Stellar Ecosystem
News

This article explains how to send money to Uganda using USDC on the Stellar Network via Bingtellar, a platform for affordable cross-border payments in Africa. It highlights low fees, accessibility, and security as key advantages over traditional remittances. A step-by-step guide demonstrates transferring USDC from wallets like Revolut to recipients who receive Ugandan shillings instantly.

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.

Coinbase submitted CFTC filings to list futures products for five tokens—Polkadot, Shiba Inu, Stellar Lumens, Avalanche, and Chainlink—with trading slated to begin on or after July 15. The expansion aims to give traders more access points for risk management and price speculation.

The Stellar Development Foundation announces its commitment to increasing gender diversity in the Stellar ecosystem and partnerships with SheFi to empower women builders. SDF will sponsor SheFi's Brussels summit in July, featuring keynotes on real-world blockchain use cases and an activation showcasing Stellar's new passkeys capability.

Goldsky announces the general availability of Mirror, its realtime crypto data streaming platform that syncs onchain data directly to user databases. It supports 40+ networks including Stellar, reducing costs and ETL complexity. The platform offers blazing-fast performance, dual interfaces, and is now accessible to everyone without a credit card.

Taurus, a digital asset infrastructure provider serving major financial institutions, has expanded its custody and tokenization platforms to the Stellar network, joining other major players like Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and Circle in leveraging Stellar for real-world asset tokenization.

Taurus, a Swiss digital asset infrastructure provider, integrated its custody platform Taurus-PROTECT and tokenization platform Taurus-CAPITAL with the Stellar network, enabling banks and issuers to custody and issue tokenized assets with reduced fees and fast transactions.

Alterscope, a Stellar Community Fund featured project, offers a comprehensive risk dashboard for the Soroban ecosystem to enhance DeFi transparency and risk management. It provides real-time risk overviews, customizable frameworks, and metrics across security, liquidity, community, and governance. Integration benefits dApps by boosting credibility, attracting liquidity providers, and promoting regulatory compliance.

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.

Alterscope introduces a comprehensive risk dashboard for the Stellar Soroban ecosystem, recently funded by the Stellar Community Fund. It provides real-time risk metrics, transparency, and customizable frameworks to help liquidity providers assess protocols. Integration benefits dApps by enhancing credibility, attracting investments, and promoting a safer DeFi environment.

GYEN and ZUSD stablecoins are now available for trading on Bitstamp, a major regulated exchange founded in 2011. The listing enables users to easily convert between USD and these Stellar-based stablecoins with enhanced security and compliance features.

The Stellar Development Foundation submitted comments to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) regarding blockchain sustainability and environmental impact, addressing energy consumption concerns and ESG indicators for distributed ledger technology under the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation.

Stellar launched Soroban, a smart contract platform integrated into Protocol 20, addressing key blockchain challenges like transaction speed, security vulnerabilities, state bloat, and high costs while leveraging Stellar's extensive payment rail network for real-world DeFi applications.

Reflector launches a dev challenge (June 5-19) for Soroban contracts utilizing its oracle. Prizes: $2,500 USDC plus Meridian conference tickets. Open to developers worldwide ages 18+; teams welcome.

Stellar and Soroban documentation sites have merged into a unified developer experience. The Stellar Development Foundation is launching the Deep Dive Docs Bounty program from May 29 to August 7, 2024, offering XLM rewards for community contributions to improve developer documentation.

FxDAO's peg system for synthetic currencies on Stellar uses XLM collateral and arbitrage incentives similar to the gold standard, not algorithmic stablecoins. It features controlled issuance, redemption, and liquidations to maintain stability and health. The protocol ensures debt cannot exceed collateral value, enforced by smart contracts.

This article introduces Stellar and its Soroban smart contract platform to Polkadot users, highlighting integration via the Spacewalk bridge by Pendulum. It covers asset transfers for Stellar's stablecoins, use cases in DeFi and payments, and provides a getting started guide. The synergy aims to enhance cross-chain financial inclusion and innovation.

Bingtellar has been awarded an Activation Grant from the Stellar Community Fund to enhance its global payments infrastructure on the Stellar network, targeting cross-border payments in Africa. The grant supports expanding features, stablecoin utility, and connecting underserved Africans to the global economy. Bingtellar leverages Stellar's blockchain for fast, low-cost remittances, akin to 'TransferWise on Web3'.

Stellar Surge is a developer community program designed to engage African engineers and startups building on Stellar and Soroban, offering learning resources, innovation support, and funding opportunities including access to the Stellar Community Fund.