DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
The Stellar Development Foundation submitted a comprehensive response to the French financial regulator AMF's DeFi discussion paper, advocating for regulatory frameworks that balance innovation with consumer protection through open source technology and decentralization principles.
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.
FxDAO announces a shift to quarterly updates and the deployment of its protocol on Soroban testnet. They've launched a new self-hosted website, a JavaScript SDK for integration, and an official Discord server. The team is preparing for Soroban mainnet launch.
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.
The Stellar Development Foundation published a whitepaper explaining how the Stellar network is uniquely suited for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), detailing its asset issuance features, consensus mechanism, and implementation guidance for central banks.
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.
Aquarius announces participation in Stellar Community Fund round 15 to develop Soroban-powered AMMs on the Stellar network. The project aims to create Uniswap v2-style smart contracts, advanced AMM types, and AQUA reward distribution on Soroban futurenet. This builds on Aquarius' established liquidity incentivization system, which has distributed over $2.25M in rewards.
Soroban Preview 10 introduces new State Expiration logic to address blockchain bloat issues, along with Rust SDK changes and clearer smart contract limits. July focused on refactors rather than new features, including rethinking governance token distribution. A new Stable Liquidity Pools contract for stablecoins is in development for future deployment.
The Stellar Development Foundation's Policy team met with EU stakeholders during the publication of the landmark Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. The SDF is now engaged in helping shape the technical implementation and definition of decentralization within the new framework.
Stellar Development Foundation CEO reflects on four years of leadership, noting how blockchain has matured from speculation-driven hype to product-focused innovation, with stronger regulatory engagement and industry leadership now driving meaningful progress.
FXDAO announces it is the first legally incorporated DAO on the Soroban network, providing legal recognition to the project. They are developing a governance contract to manage all other protocol contracts, ensuring community approval for changes. The protocol is nearing completion and ready for deployment on Soroban once the network launches.
FxDAO critiques traditional DAO governance models like 'more shares, more votes' for favoring whales, insiders, and early participants, proposing a novel system combining modified democratic voting, quadratic voting, and anti-spam measures. Key features include locking tokens for proposals and votes that redistribute to participants, human verification to prevent sybil attacks, and high-threshold democratic votes for structural changes. This aims to balance fairness, participation, and security within the Stellar ecosystem.
Blend is a new liquidity protocol primitive for Stellar, enabling anyone to create insured lending pools with Soroban smart contracts. It provides lending and borrowing capabilities, adapting to market conditions while protecting suppliers via a backstop module. The protocol enhances Stellar's ecosystem for fintech, trading, DAOs, and DeFi applications.
The Stellar Newsletter highlights the 2023 roadmap emphasizing utility through tools like Stellar Aid Assist and Soroban smart contracts. It introduces the Stellar Asset Sandbox for easy testnet asset issuance, reviews Q4 2022 achievements, and announces Sorobanathon: Equinox. Additional updates cover TASCOMBANK's blockchain pilot in Ukraine, SDF's CFTC involvement, network growth milestones, and developer resources.
The Stellar Newsletter highlights recent ecosystem developments including Soroban smart contracts live on Futurenet with a $100M developer fund and Sorobanathon. It covers Meridian 2022 on-demand sessions, Stellar Quest Live Series 5, bridge bounty grants, and the new Anchor Platform. Additional updates include stablecoin launches, SDF investments in NetXD and Wave, and community fund discussions.
The Stellar Development Foundation and ecosystem members gathered in Rome for Meridian 2022, their fourth annual conference. Themed around Leonardo da Vinci's 'Urgency of Doing,' the in-person event brought together the community to discuss solutions to pressing problems and left attendees motivated to take action.
Stellar Development Foundation's Chief Legal Officer Candace Kelly praised Senators Lummis and Gillibrand's Responsible Financial Innovation Act as a bipartisan framework for crypto regulation, calling it a milestone for establishing clear legal guardrails that balance innovation with consumer protection.
Aquarius announces ICE tokens, a new mechanism for AQUA holders on Stellar to freeze their tokens and receive boosted liquidity rewards and enhanced voting power. By locking AQUA via the locker tool, users gain four non-transferable ICE tokens (ICE, upvoteICE, downvoteICE, governICE) that increase yields on SDEX/AMM and enable simultaneous use in liquidity and governance voting. ICE tokens melt linearly over the lock period, up to three years, with voting power scaling up to 10x.
Deep dive into Stellar's native multi-signature feature, exploring how m-of-n multisig enables advanced use cases like multi-party consensus, pre-authorized transactions, commitment schemes, and proof-of-work incentives without smart contracts.
The Stellar Development Foundation partnered with PwC US to create a blockchain sustainability assessment framework. Applying it to Stellar, they found the network uses just 481,324 kWh annually with 173,243 kg CO2 emissions, equivalent to 33.7 U.S. homes. SDF committed to offsetting the network's historical carbon footprint through carbon dioxide removal.
Aquarius Governance v2.0 launches with major upgrades including a mandatory discussion phase, editable proposals, redesigned fees, vote lock periods, and improved UI. These changes address low participation and other issues from v1.0, built on the Stellar blockchain via SDEX and AMM integrations. The system now encourages better proposals and early voting.
Stellar Protocol 19 upgrade is scheduled for June 8, 2022. Node operators and developers must update Stellar Core, Horizon, and all SDKs before the network upgrade to avoid losing sync or breaking integrations.
Aquarius introduces native 'Bribes' feature on the Stellar blockchain, enabling projects to reward AQUA holders for voting on liquidity markets without custom development. Bribes are set up via a simple interface at vote.aqua.network/bribes, using any Stellar asset with a minimum value equivalent to 100,000 AQUA. Distribution begins February 28th, with a 10M AQUA launch bonus for new markets.
Aquarius Governance is a decentralized system launched in November 2021 for AQUA token holders within the Stellar ecosystem to propose and vote on protocol changes. It features a 7-day discussion phase, fees for creation and publication that are burned for deflation, and a 10% quorum requirement. Successful proposals are executed by the Aquarius Signers Guild.
YieldBlox introduces Protocol Owned Debt to eliminate liquidation cascade risks by having lending pools borrow from themselves and settle via fees, enhancing stability and capital efficiency on Stellar. It also upgrades to Growing Liability Tokens for better interest tracking and ~30% performance gains. Launch delayed by a month, with community calls planned for December.
This article details the main wallets of the Aquarius project on the Stellar blockchain, including their purposes, original AQUA token holdings, and Stellar Expert explorer links. It covers wallets for liquidity rewards, airdrops, community DAO, voting/staking rewards, emergency fund, investors, advisors/partners, and founders/team. The transparency leverages blockchain's verifiable data for AQUA holders to monitor easily.
Aquarius announces the Signers Guild to decentralize control over key AQUA wallets on the Stellar network, using native multisignature capabilities with up to 20 community members. The guild will manage 75%+ of uncirculated AQUA supply, including liquidity rewards, airdrops, and DAO funds, requiring majority approval for transactions. This initiative supports Aquarius's goals of enhancing SDEX and AMM liquidity through community governance.
The Stellar public network successfully upgraded to Protocol 18 on November 3, 2021, adding native support for automated market makers (AMMs) and liquidity pools. The upgrade required validator consensus and includes breaking changes to operations, assets, and trade precision.