Stellar Ecosystem
News

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #32 awarded $1,377,495 worth of XLM to 17 projects, including wallets, DeFi platforms, payment solutions, and developer tools. The round received 78 submissions, with 40 being first-time applicants, demonstrating continued ecosystem growth and innovation.

PayFi integrates payments with on-chain financing and blockchain technology to enable the free flow of value on-chain. By combining Web3 payments, Real-World Assets, and DeFi, PayFi unlocks new financing opportunities and helps businesses unlock liquidity through tokenized assets.

The Stellar Development Foundation published a comprehensive 2024 year-in-review highlighting major ecosystem achievements including the mainnet launch of Soroban smart contracts, expansion of DeFi protocols like Blend, integration of payment solutions with MoneyGram and Stripe, real-world asset adoption through Franklin Templeton and Paxos, and humanitarian aid initiatives through UNHCR partnerships.

Ghanaian fintech Seevcash integrated DeFindex's white-label DeFi yield infrastructure on Stellar in just one week, slashing development time from 12+ months and reducing code by 50%. Post-marketing, TVL spiked 433% to $13K with 24 active users earning yields on stablecoins. The SDK enabled gasless transactions via Stellar sponsorship, building trust in unbanked markets.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #30 round awarded $2.17 million in XLM to 22 projects in the first round of SCF 6.0, including initiatives for DeFi, payments, humanitarian aid, NFTs, developer tools, and financial inclusion across the Stellar ecosystem.

USDx stablecoin from FxDAO protocol is now live on Soroswap Finance, the first DEX on Soroban Blockchain, with a $190,000 TVL liquidity pool for the XLM/USDx pair. Users can issue USDx by locking Lumens as collateral in FxDAO vaults for liquidity without selling assets. The article guides on acquiring, swapping, and providing liquidity for USDx on Soroswap.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q3 2024 report highlighting major ecosystem milestones including 9 million network addresses, $5M+ in Enterprise and Matching Fund investments, and the launch of Stellar Community Fund 6.0. Key achievements include Franklin Templeton's Benji platform reaching $450M in supply, Protocol 22 development nearing completion, and expanded ecosystem integrations with Dune and DefiLlama.

zkCross Network announces Super Accounts on Stellar, powered by their Chain Abstraction Layer, enabling seamless 1-click cross-chain DeFi transactions without bridging or gas management. This integrates zkCrossDEX with Stellar's Soroban blockchain, supported by a Stellar Community Fund grant. The phased roadmap includes AMM DEX, staking, launchpad, and perpetuals trading.

Stellar DEX offers zero-fee trading, providing a significant edge for strategies like scalping and arbitrage by eliminating percentage-based costs that erode profits on other exchanges. Minimal network fees of 0.0001 XLM ensure negligible impact, while AMMs enhance liquidity on key pairs like XLM/USDC. The article highlights pros, cons, and tools like Chartui to maximize trading potential.

Chartui is a new customizable trading client designed specifically for the Stellar Decentralized Exchange (DEX). It offers real-time prices, charts, order books, trades, multi-pair monitoring, and multi-account management. Traders can personalize layouts, widgets, and analysis tools to enhance their Stellar DeFi experience.

Chipper Cash has integrated with MoneyGram's global agent network, powered by Stellar, enabling seamless real-time cash-in and cash-out for its users across Africa and beyond.

ClickPesa has launched the ClickPesa Debt Fund, a DeFi lending facility built on Stellar and powered by Soroban smart contracts, designed to provide financing to SMEs and women-owned businesses across Africa. The fund's SME I Pool uses Script3's Blend protocol and offers up to 12% annual interest with quarterly repayments, backed by ClickPesa Collateral Tokens (CPCT) pegged to real microfinance loan books.

Normal announces the promotion of Justin Benjamin from Head of Growth to Chief Operating Officer. Justin has been instrumental in product development, community building, and customer acquisition since joining in 2022, especially after pivoting to crypto index funds post-FTX collapse. The company looks forward to scaling under his leadership as COO.

Huma Finance closed a $38 million investment round ($10M equity, $28M in tokenized RWAs) led by Distributed Global with participation from Hashkey Capital, Folius Ventures, Stellar Development Foundation, and TIBAS Ventures. The funding will support expansion to Solana and Stellar's Soroban network.

This article showcases real-world impact stories from the Stellar ecosystem, highlighting how stablecoins and blockchain technology are enabling financial inclusion in emerging markets. It features projects like Decaf, MoneyGram Access, Félix, Bitso, Vibrant Wallet, and ClickPesa that are bringing payments, remittances, and microfinancing to unbanked and underbanked populations globally.

The Stellar Community Fund launches version 6.0 with enhanced support for ecosystem projects, integrating a new Kickstart bootcamp program, streamlined Build Awards up to $150K, post-launch growth initiatives including DraperU's Embark Accelerator, and category-specific delegate panels for improved governance.

Puntored, a Colombian fintech serving low- and middle-income populations across Latin America, raised $2M from the Stellar Development Foundation's Enterprise Fund to expand its technological capabilities and enable cross-border transactions via the Stellar blockchain network.

Soroswap.Finance, the first DEX on the Soroban Blockchain in the Stellar ecosystem, announces the listing of $NGNC, a Naira-pegged stablecoin natively supported on Stellar. This enhances liquidity, FX utility, and cross-border payments for Nigerian users. Users can trade, add liquidity, and swap NGNC with assets like XLM, BTC, ETH, and USDC.

Fernanda Orduña Rangel, co-founder of Decaf, shares her journey from industrial engineer to blockchain developer building financial inclusion solutions on Stellar. Decaf enables users in Latin America and Africa to hold value in USDC and invest, addressing real-world financial exclusion and inflation protection.

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.

Etherfuse, a tokenized real-world assets platform, raised $3 million in seed funding co-led by White Star Capital and North Island Ventures, with participation from the Stellar Development Foundation. The company is tokenizing emerging market government debt on Stellar and Solana blockchains, starting with Latin American sovereign bonds.

Huma Finance publishes a comprehensive overview of PayFi (Payment Finance), a new frontier in real-world assets that combines stablecoins with financing mechanisms to enable scalable, compliant payment solutions. The article introduces the PayFi Stack—a framework with six layers (Transaction, Currency, Custody, Financing, Compliance, Application)—and highlights Stellar's role alongside Solana in providing high-throughput, low-cost transaction infrastructure for payments.

ATHR introduces a novel ranking system for crypto assets based on all-time high rankings (ATHR), last year high rank, and last 3-month high rank, using historical data from CoinMarketCap. The approach analyzes ranking movements rather than absolute prices to account for interdependencies among assets. Stellar (XLM) appears at rank 39 with ATHR of 4, current rank around 31.

Taurus, a digital asset infrastructure provider serving major financial institutions, has expanded its custody and tokenization platforms to the Stellar network, joining other major players like Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and Circle in leveraging Stellar for real-world asset tokenization.

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.

GYEN and ZUSD stablecoins are now available for trading on Bitstamp, a major regulated exchange founded in 2011. The listing enables users to easily convert between USD and these Stellar-based stablecoins with enhanced security and compliance features.

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.