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Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson discusses the launch of Benji, a tokenized money market fund on Stellar, and explains why blockchain technology is transforming asset management and financial services infrastructure.

Tomer from SDF and Deanne from Cubist discuss WebAssembly's role in Soroban smart contracts, covering design decisions around WASM 1.0, interpreter vs. compiler tradeoffs, Rust as the primary language, and security considerations for WASM runtimes.

Deep technical overview of Soroban's architecture, covering the host-guest boundary design, value types, host functions, contract storage, and resource metering that enable secure, performant smart contract execution on Stellar.

Zodiac Custody, Stellar, International Rescue Committee, and MoneyGram announced a partnership to enable charities to distribute aid globally using blockchain technology and stablecoins, solving critical gaps in humanitarian payment infrastructure.

Alex Cordero from the Stellar Development Foundation presented the Wallet SDK, a new developer tool that simplifies wallet integration with anchors by reducing implementation complexity from 291 lines of code to just 10 lines, while maintaining interoperability standards.

CFTC Commissioner discusses crypto regulation gaps, DeFi enforcement overreach, and the need for legislative clarity. Argues the agency should engage with industry on rulemaking rather than relying solely on enforcement actions that may shut down innovation.

Julian Martinez and Chad from AHA Labs demonstrate how to build DeFi applications on Stellar using Soroban smart contracts, covering liquidity pools, swaps, and TypeScript bindings for frontend integration.

Stellar Development Foundation's fifth annual Meridian conference celebrates builders creating real-world blockchain solutions for financial inclusion. Speakers highlight ecosystem projects like Decaf, Flutterwave, MoneyGram, and 40 Soroban developers proving that blockchain can unlock human potential and democratize access to global finance.

Stellar ecosystem builders showcased 15+ projects at Meridian conference, including Comet AMM, EZA developer platform, Wavy P2P exchange, SubQuery indexer, Phoenix DEX, and infrastructure tools. Focus on DeFi primitives, real-world assets, and developer onboarding on Soroban.

Three Stellar ecosystem wallets (Beans, Decaf, Boss Money) demonstrated integration with the Stellar Disbursement Platform, showcasing how organizations can send bulk payments globally to recipients who onboard seamlessly into crypto wallets for the first time.

Elroy, a fintech platform built on Stellar, launches Elroy Global for free money transfers to Mexico with plans to expand to 30+ countries. The service offers high interest rates, virtual cards, and seamless international payments using Stellar's standardized protocols.

Panel discussion on AMMs and swap functionality in Soroban ecosystem featuring builders from Phoenix, Soroswap, and Comment. Panelists discuss liquidity incentivization strategies, developer challenges, security considerations, impermanent loss mitigation, and the role of oracles and indexers in DeFi infrastructure.

ARF, a Swiss fintech licensed in 2019, launched a USDC-based credit line product to solve the cross-border payments liquidity problem by offering short-term, uncollateralized revolving credit to financial institutions, enabling same-day settlement and reducing pre-funding capital requirements.

Panel discussion on DAO governance solutions for Soroban featuring FXDAO, ElioDAO, CommunityDAO, and BlockScience. Panelists discuss native features, accessibility, and governance models tailored for emerging markets and community-driven protocols.

Tomer from SDF presented Soroban, Stellar's new smart contracts platform built on WebAssembly and Rust. The talk covered Soroban's architecture, security tooling including a new Audit Bank and Certora partnership, and live demos of DeFi applications like Blend lending protocol and Beans app enabling cash-to-yield access.

Stellar founder explains why blockchain matters beyond cryptocurrency, detailing how Stellar's proof-of-agreement consensus enables secure issued assets with minimal fees, unlike proof-of-work and proof-of-stake chains that require expensive validator incentives.

Marcelo from Cheesecake Labs introduced Stellar Sandbox v2, an enhanced platform for asset tokenization that enables non-technical users to issue, manage, and distribute assets on Stellar without development expertise. The platform includes custodial wallets, role-based access control, treasury management, and upcoming Soroban smart contract integration, with the codebase being released as open source.

Closing keynote from Meridian 2023 reflecting on Soroban's progress from preview to mainnet launch, ecosystem growth to 100+ projects, and the $100M Soroban Adoption Fund strategy for accelerating DeFi and financial inclusion.

Panel discussion on bulk payments in the Stellar ecosystem, featuring Circle, SDF's Disbursement Platform, UNICEF, and Ping. Speakers explored how blockchain enables faster, cheaper disbursements for aid, payroll, and creator payments while addressing regulatory challenges and last-mile delivery.

Ran Goldie, SVP Head of Payments at Fireblocks, discusses the company's journey from 3 founders in 2018 to 650 employees and 1,900 clients by 2023, detailing how they achieved product-market fit by solving specific use cases for OTC desks and market makers before expanding into payments, tokenization, and CBDCs.

Beans app integrates with Blend protocol to enable users to deposit stablecoins in lending pools and earn yield while maintaining a traditional banking UX. The integration allows seamless conversion between fiat and digital currencies with zero fees.

Panel discussion featuring founders of three Soroban lending protocols: Slender (compounded lending), Trilobyte (cash flow financing for Cuba), and XLR Labs (tokenized T-bills and repo lending). Speakers discuss how lending primitives drive DeFi ecosystem growth and financial inclusion.

Soroban smart contracts launch keynote covering three pillars: technical design decisions, 100+ ecosystem projects building on Soroban with 40 presenting, and cash-to-DeFi integration unlocking real-world asset connections.

Jisun from Vibrant demonstrates building an NFT smart contract on Soroban using Taylor Swift concert tickets as an example, covering contract initialization, minting, ownership checks, transfers, and testnet deployment.