Justin Rice, head of ecosystems at SDF, discusses Stellar's protocol upgrade process, recent features like asset clawback and AMMs, and upcoming changes including payment channels and dynamic fee management at South by Southwest.
At South by Southwest, Justin Rice from the Stellar Development Foundation explains how Stellar's open governance model works through SEPs, CAPs, and protocol upgrades driven by ecosystem demand. He covers Protocol 17's asset clawback feature for regulatory compliance, Protocol 18's AMM functionality that democratized liquidity provision, and upcoming Protocol 19 improvements including payment channels via Starlight and CAP42's dynamic fee bucketing. Rice emphasizes that validators, not SDF, ultimately ratify changes, and that the network's reputation-based consensus model rewards good behavior over token ownership. He encourages ecosystem builders to participate in developer mailing lists and contribute feedback to shape the network's evolution.