Stellar Ecosystem
News

KALE is a proof-of-teamwork farming game on Stellar that launched in November 2024 and became a major ecosystem phenomenon, driving significant smart contract activity, stress-testing the network for Protocol 23, and serving as a foundational project for composability experiments at HackMeridian 2025.

A detailed comparison of COCA and KAST crypto cards highlights COCA's advantages in self-custody, real stablecoin cashback, zero fees, multichain support including Stellar, and additional perks like APY and travel benefits. KAST offers custodial convenience and broader availability but relies on speculative points rewards and higher fees. COCA is positioned as the superior choice for most users seeking real value.

Freighter wallet release 5.36.0 brings performance improvements through lazy loading API requests and enhanced caching. UX updates streamline Send and Swap flows with fewer clicks, and a new button allows easy address copying from the options dropdown. Additional bugfixes and stability enhancements are included.

Stellar Meridian 2025 in Rio showcased the evolution of Stellar's blockchain into production-grade infrastructure for payments, identity, RWAs, and stablecoins. Key sessions highlighted open systems, regulatory progress, privacy innovations, and real-world applications from partners like MoneyGram, Nubank, and Ondo Finance. LATAM and Africa emerged as blueprints for financial inclusion and efficient money movement.

Stablecoins like USDC, integrated with Stellar and MoneyGram via Hana, are revolutionizing remittances in emerging markets by enabling near-instant, low-cost transfers convertible to cash. This addresses high fees and delays in traditional systems, particularly in Southeast Asia where remittances are projected to exceed $100 billion in 2025. The partnership provides financial stability and inclusion for unbanked populations.

Wirex has launched dual-stablecoin settlement using USDC and EURC on the Stellar blockchain, in partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation and Visa. This enables on-chain settlement of card payments, offering faster, cheaper, and more transparent alternatives to traditional banking. Users benefit from lower fees, 24/7 availability, and support for both USD and EUR settlements.

Pavel Matveev of COCA, a non-custodial stablecoin-native wallet built on Stellar, is featured in the Stellar Community Fund Spotlight series. COCA received a $50K SCF grant and a $1M Series A investment from SDF to integrate USDC support and solve Web3 security and usability challenges for mass-market adoption.

Hana Wallet partners with MoneyGram, powered by Stellar and USDC, to enable instant cash withdrawals of stablecoins in Southeast Asia. Users can convert USDC to local cash at over 350,000 MoneyGram locations without banks or exchanges. This bridges digital finance with cash-based economies for freelancers, families, and businesses.

Stellar, LOBSTR, and Mercuryo launched a campaign offering 5% USDC cashback (up to $50) when users buy stablecoins via Mercuryo on Stellar through LOBSTR Wallet, aiming to shift crypto from holdings to active payments.

Abroad announces a partnership with Lobstr, a leading Stellar network wallet, to enable seamless USDC stablecoin payments in everyday life across Latin America and Southeast Asia. Users can convert USDC to local currencies like Brazilian reais via QR code scans directly in the Lobstr app. This integration bridges blockchain with real-world spending, enhancing speed, security, and borderless transactions.

The article explains the lifecycle of Trustless Work escrows on blockchain, detailing six phases from initiation to dispute resolution. It highlights how programmable trust, roles, and on-chain immutability ensure transparency, accountability, and auditability in payments. This structure benefits businesses, enterprises, and developers by replacing blind transactions with verifiable actions.

Beans integrated DeFindex to launch stablecoin yield features in 3 weeks, attracting $610K in deposits within 90 days. The partnership eliminated 11+ months of development work by using DeFindex's pre-built yield infrastructure instead of building in-house.

Templar, a lending protocol powered by NEAR's chain abstraction, launches on Stellar enabling users to deposit XLM and borrow stablecoins across multiple chains from a single wallet. The integration expands Stellar's RWA ecosystem and unlocks cross-chain liquidity.

Stellar's Q3 2025 showed strong ecosystem growth with 1B+ operations processed, $562M RWA market cap, and 71% DeFi TVL growth. Major institutional partnerships including Visa, PayPal, and MoneyGram expanded adoption, while developer activity surged 37% YoY and smart contract invocations hit 1M daily.

Abroad participated in Stellar's Meridian 2025 conference in Rio de Janeiro, showcasing partnerships and real-world stablecoin payments in Latin America. Key highlights included the native issuance of PayPal's PYUSD on Stellar, HackMeridian innovations, and Abroad's launches with ZyptoApp and BeansApp. The event demonstrated Abroad's growth with 66 monthly active users and over 910 transactions on Stellar.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #39 round awarded $1,115,655 in XLM to 12 innovative projects building on the Stellar network. Highlights include QuillTip for microtipping, Stallion for decentralized bounties, and RendBit for cross-border banking in Africa. The round featured record voter participation and governance updates to Neural Quorum Governance for fairer voting.

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.

Stellar expanded into the Turkish market in 2025 through a strategic four-phase plan by Rise In, starting with developer education workshops and a mini-hackathon. This led to Hack Pera, Turkey's largest Web3 hackathon with 72 projects and $25K prizes, followed by a massively popular Stellar Sunset Party and a prominent booth at Istanbul Blockchain Week. The initiative resulted in 1,646 learners, 130+ projects, and projects advancing to Stellar's $150K Build Grant Program.

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.

Stellar processes an average of 252k USDC transactions daily, totaling nearly $50 million in volume, supporting both microtransactions and institutional flows. Analysis reveals EMEA-aligned transaction peaks, whale-dominated volume, and growing cross-chain activity via bridges like Decaf to Solana and Base. The network also faces scam token risks, but excels in real-world stablecoin money movement.

Abroad announces a strategic partnership with Zypto to enable instant crypto payments in Brazil using stablecoins like USDC. Users can pay via PIX QR codes or numbers, with instant settlement in Brazilian reais directly to recipients' accounts. Zypto's ecosystem, including its wallet and payment tools, integrates with partners like Stellar for seamless crypto-to-fiat usability.

Wirex, a UK-based digital payments platform, partnered with Crossmint to upgrade from EOAs to smart wallets for global scalability. This enables programmable governance, multichain support including Stellar, and flexible custody models. The shift reduces vendor lock-in and accelerates product launches across retail and institutional offerings.