Stellar Ecosystem
News

Franklin Templeton filed with the SEC to launch a blockchain-based mutual fund for government securities, recording fund share ownership on the Stellar blockchain to improve transparency and reduce settlement times while keeping investor mechanics hidden.

Franklin Templeton filed an SEC prospectus for a money market fund whose shares would be recorded on the Stellar Network. The fund would invest in government securities and cash, with shares purchasable through the firm's app starting at $20 minimum.

Stellar Development Foundation released Horizon v0.20.1 with a new ingestion system that addresses architectural issues by building a full copy of ledger state from history archives instead of relying on Stellar-Core's database. The update enables new features like "Accounts for Signers" and significantly improves path-finding performance by up to 10x.

Anchorage, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed institutional crypto custodian, is now supporting Stellar and Tezos assets. The firm offers staking rewards between 1-7% and aims to compete with Coinbase and BitGo for institutional investors.

Stellar Development Foundation launched a redesigned stellar.org website featuring improved developer tools, clearer messaging about the network's capabilities in asset issuance and payments, and a new interactive Runkit for getting started.

Stellar, Ethereum, Tezos, Oasis, and NEAR foundations partnered with IDEO CoLab and CoinList on a hackathon running Aug 5-Sept 22 focused on building user-friendly blockchain applications. Teams compete to simplify crypto UX and drive mainstream adoption, with prizes up to $10,000.

Stellar's Decentralized Exchange faces a liquidity problem that market makers can solve. The SDF built Kelp, a free open-source trading bot in Golang that automates market-making strategies on Stellar's DEX and centralized exchanges, with v1.7.1 now available.

Binance discovered it earned 9.5 million XLM in staking rewards since 2018 and will now officially support XLM staking, distributing accumulated rewards to users starting in 42 days with September payouts worth 10-12 months of typical monthly rewards.

Stellar Development Foundation released stellar-core v11.2 with automatic quorum configuration and a quorum intersection checker to help validators manage Byzantine Agreement Systems more easily and safely.

Stellar Development Foundation's new leadership outlines five strategic priorities: achieving financial inclusion through technology focus, building products that prove Stellar's value, engaging on policy matters, and increasing communication. SDF is launching a dollar savings app for Latin America and hosting its first Meridian conference in Mexico City.

Stellar is hosting its first-ever conference, Stellar Meridian, in Mexico City on November 4-5. The event will focus on financial inclusion, payments innovation, and the protocol's role in shaping the future of global finance.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced Stellar Meridian, its first sponsored conference, taking place November 4-5, 2019 in Mexico City. The event will bring together developers, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem projects to discuss financial inclusion, regulation, and Stellar's role in the future of finance.

Crypto.com listed Stellar Lumens (XLM) on its Wallet & Card App, enabling users to purchase XLM fee-free via credit card or bank transfer and spend it globally through the MCO Visa Card at 40+ million merchants.

Stellar public network Protocol 11 upgrade scheduled for June 10, 2019 at 1600 UTC. Developers must upgrade SDKs, Horizon instances, and Stellar Core to ensure compatibility.

IBM's global blockchain head Jesse Lund has departed the company. Lund led IBM's Stellar-based World Wire payment network, which connected six banks across 72 countries. Stellar co-founder Jed McCaleb said the departure won't impact the platform.

Stellar network halted for nearly two hours Wednesday when enough validator nodes stopped, preventing consensus. The incident highlighted risks of rapid decentralization, though SDF nodes remained operational.

Gab CEO Andrew Torba announced plans to fork Keybase and replace its Stellar wallet integration with Bitcoin Lightning Network, positioning the move as part of Gab's broader strategy to fork open-source projects and remove what he calls 'shitcoins' in favor of Bitcoin.

Paysend, a London-based fintech serving over 1 million users, is launching a stablecoin on Stellar to enable instant global payments without cross-border fees for expats and multi-currency account holders.

Stellar Development Foundation announces ZkVM, an experimental zero-knowledge virtual machine for scalable and confidential smart contracts. The research explores sidechain architectures to enhance Stellar with privacy features and flexible contract capabilities.

The Stellar Development Foundation announces the release of a new Go SDK for the Stellar network, featuring horizonclient for Horizon server access and txnbuild for transaction construction. This is the third official SDK alongside JavaScript and Java, designed with Go-specific idioms and improved developer experience.

Wirex launched 26 fiat-backed stablecoins on Stellar and added Lumens support to its crypto debit card, enabling users to spend USD, EUR equivalents via VISA. The circular process of converting fiat to stablecoin and back raises questions about practical utility.