Stellar Ecosystem
News

Stellar Development Foundation has published an e-book showcasing case studies of financial institutions and fintechs building on the Stellar network, highlighting applications in cross-border payments, remittances, and financial inclusion.

A comprehensive guide to Stellar wallets covering types, features, and best practices for storing and sending lumens. The article explains wallet functionality, custodial vs. non-custodial options, and answers common questions about wallet usage and security.

UNHCR and the UN's technology provider UNICC are piloting Stellar Aid Assist, a blockchain-based cash disbursement solution using the Stellar network and USDC stablecoin to deliver humanitarian aid directly to displaced persons in Ukraine. The program enables instant bulk transfers, eliminates banking requirements, and provides full transaction traceability.

The Stellar Development Foundation has published a comprehensive guidebook for policymakers and regulators on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), addressing the growing global interest in government-backed digital assets on blockchain.

This article explains the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), a Proof-of-Agreement mechanism that enables Stellar to achieve fast, energy-efficient consensus without mining. It compares SCP to other consensus mechanisms like Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake, and details how Stellar's transparent, node-based validation process works.

This article outlines the essential building blocks required for a thriving smart contract ecosystem on Soroban, including financial protocols (AMMs, lending markets), data access tools (oracles, indexers), user interfaces (wallets, block explorers), and security mechanisms. It demonstrates how these interconnected components enable real-world DeFi use cases like decentralized lending.

GetPaid is a Stellar-powered marketplace connecting African digital professionals with global companies, enabling fast cross-border payments in multiple currencies. Built on Stellar's Anchor platform, it addresses talent supply challenges while providing cost-efficient payment solutions for freelancers and creators across Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania.

Félix, a WhatsApp-based remittance platform, partners with Bitso to enable faster and cheaper cross-border payments from the US to Latin America using USDC on the Stellar network. The solution reduces remittance times from hours or days to seconds while dramatically lowering transaction fees.

MoneyGram International has launched MoneyGram Ramps, a cash-to-crypto on and off-ramp service powered by the Stellar blockchain and USDC stablecoin. The service enables unbanked and underbanked populations to convert physical cash to digital assets at MoneyGram's 480,000+ locations worldwide, addressing the critical last-mile problem in blockchain adoption.

An educational overview of blockchain fundamentals, explaining how distributed ledgers work, their advantages over centralized databases, and comparisons of major blockchain platforms including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Stellar.

Arf, a regulated liquidity and settlement platform, leverages the Stellar network and USDC to provide cross-border payment solutions for financial institutions. By eliminating pre-funding requirements and enabling same-day settlements, Arf has extended over $830 million in loans with $1.6 billion in on-chain transaction volume since 2022.

Kazim Ozyilmaz from Arf discusses how the Swiss-regulated settlement banking platform uses Stellar for cross-border B2B financing and liquidity, operating as a meta anchor for financial institutions with DeFi integration planned.

This article explains the role of lumens (XLM), Stellar's native token, in the network's design. Lumens serve as a modest barrier to prevent spam and abuse while keeping the network accessible, with a minimum balance requirement of 1 lumen and transaction fees of 0.00001 XLM.

Vesseo is a wallet app built on Stellar by Sunship, Inc. (an SDF subsidiary) that enables Argentines to quickly and cheaply purchase and hold USDC to protect against peso devaluation. The app leverages Stellar's fast settlement, low fees, and asset issuance capabilities to provide a simple alternative to traditional dollar-holding methods.

A comprehensive guide to Rust development for smart contracts on Soroban, covering setup, language advantages over Solidity, and resources from the Stellar Development Foundation for learning and building.