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Stellar developers discussed CAP74, which adds BN254 pairing-friendly curve support to Soroban via three new host functions, and explored approaches for implementing Poseidon hash functions to support zero-knowledge proof use cases on the network.

Tomer, SDF Chief Product Officer, outlines Stellar's privacy strategy combining blockchain transparency with user privacy through opt-in, configurable solutions. SDF is funding privacy projects, building ZK infrastructure, and developing confidential token and private payment protocols with partners like Nethermind.

Lee from the Stellar Development Foundation discusses three low-level features that power great developer tools: contract specs (embedded IDL), the Soroban runtime environment, and XDR JSON for readable transaction data.

Franklin Templeton executive discusses the company's tokenization journey on Stellar, highlighting Benji, a tokenized U.S. government money market fund that enables peer-to-peer transfers and yield earning on chain.

Lucien from Boundless and Matteo from NetherMind demonstrate how to bring zero-knowledge proofs to Stellar via Boundless, enabling privacy, removing transaction limits, and unlocking new DeFi applications like private AMMs through verifiable off-chain computation.

Stellar Development Foundation CEO unveils Meridian Pay, a production-ready smart wallet built with Cheesecake Labs, at Meridian 2025 in Rio de Janeiro. The wallet showcases Stellar's capabilities for real-world financial applications with open-sourced code, smart contract templates, and instant XLM disbursement to attendees.

RTM CEO Ruben Galindo discusses 11 years of stablecoin payments innovation, revealing that despite proven technical superiority over PayPal, the industry remains 70x smaller and faces challenges around liquidity, consumer adoption, and coordinated ecosystem efforts to scale.

Beans, Blend, and DeFindex collaborate to enable non-custodial yield earning for everyday users. The integration abstracts DeFi complexity, allowing Beans users to earn 10x+ bank rates on stablecoins through automated Blend lending strategies without seeing gas fees or technical details.

MoneyGram launches next-generation app in Colombia enabling instant USDC transfers on Stellar blockchain, positioning itself as the largest crypto cash on/off ramp bridging physical and digital payments for financial inclusion.

Charles from SDF and Fernanda from Cheesecake Labs discuss design decisions for Freighter and Akuna wallets, focusing on solving user adoption barriers through thoughtful UX rather than technology alone. Both wallets prioritize security, clarity, and accessibility for mainstream users entering the Stellar ecosystem.

Akuna wallet, built on Stellar, enables African creators to monetize globally by providing virtual US dollar accounts and stablecoin holdings. The platform addresses barriers preventing Africa's 1.4 billion people from accessing the creator economy, with actor Idris Elba discussing how technology can leapfrog infrastructure gaps.

A keynote on how stablecoins and programmable money can transform everyday payments through automation, spending guardrails, and yield generation, moving beyond faster settlement to smarter financial behavior.

Near Protocol's Dejan Radic presented Near Intents, an intent-driven cross-chain swap protocol that recently integrated Stellar. The system enables fast, low-cost cross-chain transactions through a market maker model, with Stellar seeing approximately 200k cumulative volume since integration on August 19th.

NetherMind's ZK engineering team presented a privacy solution for Stellar using zero-knowledge proofs and privacy pools with regulatory compliance, addressing the blockchain's transparency-by-design limitation while enabling opt-in privacy for users.

At the Meridian event, lightning talks feature Stellar ecosystem innovators. Ondo Finance announces USDY, their yield-bearing tokenized treasury, now live on Stellar. Etherfuse introduces Tesoro, a Brazilian stable bond offering high yield in local currency, and Credit discusses remittances and financial innovation in Africa.

Meridian Pay is a Stellar Smart Wallet built by SDF and Cheesecake Labs that delivers Web2-like UX on mainnet. It uses passkeys for passwordless authentication, Merkle trees for efficient token distribution, and the wallet backend for fee sponsorship and transaction indexing.

PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin is now live on Stellar. The USD 1.3 billion market cap stablecoin has grown 160% year-to-date and will enable checkout at millions of PayPal merchants through Stellar wallets with sub-1% fees.

In a fireside chat at a Stellar event, Tomer from Stellar Development Foundation interviews Simon Baxes from Layer 0 about their upcoming integration, making Stellar the 143rd chain connected to Layer 0's cross-chain messaging protocol. Layer 0, handling 82% of cross-chain messaging volume and $10B monthly, enables native asset transfers for issuers like Tether and PayPal without wrapping risks. The integration promises sub-second, gasless swaps and universal interoperability, supercharging Stellar's payments and finance ecosystem.

Sergey Nazarov discusses how de-globalization and local instability are driving crypto adoption, emphasizing that reliable oracles, cross-chain bridges, and real-world asset tokenization are critical for blockchain ecosystems to succeed at scale.

Artemis and Messari present data analytics platforms for Stellar ecosystem. Artemis offers Bloomberg-style crypto analytics with cross-chain comparisons and AI chat. Messari provides Portal for on-chain/off-chain data aggregation and AI Copilot for ecosystem research.

Enrique shares his four-year journey building wallets in Stellar, discussing why smart wallets matter for user adoption and announcing XBull V2, which combines classic account benefits with smart wallet features using passkey authentication.

Stellar Development Foundation research team discusses performance and scalability improvements including JIT execution for Soroban contracts, parallel processing strategies, network overlay optimization, and consensus protocol enhancements targeting sub-second latency.

Stellar Development Foundation announced major expansions to the Stellar Disbursement Platform, adding one-off payments, USDC purchasing, and smart wallet support. A case study showed GIZ using SDP to pay healthcare workers in Syria, reducing payment times from months to days and saving 400,000 euros annually.

Panel discussion on stablecoin adoption in emerging markets featuring Vesio, Digibank, Plexus Institute, and filmmaker Justin Norman. Speakers shared ground-level insights on how stablecoins are solving real problems in Argentina, Brazil, Syria, and other regions through localized solutions and last-mile infrastructure.