DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
Stellar Community Fund announces SCF #45 results: 40 projects awarded approximately $4.04M XLM across Open, Integration, and RFP tracks. The cohort spans confidential-finance infrastructure, real-world-asset tokenization, cross-border payment rails, and agentic-payment tooling, reflecting the Stellar builder community's deepening depth and technical ambition.
Trustless Work joins SCF's official Integration List, becoming an official building block for ecosystem teams.
Over 23 rounds since October 2023, Stellar Community Fund's Neural Quorum Governance has distributed $38M to over 500 projects. The open-source voting system combining layered neurons with quorum delegation evolved across three phases and now achieves 89% alignment with expert delegate panels.
Anke Liu, who has run the Stellar Community Fund since 2020, launches a Substack on governance in practice. Drawing from six years managing $38M+ in awards, she'll write about how voting mechanisms and capital allocation actually work—not how they're designed, but what happens when real money and incentives show up.
The Stellar Development Foundation launched the Stellar Ambassador Program, a global initiative with four progression tiers: Explorer (onboarding), Contributor (workshops and mentoring), Builder (project deployment), and Ecosystem Leader (regional initiatives). The program connects local chapters to the Stellar Community Fund pipeline, offering up to $150K in XLM for projects moving from concept to mainnet.
SCF #44 closes with record participation: 175 submissions resulted in 46 projects awarded $4.57M XLM across three tracks. Winners represent DeFi protocols, payment infrastructure, and developer tooling built on Stellar.
SCF #43 concludes with 85 submissions and 29 projects awarded across three distinct tracks: Open Track for novel on-chain use cases, Integration Track for existing ecosystem tools, and RFP Track for developer tooling needs. Total awards: $3.14M XLM. The referral program sourced 22 of 29 winners.
SCF #42 awarded $2.46M in XLM to 27 projects across three tracks: Open Track (novel use cases), Integration Track (ecosystem tools), and RFP Track (developer tooling). The round achieved 100% alignment between community voting and delegate panel decisions, with 106 voters participating in Neural Quorum Governance.
SCF #41 awarded 34 projects across three tracks (Open, Integration, RFP) with a total of $3,941,744 worth of XLM, the highest awarded round to date. The round marked the first under SCF 7.0's restructured framework and achieved perfect alignment between community voting and delegate panel decisions.
Hoops Finance released a major authentication update enabling passkey-controlled smart accounts on Soroban, allowing users to authorize DeFi operations via biometric authentication without seed phrases or browser extensions. The founder detailed months of foundational work building the custom authentication layer, demonstrating a complete DeFi lifecycle from account creation through multi-protocol atomic deposits and withdrawals.
Bitwave's 2025 year-in-review highlights their leadership in enterprise blockchain finance, including events like ETHDenver, Consensus, and Stellar Meridian, plus awards such as the Stellar Community Fund recognition for Stellar-based custodial solutions. They expanded platform capabilities for stablecoin payments, DeFi tracking, and multi-chain support. Looking ahead, Bitwave anticipates stock tokenization and supply-chain blockchain adoption in 2026.
A comprehensive guide to building decentralized applications on Stellar's Soroban smart contract platform, covering essential developer tools, a step-by-step roadmap from setup through deployment, and community resources for support.
Rubic announces multiple integrations including Sui going live, MegaETH Day 1 support, and an expanded Stellar integration funded by the Stellar Community Fund. The Stellar update enables cross-chain swaps via providers like SimpleSwap and Changelly, with support for LOBSTR and Freighter wallets. Additional enhancements include expanded Relay support and a upcoming Rubic × Stellar marketing campaign.
The Stellar Community Fund Growth Hack is running active promotional campaigns across payments, DeFi, and infrastructure projects. Users can earn rewards through ROZO, Myaza, Seevcash, Soroswap Earn, and Allbridge by participating in user acquisition activities like deposits, transfers, bridging, and referrals.
