Stellar's scalability, latency optimization, DeFi composability on Soroban, and oracle use cases like prediction markets. The discussion highlighted upcoming performance improvements including parallel contract execution and networking optimizations planned for 2025.
xycloo Labs built Soroban Insurance, a decentralized insurance protocol for Soroban smart contracts that uses Reflector oracle price feeds. The protocol allows users to purchase policies protecting against asset price movements over defined periods, with liquidity providers earning premiums while covering potential claims.
FxDAO shares its Q1 2024 update, highlighting the completion of a smart contract audit by Runtime Verification and adaptations to Soroban platform changes on Stellar. Despite challenges like limit downgrades requiring refactors, the team resolved issues to fit current network limits. They are preparing for mainnet launch with vaults for synthetic USD, EUR, and GBP, alongside plans for a custom oracle.
The development team shares updates from April 26, 2024, including bug fixes, new UI testing for the Custom Risk Framework, and live Governance and Tokenomics V2 dashboards. Key advancements feature Stellar Soroban nodes deployment, internal client readiness, and API support for circuit generators. Additional improvements cover data pipelines, price oracles for Optimism tokens, and Ethereum/NEAR analytics.
STOCKen CAPITAL has been awarded in Stellar Community Fund #24, marking a key milestone in integrating Soroban services. The funding enables enhancements in cryptocurrency payments via Stellar, smart contracts with Soroban, and oracle connections for secure legal processes. This advances their platform for capital acquisition and digital governance using blockchain.
Pendulum's Q1 2024 roundup highlights the launch of the Spacewalk bridge connecting Stellar and Polkadot ecosystems for seamless XLM and stablecoin transfers. Key developments include reward structures for bridge vaults, new liquidity pools on Zenlink and StellaSwap, and progress on Forex AMM powered by Nabla. Community engagement and governance updates further strengthen the ecosystem's growth.
Runtime Verification completed an audit of Band Protocol's Rust implementation of the Band Standard Reference Soroban Smart Contract. This contract enables querying real-world asset prices from BandChain into the Stellar network's Soroban mainnet. The audit identified issues and informative findings, with a detailed report available.