Stellar Ecosystem
News

Ondo Finance has launched USDY, its yield-bearing stablecoin, on the Stellar network, enabling users to access 5.3% APY on tokenized U.S. Treasuries. The integration unlocks new use cases in payments, treasury management, collateralization, and cross-border transactions on Stellar.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #38 round received 83 submissions and awarded $2,568,750 worth of XLM to 24 innovative projects. Funded initiatives span DeFi platforms, wallets, payment solutions, real-world applications like food delivery and remittances, and developer tools for the Stellar ecosystem. This round highlights the rapid evolution and community commitment to building practical utility on Stellar.

Certora organized the first formal verification contests for Rust-based Soroban smart contracts on Stellar, partnering with Code4rena and Cantina. The contests for Blend v2 and Aquarius protocols featured a 40,000 USDC prize pool and used mutation testing to evaluate specifications. They demonstrated the effectiveness of Certora's Sunbeam prover in securing DeFi protocols on Stellar.

EquitX introduces synthetic stocks (xAssets) on the Stellar blockchain, enabling users to gain exposure to real-world equities like Tesla without owning actual shares. The platform supports long, short, swing, and passive investment strategies through minting, trading on DEXs, and stability pools. It emphasizes maintaining collateral ratios above 110% to avoid liquidation while offering DeFi accessibility.

EquitX has received two awards totaling $150,000 from the Stellar Community Fund to develop its Synthetic Stocks Protocol on the Stellar blockchain. The protocol enables synthetic small-cap equities like xUSD and xTesla using collateralized debt positions backed by XLM. This bridges traditional markets with DeFi, leveraging Stellar's low-cost blockspace, DEXs, and Soroban smart contracts.

EquitX is a DeFi protocol on Stellar that enables synthetic equities and starts with xUSD, minted via collateralized debt positions using XLM. It avoids traditional tokenization issues by using a derivatives model with oracles, stability pools, and programmatic liquidations for price tracking and solvency. This boosts Stellar's TVL, XLM utility, and provides stock-like exposure with crypto-native composability.

The US Department of Commerce has posted quarterly GDP data on the Stellar network for the first time in US government history, creating an immutable and publicly auditable record of critical economic data. This development demonstrates government adoption of blockchain technology and enables new use cases in DeFi, automated trading, and real-world asset tokenization.

Vanish Trade, a privacy-first trading platform on Solana, partners with Range for real-time risk screening to balance privacy and compliance. Range provides cross-chain intelligence, sanctions monitoring, and KYB/KYT analytics to prevent illicit activity while protecting legitimate traders. Range also supports Stellar and other ecosystems in onchain compliance.

A comprehensive tutorial on building a Stellar smart contract that uses Reflector oracle to create a EUR price prediction market. The guide covers contract initialization, oracle integration, storage patterns, token transfers, and verification logic using Soroban.

Range announces a partnership with zeroShadow to integrate forensic-grade incident intelligence into its blockchain security platform. This collaboration enhances threat detection and incident response for ecosystems including Stellar. Real-time data from zeroShadow's investigations will improve Range's Transaction Security and Risk API products.

Normal announces the hiring of full-stack engineer Jay Malve to bolster its team ahead of the Normal Protocol's launch on the Stellar blockchain mainnet. Jay, a hackathon winner with blockchain experience from ETH Denver, will enhance platform usability and development. The protocol offers custom crypto indexes, trading of top 200 cryptocurrencies, and DeFi features like lending and borrowing.

Stablecoins have surged to $250 billion in market value, driven by regulatory clarity from the GENIUS Act. The article explores how stablecoins work, their advantages over traditional banking systems, and their role in enabling financial inclusion, cross-border payments, and emerging DeFi innovations on networks like Stellar.

The Stellar Development Foundation has made a strategic investment in Archax, a UK-regulated digital asset exchange, to support the tokenization of real-world assets on the Stellar network. Archax has completed key milestones including tokenizing an Aberdeen Money Market Fund and integrating Stellar into its platform, positioning itself to bring institutional assets onchain.

The Stellar Development Foundation introduces the Token Transfer Processor (TTP), a Go package that simplifies tracking token movements on Stellar by automatically generating clean, standardized events for payments, DEX trades, smart contracts, and fees.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #37 round awarded $1,861,405 worth of XLM to 19 innovative projects building on the Stellar blockchain. Projects span DeFi protocols, privacy solutions, real-world assets, wallets, and developer tools. Out of 76 submissions, 43 were first-time applicants, showcasing the vibrant Stellar ecosystem.

July was a landmark month for Stellar, featuring new SDF leadership appointments, major integrations with Visa for stablecoin settlement, and significant ecosystem advances in DeFi, cross-chain communication, and developer tooling. The network celebrated its 11th birthday while the community engaged in global hackathons and grant programs.

Flipside Quests launches on Stellar, offering an interactive way to earn rewards while learning DeFi through simple tasks and guided onboarding.

Usher Labs shifts focus to zkTLS for verified private data on blockchains. Verity zkTLS, now in early testing, lets apps prove data from APIs without revealing secrets. Partners ChainSight and Truflation are pilot users. A foreign exchange liquidity protocol launches in fall 2025.

Templar Protocol, a decentralized lending platform, published its roadmap for expanding Cypher Lending across multiple blockchains. Starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum in Q2 2025, the protocol plans to add Stellar, Solana, Cardano, and dozens more chains through 2026, with privacy features and chain abstraction.

An educational guide on using Blend, a permissionless lending protocol on Stellar, to transfer funds between accounts while avoiding cryptocurrency exchange rate volatility by borrowing XLM as collateral.

This article argues that USD Coin (USDC) is the best stablecoin to hold in 2025 due to its transparency, regulatory compliance, multi-chain availability including Stellar, and growing adoption in emerging markets. It contrasts USDC with alternatives like USDT and DAI, highlighting risks in less transparent or volatile stablecoins. USDC's institutional support and real-world utility in remittances and DeFi make it a standout choice.

Hoops Finance, originating from a hackathon demo, has rapidly grown into a leading DeFi infrastructure on Stellar mainnet, securing $150K in Stellar Community Fund grants and winning multiple hackathons. The platform boasts strong traction with thousands of daily API requests, high user engagement, and tracks over $25M in TVL. It offers risk-assessed savings, AI analytics, and tools like Comet Swap to simplify DeFi for the masses.

COCA delivered major Q2 growth with 74% increase in monthly active users, 101% growth in card holders, and 199% increase in card transaction volume. The platform launched ETH staking, COCA cashback rewards, and new integrations including Ramp and Uniswap listings.