DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
Executioners Esports publishes an educational guide on Stellar blockchain, covering its fast, low-cost payment infrastructure, the Stellar Consensus Protocol, and Soroban smart contracts. The article provides developer onboarding steps and real-world use cases including DeFi, NFTs, and gaming.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) Round 31 awarded $2,068,710 in XLM to 22 projects, including payment solutions, DeFi platforms, developer tools, and RWA tokenization engines. The round received 123 submissions, with 71 being first-time applicants, demonstrating strong ecosystem growth.
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.
DappLooker reviews its remarkable 2024 growth, highlighting 3x revenue increase, expansion to 25+ chains, and over 1000 protocols onboarded. Key launches include AI-powered Loky analyst and innovative tools like DataBots and AI Studio. Partnerships span Arbitrum, Stellar Community Fund, Manta, HAQQ, and others, with active participation in Web3 events.
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.
Ghanaian fintech Seevcash integrated DeFindex's white-label DeFi yield infrastructure on Stellar in just one week, slashing development time from 12+ months and reducing code by 50%. Post-marketing, TVL spiked 433% to $13K with 24 active users earning yields on stablecoins. The SDK enabled gasless transactions via Stellar sponsorship, building trust in unbanked markets.
A developer tackles a challenge to create the smallest invokable Soroban smart contract on Stellar mainnet, beating the previous 66-byte record by using an empty export name. The solution shrinks the WASM binary to 39 bytes including the required metadata section. Mainnet transaction hashes are provided for upload and invocation.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #30 round awarded $2.17 million in XLM to 22 projects in the first round of SCF 6.0, including initiatives for DeFi, payments, humanitarian aid, NFTs, developer tools, and financial inclusion across the Stellar ecosystem.
This article explores how passkeys—a secure, user-friendly authentication method already adopted in Web2—are being integrated into Stellar's blockchain to improve user experience and drive adoption. Stellar gained a significant advantage by implementing native secp256r1 support in Protocol 21, enabling passkey functionality directly at the protocol level rather than through third-party solutions.
Protocol 22 is coming to Stellar Testnet on November 12 and will go to Mainnet validator vote on December 5. The upgrade introduces constructors for Soroban contracts (CAP-0058) and BLS12-381 cryptographic host functions (CAP-0059), enabling more efficient smart contracts and advanced privacy features like zk-SNARKs.
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.
zkCross Network announces Super Accounts on Stellar, powered by their Chain Abstraction Layer, enabling seamless 1-click cross-chain DeFi transactions without bridging or gas management. This integrates zkCrossDEX with Stellar's Soroban blockchain, supported by a Stellar Community Fund grant. The phased roadmap includes AMM DEX, staking, launchpad, and perpetuals trading.
Dfns ships Givre, an optimized FROST threshold signature library for distributed cryptographic systems. The open-source implementation outperforms existing Rust threshold EdDSA implementations and supports Bitcoin BIP340, Stellar, Soroban, Solana, and Tezos. Now maintained by Lockness under the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust.
Mercury has released Retroshades, a smart contract indexing technology designed specifically for Soroban-supporting chains. Retroshades allows developers to build custom indexers in minutes by defining data structures directly within smart contracts, eliminating the need to learn new technologies or manage complex infrastructure.
Komet is a new tool from Runtime Verification for property testing and formal verification of Soroban smart contracts on the Stellar blockchain. It supports fuzzing and symbolic execution, integrating seamlessly with Rust for enhanced contract security. The article provides installation steps and a detailed case study testing a simple 'adder' contract.
zkCross Network announces its oversubscribed seed and strategic funding rounds, backed by investors including Stellar, ahead of a $2.6M public sale. The project offers chain abstraction infrastructure to simplify cross-chain DeFi with features like messaging systems, liquidity aggregation, and decentralized protocols. A detailed roadmap outlines expansion across blockchains, targeting massive user growth.
xyclooLabs announces new community indexes and dashboards functionality for Mercury, their data platform for Stellar developers. The update includes improvements to the zephyr-sdk with DashboardBuilder, backend infrastructure for creating and discovering indexes/dashboards, and a community section in the Mercury webapp.
The Stellar Development Foundation introduces the Composable Data Platform (CDP), a new open-source architecture that decentralizes data access on Stellar by breaking down monolithic tools like Horizon and Hubble into modular, configurable components. CDP enables developers to customize their data consumption patterns and infrastructure based on specific application needs.
Phoenix DeFi Hub has launched on Stellar's Soroban smart contract platform, starting with a decentralized exchange in May and planning an NFT marketplace and additional protocols. The platform aims to be a comprehensive DeFi solution leveraging Stellar's on/off-ramp infrastructure and stablecoin ecosystem.
A technical tutorial on building a custom indexer and API for the YieldBlox blend pool using Mercury and Zephyr. The guide covers setting up a Rust-based indexer to track borrow, repay, and collateral actions on Stellar, with real-time data retrieval through a custom API.
A comprehensive technical overview of the Stellar stack. Covers the three networks (Mainnet for production, Testnet for development, Futurenet for experimental features), Stellar Core's consensus protocol, Horizon API for blockchain interaction, Soroban RPC for smart contracts, and SDKs available in Go, Python, Java, and JavaScript.
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.
A comprehensive tutorial on migrating smart contracts from Ethereum's Solidity to Soroban's Rust SDK, comparing the two platforms and demonstrating how to build a Hello World contract in both languages.
Stellar's Protocol 21 upgrade activated on June 18, 2024, introducing five Core Advancement Proposals (CAPs) that enable passkey support for smart contracts, improve state archival, and reduce transaction costs through VM optimization and module caching.
The Stellar Development Foundation hosted a Cash-to-DeFi challenge track at Consensus X EasyA 2024 Hackathon in Austin, attracting global developers to build real-world financial solutions. Five winning projects were selected, including DeFindexes, Global Rupee, RampMeDaddy, Punch Starter, and Lumen Finance, each addressing financial inclusion and DeFi accessibility.
A technical guide comparing data types between Solidity (EVM) and Rust (Soroban), part 2 of a migration series. The article covers primitive and composite types, key differences like String vs. Symbol, and provides code examples for both languages.
A comprehensive tutorial on migrating smart contracts from Ethereum's Solidity to Soroban's Rust SDK, comparing the two languages and providing step-by-step examples of building a 'Hello World' contract in both environments.
The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q4 2023 quarterly report highlighting major ecosystem achievements including Protocol 20 support, Soroban mainnet rollout, $4M in SCF funding to 88 projects, and over $2M in humanitarian aid disbursed via the Stellar Disbursement Platform.
The Stellar Development Foundation announced Protocol 20, which brings Soroban smart contracts to Stellar. The network will adopt a phased rollout approach to gradually increase smart contract capacity while monitoring network stability and performance.