Stellar Ecosystem
News

Tajinder Singh, Deputy Secretary General of IOSCO, discusses global regulation and standards for digital assets in a podcast interview at SDF's Meridian conference. He emphasizes investor protection, market integrity, and coordinated regulatory approaches across jurisdictions.

Stellar's Protocol 20 upgrade, which enables Soroban smart contracts on Mainnet, is approaching a validator vote. The upgrade implements 12 Core Advancement Proposals and unlocks new possibilities for developers while maintaining Stellar's existing capabilities.

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.

Australian crypto companies Upside and Stables announce a partnership to deliver Web3 education, events, and content, while providing Stables a Melbourne base at Upside HQ. Stables offers a digital wallet for spending, sending, and earning stablecoins, aiding businesses with treasury and payroll. The collaboration aims to boost crypto adoption in Australia.

The Stellar Disbursement Platform (SDP), integrated with Beans, enables businesses and organizations to send thousands of cross-border payments instantly via the Stellar ledger. It supports payroll, micro-payments, and humanitarian aid with user-friendly features like dynamic links for recipients without blockchain experience. Beans offers versatile withdrawals in cash, bank transfers, or crypto across 180+ countries.

RPCiege: Axe & Ember is a text-based adventure game built on Soroban smart contracts. Getting started guides show how to play via Gitpod, GitHub Codespaces, or local CLI setup, with NFT rewards available for players who connect a Stellar wallet.

Decaf, a non-custodial wallet built on Stellar, is empowering Latin Americans with seamless fiat-to-crypto on and off-ramps through MoneyGram integration. The article showcases real-world impact in San Francisco, Colombia, where the platform enables financial inclusion for unbanked populations.

This article explores the history and advantages of asset tokenization on the Stellar network, highlighting how institutions like Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and the Bank for International Settlements leverage Stellar's native asset control features for issuing securities, money market funds, and bonds with operational efficiency, transparency, and sustainability benefits.

The Stellar Development Foundation joined the CALP Network as its first Layer 1 blockchain member, advancing humanitarian cash and voucher assistance programs. SDF's Stellar Aid Assist platform, powered by the Stellar Disbursement Platform, enables rapid, low-cost digital payments to crisis-affected populations worldwide.

The Stellar Development Foundation highlights five outstanding submissions from the Sorobounty Spectacular program, a content bounty initiative that encouraged developers to build Soroban dapps with educational tutorials. Featured projects include a regulated assets dapp, a snooker game, a farming game, a payment streaming app, and a Bitcoin price oracle.

Stellar is launching Soroban, a smart-contract platform built with Rust and WebAssembly, to compete with Ethereum and other chains. The upgrade, expected by year-end, includes a $100M adoption fund and partnership with Certora for security verification.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced updates to the Stellar Disbursement Platform (SDP), an open-source tool for bulk payments that now supports supplier payouts, global payroll, government transfers, and enterprise remittances. The platform features self-hosting, on-demand wallet creation, multi-level access controls, and support for any Stellar-based digital asset.

Stellar Development Foundation partners with Certora to conduct security audits for Soroban, its upcoming WebAssembly-based smart contracts platform. The formal verification tools will provide continuous integration security checks as the platform approaches mainnet launch in early 2025.

Stellar's Testnet upgraded to Protocol 20 on September 20, enabling Soroban smart contract support. Developers can now test DeFi applications in a sandbox environment, with Mainnet upgrade expected before year-end. This unlocks cash-to-DeFi opportunities through partnerships like Moneygram.

Beans App and Boss Money wallet have integrated with the Stellar Disbursement Platform, enabling global bulk payments and financial access across 185+ countries and 10+ African nations respectively.

Meridian 2023, the annual Stellar conference held in Madrid, showcased major ecosystem developments including MoneyGram's non-custodial wallet launch, Circle's EURC stablecoin deployment, and significant upgrades to developer tools like the Anchor Platform and Stellar Disbursement Platform.

Qolaq opens final beta testing for its community-driven health insurance platform on Stellar. Users can enroll in Critical Illness or Life programs with QLQ tokens, participate in community voting on claims, and access full wallet functionality. Beta participants earn rewards in XLM and USDC.

Circle launched EURC, its euro-backed stablecoin, on Stellar as the third blockchain after Ethereum and Avalanche. The stablecoin enables 24/7 global transactions with low costs and near-instant settlement, with integration into aid disbursement systems and expansion by Ripio to Spain.

The article explores the evolution of identity authentication from paper documents to Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs), emphasizing self-sovereign identity on blockchain. It highlights benefits like ownership, privacy, interoperability, and real-world applications in government, refugees, finance, and more. It teases upcoming content on implementing DIDs on the Stellar network.