Stellar Ecosystem
News

Three African fintech leaders building on Stellar discuss why they chose the network for payments infrastructure, the $95B+ remittance opportunity across Africa, and advice for entrepreneurs launching in the space ahead of the Stellar Blockchain Bootcamp.

Stellar CEO Denelle Dixon announced that Stellar is working with Ukraine to launch a central bank digital currency (CBDC) using the hryvnia, with ongoing efforts despite delays from the conflict. The initiative involves partnerships with Bitt and Tascombank, and Ukraine has simultaneously seen significant growth in crypto adoption for donations and military purchases.

A comprehensive overview of Africa's rapidly growing Web3 economy, highlighting major blockchain protocols (including Stellar), venture capital investments, NGO partnerships, and government initiatives shaping the continent's crypto and blockchain landscape.

Shift Markets and Nexus Markets integrated USDC on Stellar, enabling institutional and retail clients to deposit, withdraw, and swap USDC across blockchains while earning yield through Nexus Vaults.

Stellar is a blockchain focused on cross-border remittances and peer-to-peer payments, powered by the XLM token. Founded by Jed McCaleb, it differs from Ripple by targeting individuals rather than banks, enabling transactions in seconds for pennies while integrating with traditional financial systems through anchors and partnerships.

Aquarius introduces native 'Bribes' feature on the Stellar blockchain, enabling projects to reward AQUA holders for voting on liquidity markets without custom development. Bribes are set up via a simple interface at vote.aqua.network/bribes, using any Stellar asset with a minimum value equivalent to 100,000 AQUA. Distribution begins February 28th, with a 10M AQUA launch bonus for new markets.

One year after USDC launched on Stellar, the ecosystem has grown significantly with new payment corridors across Africa, Europe, Philippines, and Latin America, plus integrations from major exchanges like Bitso, Liquid, and Okcoin enabling faster, cheaper cross-border payments and financial inclusion.

Okcoin becomes the first US exchange to offer USDC deposits and withdrawals on Stellar, enabling faster and cheaper stablecoin transactions with near-zero fees and 5-second settlement times.

Tribal, a fintech platform serving SMBs in emerging markets, raised $60 million in Series B funding led by SoftBank Latin America Fund. The company plans to expand across Latin America, building on its cross-border payment system with Bitso and the Stellar Development Foundation.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its 2021 Q4 report, highlighting major achievements including USDC integration, MoneyGram partnership for cash-in/cash-out services, $80.25M in Enterprise Fund investments, three protocol upgrades, and international CBDC pilots in Ukraine.

Muxed accounts, a Stellar feature that maps a single address to multiple virtual accounts, are now live and available to all ecosystem products. All services must support sending to muxed accounts, while custodial services should implement them on the receive side to eliminate memo-related user errors.

Brave, a top-performing Stellar token, announces a redesigned staking rewards system to eliminate fraud from previous universal and trading rewards. The new Brave Staking offers tiered APYs up to 26% for 12-month periods, with flexible withdrawals and no minimums. Monthly burns of 24 million Braves and discontinuation of old rewards aim to stabilize price and foster long-term growth.

Velo Labs and FinClusive announced a strategic partnership to enable faster, cheaper cross-border payments by combining Velo's Stellar and BSC blockchain solutions with FinClusive's embedded compliance controls for remittances and value transfers.

Tribal Credit, Bitso, and the Stellar Development Foundation partnered to launch a cross-border B2B payment platform enabling Mexican businesses to send payments in pesos to the U.S. and receive dollars, leveraging Stellar's blockchain network for faster, cheaper transactions.

Tribal Credit, Bitso, and the Stellar Development Foundation launched a cross-border payment system enabling SMBs in Mexico and the U.S. to transact using USDC stablecoins, reducing costs and settlement times for international payments.

SDF CEO Denelle Dixon testified before the US House Committee on Financial Services on digital assets and blockchain's role in financial innovation, highlighting Stellar's use cases in cross-border payments, remittances, and stablecoin issuance while addressing regulatory frameworks and environmental sustainability.

Stellar Development Foundation introduces Starlight, a Layer 2 payment channel protocol achieving 1+ million payments per second while maintaining fast finality. The protocol leverages new Stellar protocol upgrades (CAP-21, CAP-40) and buffering techniques to enable high-throughput transactions between two participants.

Benkiko, a micropayment protocol building on Stellar, is evolving to a decentralized autonomous organization. Its core innovation is a six-tier tokenization economy where communities create and trade custom tokens representing any item of economic value. The model draws from economic theory around monetary demand and peer-to-peer exchange, enabling micropayments, community economies, and full token-based systems.

Meridian 2021, Stellar's annual conference, concluded with keynotes on climate and economy, a MoneyGram partnership announcement enabling cash on/off ramps via 400k+ agent locations, ecosystem builder sessions, regulatory debates, and SDF's 2022 strategic priorities focused on utility, participation, ecosystem growth, inclusion, and policy impact.

MoneyGram and the Stellar Development Foundation launched a live pilot enabling cash deposits and international payments via Stellar USDC with near-instant settlement, marking one of the fastest blockchain integrations for a major money transfer company.

This technical blog post details the implementation requirements and mathematical foundations for integrating SPEEDEX, a novel scalable decentralized exchange design, into Stellar-core. It covers the three main protocol changes needed, the Arrow-Debreu economic model underlying SPEEDEX, and the Tâtonnement algorithm used for efficient price computation.

Stellar upgraded to Protocol 18, adding native AMM functionality to the blockchain. This enables liquidity pools for cross-currency payments without smart contracts or high gas fees, making Stellar one of the earliest Layer 1 blockchains with protocol-native AMMs.

Flutterwave launched two new remittance corridors between Europe and Africa on Stellar, partnering with TEMPO to offer cost-effective money transfers using Stellar USDC, expanding Pan-African digital payments infrastructure.

Flutterwave launched two new remittance corridors between Europe and Africa on the Stellar network, partnering with TEMPO to enable cost-effective money transfers using Stellar USDC. The expansion aims to strengthen Pan-African digital payments infrastructure and reduce remittance costs to sub-Saharan Africa.