Stellar Ecosystem
News

The Stellar Development Foundation is using blockchain technology and the Stellar Disbursement Platform to deliver humanitarian cash aid at scale, enabling instant, low-cost, transparent fund transfers to aid recipients globally through digital wallets and stablecoins.

The Stellar Development Foundation outlines emerging global consensus on stablecoin regulation, highlighting core principles around transparency, reserve backing, and consumer protections that align with SDF's asset issuance framework as jurisdictions like the EU and UK advance comprehensive crypto regulatory frameworks.

Stellar Development Foundation announced updates to the Anchor Directory, adding search functionality, contact info, and filters for SEP standards to help wallets and anchors discover and connect with compatible partners on the network.

The Stellar Newsletter highlights Q1 achievements including Franklin Templeton's OnChain Fund surpassing $270M AUM on Stellar blockchain, SDF's strategic progress, and new board member Asiff Hirji. It covers partnerships like Arf, Cebuana Lhuillier, and blockchain remittances, plus Soroban smart contracts developments and community spotlights. Upcoming Meridian 2023 in Madrid is announced.

Stellar Development Foundation announced plans to open-source the Stellar Disbursement Platform by Q3, enabling developers and organizations to build bulk payment and on/off-ramp solutions for humanitarian aid and financial inclusion use cases.

SEP-24 is a standardized API that enables anchors to offer hosted deposits and withdrawals directly within apps, eliminating the need for custom integrations and improving user access to on/off ramps for fiat and digital assets.

The Stellar Development Foundation showcased Stellar's real-world utility at Paris Blockchain Week, featuring keynotes on humanitarian aid delivery via Stellar Aid Assist, Soroban smart contracts workshops, and panels on enterprise payments with stablecoins like GYEN and ZUSD.

Stellar Development Foundation launched Stellar Aid Assist, a stablecoin-based platform enabling humanitarian organizations to distribute cash aid via USDC through the Stellar network. The platform eliminates intermediaries, reduces costs to near-zero, and provides recipients secure access to funds without bank accounts, currently piloted with Ukrainian refugees.

AMA recap with MYKOBO CEO Seyi Akin-Olugbemi, issuer of the EURC Euro stablecoin on Stellar. He discusses his background in fintech, the motivation behind MYKOBO for financial inclusion in Africa, and why Stellar is ideal for value transfer. MYKOBO app supports EURC, USDC, XLM, and AQUA, all on Stellar, with upcoming liquidity pools.

Blend is a new liquidity protocol primitive for Stellar, enabling anyone to create insured lending pools with Soroban smart contracts. It provides lending and borrowing capabilities, adapting to market conditions while protecting suppliers via a backstop module. The protocol enhances Stellar's ecosystem for fintech, trading, DAOs, and DeFi applications.

Coinme integrated USDC on Stellar across its 40,000+ U.S. cash locations, enabling low-fee cash-to-digital conversions and near-instant peer-to-peer payments. The partnership brings financial inclusion to unbanked Americans through Stellar's efficient payment infrastructure.

MoneyGram won the 2023 FinTech Breakthrough Award for Best Use of Blockchain in FinTech, recognized for its on/off-ramp service on Stellar that bridges digital assets and local currency through MoneyGram retail locations worldwide.

MYKOBO has reduced its minimum crypto-to-crypto send and buy/sell values from €20/20 EURC to €1/1 EURC, making trading and transfers more accessible. This change aims to empower users of all trade sizes in the crypto economy. MYKOBO issues the EURC stablecoin on the Stellar blockchain, bridging European finance to blockchain.

Arf launched a USDC-backed working capital solution in partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation, providing unsecured short-term loans for cross-border payment institutions. Within four months, the platform deployed $80M across 800+ locations globally, generating $150M in cumulative on-chain USDC volume.

The Stellar Newsletter highlights the Soroban Adoption Fund with $100M in opportunities, including a $10M Stellar Community Fund program for Soroban projects and developer initiatives like Sorobanathon. It covers UNHCR's nomination for blockchain impact award using Stellar for aid in Ukraine, partnerships like Beans App with MoneyGram, and technical updates on Pull Mode and Ubuntu upgrades. Community events, policy priorities, and developer resources are also featured.

Tori Samples, co-founder of Leaf Global Fintech (now BOSS Money Africa), discusses her journey building blockchain solutions for financial inclusion in Africa. She recently joined the Stellar Development Foundation as Senior Product Manager, leading work on Stellar Aid Assist for humanitarian disbursements.

Stellar was designed for interoperability, enabling low-cost transfers of all asset types across traditional finance, different blockchains, and web applications. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, Stellar facilitates value movement between all systems rather than replacing them.

EURC is a Euro-pegged stablecoin launched on the Stellar blockchain by UAB MYKOBO, offering secure, fast, and sustainable transactions. It has seen significant adoption with over 150k in circulating supply and substantial trading volume on Stellar's DEX. To celebrate its launch and MYKOBO's anniversary, zero transaction fees are offered throughout March 2023.

BP Ventures has launched three new open-source crypto wallets to facilitate company integration with the Stellar Blockchain. These include a white-label retail wallet supporting key SEPs, a compact command-line wallet, and documentation for Stellar Anchor integration. The initiative underscores BP Ventures' commitment to open blockchain networks.

Wirex has integrated XLM and USDC on Stellar into its non-custodial wallet, marking the first such wallet without seed phrase vulnerability to support Stellar. The integration expands Wirex Wallet's blockchain support to nine networks.

This article explains Pull Mode, a feature introduced in Stellar Core releases 19.4.0 and mandated in 19.7.0 that reduces redundant transaction broadcasting between validators. By having validators request transaction hashes before sending full transactions, Pull Mode decreased computational overhead and increased maximum TPS by 72% in testing.