Stellar Ecosystem
News

Cheesecake Labs expands its five-year partnership with Stellar Development Foundation, serving as official ambassador at Blockchain Rio 2025 and Meridian 2025. The company has built multiple solutions on Stellar including MoneyGram Wallet, Vesseo Wallet, and MBRL stablecoin, positioning itself to capitalize on stablecoin opportunities following the GENIUS Act.

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.

Visa expanded stablecoin settlement support to include PYUSD, USDG, and EURC on Avalanche and Stellar networks, joining existing Ethereum and Solana support. The move reflects growing institutional adoption of stablecoins following the U.S. GENIUS Act regulatory framework.

Women Biz shares July activities and announces August opportunities including English club, legal workshops, stablecoins education, and a Stellar Ideathon hackathon in Lima.

Kura, a Stellar-based digital payment solution founded by Stéphanie Joseph, enables merchants in Central America and the Caribbean to accept instant cross-border payments. The company received funding through Stellar Community Fund Round #31 and is piloting with merchants in the Caribbean to bring financial inclusion to underserved regions.

The International AIDS Society (IAS) partnered with Stellar Disbursement Platform and Decaf wallet to distribute $49,480 in USDC stablecoins to 248 scholarship recipients from over 50 countries at the 2025 IAS Conference in Kigali. This blockchain solution replaced inefficient cash envelopes and long queues with seamless, secure digital payments achieving 100% delivery success across 425 transactions. The initiative highlights Stellar's potential for modernizing global disbursements for NGOs.

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.

@StellarOrg and @Giveth launched a $50,000 matching grant program using Quadratic Funding to support community-led Stellar educational events worldwide. The initiative aims to identify new community leaders and ambassadors while fostering global adoption through workshops, hackathons, and localized content.

Mercury, a Stellar ecosystem runtime platform, is shifting to a Light Client deployment model that unbundles data sourcing, execution, and delivery into modular, open-source components. This redesign reduces operational overhead while preserving Mercury's Zephyr and Retroshades runtime technology and enabling third-party infrastructure operators to run Mercury services independently.

Balanced protocol is transitioning post-merger with ICON into SODAX on Sonic, with PARROT9 taking over the app. They've added Stellar support for intent-based trades, fixed bugs, and supported Stellar campaigns. Q3 plans include money market demos, full intent trades, and shipping Balanced v2.

PayPal's former blockchain head José Fernández da Ponte has joined the Stellar Development Foundation as president and chief growth officer. The SDF also appointed Jason Karsh, ex-Block and Blockchain.com executive, as chief marketing officer. Both hires aim to boost Stellar's growth, financial inclusion efforts, and adoption.

Trustless Work participated in Casa Builders CDMX, a Stellar-hosted hackathon in Mexico focusing on financial inclusion, digital identity, and public good transparency. Their team built Pacto, a decentralized P2P stablecoin ramp using Trustless Work's programmable escrow, and won the event. The hackathon united Latin American builders, with strong Costa Rican representation.

XLM surged 6% to $0.3880 on Saturday, becoming the top performer among top 20 cryptocurrencies. The rally follows PayPal's announcement of launching its PYUSD stablecoin on Stellar, with executives highlighting the network's speed, low costs, and global reach across 170+ countries.

Keyrails, a stablecoin-based operating system for cross-border payments in emerging markets, has selected Dfns to power its wallet infrastructure. The platform supports stablecoins across multiple blockchains including Stellar, enabling programmable treasuries, fast settlements, and compliance. This partnership enhances security and scalability for high-value transactions in regions like Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Tellus Cooperative announces a July lineup of free virtual events focused on fintech, blockchain, and AI for Latin America, featuring Stellar Quest workshops and spotlights on projects like TuCambio, A0X, and Skipo. Participants can learn Stellar basics, join discussions with innovators, and win official Stellar Chile merchandise through live raffles. The events aim to build a collaborative Web3 ecosystem in the region.

June 2025 marked significant growth for the Stellar ecosystem with major European engagement, landmark DeFi product launches, and powerful developer tools. Key highlights include Berlin and Istanbul blockchain weeks, the launch of Beans Earn with Defindex, PayPal's intent to bring PYUSD to Stellar, and new developer infrastructure from OpenZeppelin and Creit Tech.

Normal has partnered with Halborn for a comprehensive security audit, backed by the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF). This initiative aims to ensure world-class security using industry-leading solutions.

Airtm, Bridge, and Stellar blockchain have integrated to enable fast, low-cost stablecoin payouts for global freelancers and gig workers. Nearly half of Airtm's stablecoin payouts now use Stellar, processing over 1.2 million transactions across seven continents since March 2024. This partnership leverages Stellar's anchor network for seamless fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, revolutionizing cross-border payroll.

Range announces a partnership with Peersyst to bring its cross-chain monitoring, security, and intelligence tools to the XRPL EVM sidechain launching in 2025. XRPL EVM introduces Ethereum-compatible smart contracts to the XRP ecosystem while preserving XRPL's speed and low costs, enabling DeFi, staking, and interoperability via IBC, Axelar, and Wormhole. Range will provide day-one support including its Cross-Chain Explorer, Monitoring and Alerts, and Trail forensic tool.

Raja Chakravorti, Chief Business Officer at the Stellar Development Foundation, discusses how Stellar's fast, low-cost blockchain is enabling financial inclusion globally, with use cases ranging from institutional adoption by Franklin Templeton to UN-backed humanitarian aid delivery in crisis zones.

PayPal is bringing its PYUSD stablecoin to Stellar pending regulatory approval, enabling fast, low-cost cross-border payments and remittances through Stellar's network of on and off-ramps.