DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q2 2024 quarterly report, highlighting network growth to 8.4 million addresses, real-world asset supply exceeding $598 million, and significant progress in tokenization and Soroban adoption. The report showcases achievements including WisdomTree's expanded retail access, $7.8 million in enterprise investments, and $5 million in Stellar Community Fund awards to 107 projects.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Stellar Development Foundation leader reflects on their five-year tenure, highlighting SDF's strategic focus on building a viable ecosystem through payments infrastructure, on/off-ramps, and real-world assets. The post celebrates Stellar's growth metrics and the recent launch of Soroban smart contracts as the next phase of ecosystem expansion.
The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q1 2024 quarterly report highlighting major ecosystem achievements including the launch of smart contracts on Stellar, $3.2M in Stellar Community Fund awards, the introduction of the Soroban Audit Bank for security, and significant growth metrics including 8M+ network accounts and $1.6B in real world asset payment volume.
The Stellar Development Foundation visited Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya in February to meet with ecosystem builders, creators, and fintech innovators. The trip highlighted local solutions addressing payment challenges, financial inclusion, and creative economy opportunities across Africa.
Cables Finance has launched on the Stellar network as a semi-decentralized FX trading platform featuring a central limit order book, slippage-free trading, and OTC capabilities. The launch represents a collaboration between Cables Finance and the Stellar Development Foundation to democratize access to cross-border payments and FX trading globally.
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.
Stellar network validators voted to upgrade Mainnet to Protocol 20 on Feb. 20, enabling Soroban smart contracts with a phased rollout approach. The upgrade delivers a secure, scalable, and developer-friendly smart contract platform built on Rust and WASM, designed for real-world financial inclusion and low-cost transactions.
This article provides a comprehensive overview of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and its implementation on the Stellar blockchain. It explains DeFi's core components—including blockchain, smart contracts, DEXs, and liquidity pools—and highlights how Soroban, Stellar's native smart contracts platform, enables developers to build DeFi applications with access to real-world financial rails.
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.
HoneyCoin wins Stellar Community Fund Round 21 award for launching Flights, a pioneering feature enabling flight ticket purchases to 150+ countries using Stellar assets like USDC and EURC. The award recognizes their innovative work on the Peer platform. They thank the Stellar community and tease more features ahead.
Stellar Community Fund launches SCF 5.0 with Neural Quorum Governance, a reputation-based voting mechanism built on Soroban. The fund deployed $10M to 130+ projects in 2023 and introduces streamlined Activation and Community Awards up to $50K and $100K respectively.
The Stellar Community Fund has distributed over $10M in XLM to 130+ projects across 10 review rounds and is scaling up funding by five times. The article provides eight key guidelines for submitting successful SCF proposals, emphasizing ecosystem impact, clear deliverables, and deep Stellar/Soroban integration.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) has launched its fifth iteration with major upgrades including Neural Quorum Governance, a new reputation-based voting mechanism built on Soroban, and a redesigned website with improved transparency and user experience. The updated award structure now offers Activation Awards (up to $50K) for new projects and Community Awards (up to $100K) for continued development.
The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q3 2023 report highlighting major progress on its roadmap, including Soroban's advancement toward Mainnet launch, security partnerships with Certora, enhancements to the Anchor Platform and Wallet SDK, and significant ecosystem milestones like Circle's EURC stablecoin launch and MoneyGram's planned wallet integration.
AssetDesk has secured an R&D grant from the Stellar Community Fund to develop the AssetDesk protocol, a new money markets protocol for Stellar's Soroban smart contracts platform. The protocol enables decentralized borrowing and lending with features like margin trading, flash loans, NFT lending, and stablecoin markets. It aims to enhance capital efficiency in Stellar's DeFi ecosystem.
GetPaid is a Stellar-powered marketplace connecting African digital professionals with global companies, enabling cross-border payments in multiple currencies with fast settlement and low fees. The platform leverages Stellar's Anchor platform and SEP standards to provide accessible financial services to freelancers, creators, and traders in Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania.
Aquarius announces participation in Stellar Community Fund round 15 to develop Soroban-powered AMMs on the Stellar network. The project aims to create Uniswap v2-style smart contracts, advanced AMM types, and AQUA reward distribution on Soroban futurenet. This builds on Aquarius' established liquidity incentivization system, which has distributed over $2.25M in rewards.
The Stellar Newsletter highlights upcoming events like Meridian 2023 in Madrid with Idris Elba, MoneyGram's USDC case study on Stellar, and Coinbase's integration with USDC on the network. It covers improvements to the Anchor Directory, wallet on/off-ramp integrations, Soroban infrastructure projects, and a new Soroban security bug bounty. Developer updates include proposed transaction changes and SCF submission best practices.
The Stellar Community Fund spotlights four SCF-awarded projects enhancing Soroban: Reflector (price feed oracle), Chainlink Oracles Relayer (VRF proxy), Elio DAO (decentralized governance), and Anchain.ai's Smart Contract Catalog (developer templates).
Source of Tales releases early access for Windows, Linux, and Android, featuring Stellar wallet login via Albedo. Funded by Stellar Community Fund #10 grant from Stellar Development Foundation, it implements blockchain-based authentication using a custom Mana Stellar Bridge. Further Stellar integrations for character data storage are planned.
The Stellar Community Fund published guidance on three best practices for successful SCF applications: demonstrate technical expertise with Soroban/Stellar, prove ecosystem impact, and define clear 3-month roadmaps with specific deliverables.
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.