Tomer from SDF leads a new Tech Docs series discussing Starlight payment channels (1.5M TPS), Starbridge for blockchain interoperability, and early experiments with WASM runtimes for Project Jump Cannon smart contracts.
In the first episode of Tech Docs with Tomer, Stellar Development Foundation's technical strategy lead Tomer interviews engineer Lee McCulloch about three major initiatives. Starlight, a payment channel protocol, achieves 1.5 million transactions per second by moving payment processing off-chain and settling only final balances on-chain, using batching techniques from traditional payment systems. Starbridge addresses interoperability between Stellar and other blockchains through a decentralized bridge design, maintaining trust-minimized connections without centralized intermediaries. Project Jump Cannon, SDF's smart contracts initiative, is exploring WASM runtimes and developer experience across multiple languages including Rust, AssemblyScript, and Zig to determine the best approach for safe and accessible smart contract development on Stellar.