This article provides a comprehensive Spanish-language guide to Stellar Community Fund (SCF) 7.0, explaining its funding process, key changes, and application steps for builders in the Stellar ecosystem. It covers the Interest Form entry point, three Build tracks (Open, Integration, RFP), tranche-based funding up to $150K-$300K in XLM, and practical tips for maximizing success. SCF emphasizes real products, execution, and community governance over mere ideas.
The Stellar Development Foundation has launched SCF v7.0, a major upgrade to the Stellar Community Fund grant program featuring three new build award tracks (Integrate, Open, RFP), improved submission pathways with referral incentives, milestone-based funding tied to execution, ambassador-led Instawards for early-stage projects, and post-launch growth pathways for successful teams.
Stellar's financial ecosystem expanded significantly in 2025, with stablecoin market cap growing 53% to $243.6M driven by PayPal's PYUSD launch, while RWA market cap surged 196% to $890.2M. U.S. Bank is testing custom stablecoin issuance on Stellar, and the Marshall Islands completed the world's first onchain universal basic income disbursement by a national government.
Stellar hackathons are driving innovation by fostering collaborative development of decentralized apps on the Stellar blockchain and Soroban smart contracts. Key initiatives like the Build Better Contest and partnerships with UNDP's SDG Blockchain Accelerator turn ideas into real-world impact projects. These events build a thriving developer community through learning, networking, and funding opportunities.
Normal's 2025 recap highlights its evolution from a centralized product to a fully self-custodial, decentralized protocol built on Stellar. Key achievements include 30,000 lines of smart contract code for wallets, AMMs, DEX, synthetic assets, and on-chain indexes, a Halborn security audit backed by SDF, and a Stellar Community Fund grant. The team expanded with key hires like CTO Jay and frontend lead Niko, while hosting global community events.
Trustless Work reviews its 2025 achievements, including completion of the Draper University/Stellar Embark program, extensive hackathon participation across chains like Stellar and Solana, and shipping production-ready escrow infrastructure. The project highlights builder adoption, enterprise pilots in real estate tokenization and private credit, and Stellar's ecosystem growth with milestones like PYUSD launch. Looking to 2026, they aim to accelerate integrations, volume, and tokenized assets while preparing to raise capital.
Boundless has won a Stellar Community Fund Build Award to develop its milestone-based funding platform on Stellar. The platform uses Soroban smart contracts and escrow to ensure accountable, verifiable payouts for grants, bounties, and crowdfunding. This addresses key Web3 funding issues like upfront payments and lack of transparency.
Boundless wins SCF #40 for its Soroban-powered funding platform that manages crowdfunding, grants, hackathons, and bounties. The win validates the team's approach to transparent, milestone-based funding for Web3 builders and communities.
BP Ventures' StellarMesh Anchor project has won a Stellar Community Fund #40 Build Award, recognizing its role in connecting global exchange liquidity to Stellar's onchain rails. The infrastructure enables instant, compliant funding for Stellar wallets via SEP-24/31 standards. This milestone validates the project's contribution to interoperability and real-world asset movement on Stellar.
Pavel Matveev of COCA, a non-custodial stablecoin-native wallet built on Stellar, is featured in the Stellar Community Fund Spotlight series. COCA received a $50K SCF grant and a $1M Series A investment from SDF to integrate USDC support and solve Web3 security and usability challenges for mass-market adoption.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #39 round awarded $1,115,655 in XLM to 12 innovative projects building on the Stellar network. Highlights include QuillTip for microtipping, Stallion for decentralized bounties, and RendBit for cross-border banking in Africa. The round featured record voter participation and governance updates to Neural Quorum Governance for fairer voting.
The Stellar i³ Awards 2025 recognized three standout projects at Stellar Meridian: Decaf won Impact for its non-custodial stablecoin app with 50k users, Etherfuse won Innovation for tokenized government treasuries and peso stablecoins, and DeFindex won Interoperability for its plug-and-play DeFi API for wallets.