Stellar Ecosystem
News

Visa is expanding stablecoin support to four new stablecoins on four unique blockchains, enabling banks to mint and burn them via its tokenized asset platform. The company already supports USDC, EURC, PYUSD, and USDG on Ethereum, Solana, Stellar, and Avalanche. This move highlights Visa's growing focus on stablecoins for cross-border payments, with stablecoin-linked card spending up fourfold year-over-year.

Spiko details their custom blockchain infrastructure for handling indexing, real-time queries, and transaction relaying across multiple networks including Stellar. They moved away from off-the-shelf solutions like The Graph due to reliability issues, building a robust system using RPC servers. This architecture improves efficiency, reduces bugs, and speeds up expansion to new chains.

Etherfuse is launching stablebonds on Stellar—yield-bearing tokens backed by local government treasuries from countries like Mexico and Brazil—reducing cross-border conversion costs from 7% to 0.04% while enabling financial sovereignty for emerging markets.

The Stellar i³ Awards 2025 recognized three standout projects at Stellar Meridian: Decaf won Impact for its non-custodial stablecoin app with 50k users, Etherfuse won Innovation for tokenized government treasuries and peso stablecoins, and DeFindex won Interoperability for its plug-and-play DeFi API for wallets.

This article analyzes McKinsey's 2025 Global Payments Report, highlighting stablecoins like USDC and PYUSD on the Stellar network as key to future payment rails amid margin compression, rail fragmentation, and AI-driven edge intelligence. It outlines practical applications for remittances, merchant settlements, B2B treasury, and agentic commerce. Stellar's low fees, Soroban smart contracts, and MoneyGram integrations position it as a pragmatic, programmable settlement layer.

The article compares redeemable gold-backed tokens like DGLD, PAXG, XAUt, DaVinci, and SGT, focusing on Swiss redemption options, minimums, fees, and logistics. It highlights practical challenges for physical delivery and contrasts with non-redeemable gold ETFs. A dedicated section explains Stellar's advantages for issuing such tokenized assets.

TokenOps leverages Stellar's Soroban smart contracts for scalable, low-cost token operations including airdrops, vesting, and TGEs. It offers 3-5 second settlement times, fixed fees, and real-time tracking with backend persistence. This enables efficient automation, transparency, and compliance for Web3 projects on Stellar.

Meridian 2025, held in Rio de Janeiro, showcased the Stellar ecosystem's collaborative blueprint for building open financial infrastructure. The conference featured major announcements from PayPal, Ondo, Mercado Bitcoin, Centrifuge, and others, alongside HackMeridian where 400+ builders created 110+ projects across innovation and composability tracks.

DCM launched the Transparent Network (TPN), a blockchain-based instant payment system built on Stellar, to modernize Ukraine's financial infrastructure. TPN enables banks to process payments in under five seconds with 70% reduction in acquiring costs for merchants and 60% reduction in transaction costs for institutions.

Meridian 2025, the Stellar Development Foundation's flagship conference held in Rio de Janeiro, showcased major advancements in the Stellar ecosystem under the theme 'The Blueprint.' Key highlights included Soroban smart contract launches, over $3 billion in RWA tokenizations, PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin integration, and new partnerships. The event solidified Stellar's leadership in real-world financial applications and announced Meridian 2026 in Abu Dhabi.

Stripe and Paradigm's Tempo is a new blockchain optimized for stablecoin payments, featuring stablecoin fees, 100k+ TPS, and EVM compatibility, directly challenging Stellar's established position in cross-border payments. Stellar, with a decade of proven reliability, anchors, SCP consensus, and Soroban smart contracts, offers production-ready compliance and fiat connectivity. The article compares their strengths, suggesting both could complementarily serve fintech needs.

RedSwan has partnered with Stellar to tokenize $100M in commercial real estate on the XLM network, enabling fractional ownership of institutional-grade multifamily and hospitality properties with lower investment minimums and enhanced liquidity.

RedSwan Digital Real Estate, a FINRA-regulated marketplace, has tokenized $100 million in commercial real estate assets on the Stellar blockchain, enabling fractional ownership and 24/7 secondary market liquidity for institutional-grade properties.

Ondo Finance has launched USDY, its yield-bearing stablecoin, on the Stellar network, enabling users to access 5.3% APY on tokenized U.S. Treasuries. The integration unlocks new use cases in payments, treasury management, collateralization, and cross-border transactions on Stellar.

The Stellar Development Foundation outlines its comprehensive strategy for implementing privacy on the Stellar blockchain while maintaining openness and compliance. The approach combines opt-in, configurable privacy at the application layer with three key work streams: supporting research and innovation, investing in core privacy infrastructure like zero-knowledge proofs, and building open-source solutions including confidential tokens.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #38 round received 83 submissions and awarded $2,568,750 worth of XLM to 24 innovative projects. Funded initiatives span DeFi platforms, wallets, payment solutions, real-world applications like food delivery and remittances, and developer tools for the Stellar ecosystem. This round highlights the rapid evolution and community commitment to building practical utility on Stellar.

21X, Europe's first fully regulated DLT trading and settlement system, has launched on the Stellar network as its second blockchain, enabling institutional trading of tokenized securities on a regulated secondary market in the EU.

EquitX introduces synthetic stocks (xAssets) on the Stellar blockchain, enabling users to gain exposure to real-world equities like Tesla without owning actual shares. The platform supports long, short, swing, and passive investment strategies through minting, trading on DEXs, and stability pools. It emphasizes maintaining collateral ratios above 110% to avoid liquidation while offering DeFi accessibility.

Blockchain benefits both financial institutions seeking efficiency and the 1.4 billion unbanked needing accessibility, as emphasized by Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon. Institutional adoption by firms like Franklin Templeton and BlackRock validates infrastructure that also enables fast, low-cost remittances and humanitarian aid. Success requires intentional design serving both ends of the financial spectrum.

EquitX has received two awards totaling $150,000 from the Stellar Community Fund to develop its Synthetic Stocks Protocol on the Stellar blockchain. The protocol enables synthetic small-cap equities like xUSD and xTesla using collateralized debt positions backed by XLM. This bridges traditional markets with DeFi, leveraging Stellar's low-cost blockspace, DEXs, and Soroban smart contracts.

EquitX is a DeFi protocol on Stellar that enables synthetic equities and starts with xUSD, minted via collateralized debt positions using XLM. It avoids traditional tokenization issues by using a derivatives model with oracles, stability pools, and programmatic liquidations for price tracking and solvency. This boosts Stellar's TVL, XLM utility, and provides stock-like exposure with crypto-native composability.

XLM climbed 3% to break through $0.37 resistance on above-average volumes as Stellar prepares Protocol 23 upgrade. South Korean exchanges Bithumb and Upbit will pause XLM deposits/withdrawals Sept. 3 to support the network enhancement, which aims to expand interoperability for the $460 million in tokenized assets already on Stellar.

The US Department of Commerce has posted quarterly GDP data on the Stellar network for the first time in US government history, creating an immutable and publicly auditable record of critical economic data. This development demonstrates government adoption of blockchain technology and enables new use cases in DeFi, automated trading, and real-world asset tokenization.

VersaBank is testing USDVB, a tokenized deposit token representing U.S. dollars held at the bank, on Ethereum, Algorand, and Stellar blockchains. Unlike stablecoins, the tokens are federally insured, earn interest, and function as bank liabilities subject to banking regulations.