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Anke Liu from the Stellar Development Foundation presented updates to the Stellar Community Fund, announcing a new four-week submission cycle for awards up to $150,000 XLM, a virtual startup bootcamp launching in April, and a tiered verified member system with governance roles.

SDF Q4 2022 quarterly review covering network growth to 7.4M accounts, Soroban smart contracts launching on FutureNet with mainnet planned for H1 2023, Stellar Aid Assist deployment in Ukraine, and the 2023 roadmap focused on utility as the growth exponent.

Soroban design discussion on Authnext proposal covering account abstraction, standardized signature payloads, and invocation authorization. Dima presented the two-component system enabling flexible authentication while maintaining protocol standardization for contract interoperability.

Aaron Tyson from the Stellar Development Foundation presents Bucket List DB, a next-generation database replacing SQL for Stellar Core storage. The new system reduces disk usage by 50%, improves read performance 2.6-4.2x, and eliminates data duplication while maintaining fast hashing for consensus.

UNHCR treasurer Carmen Hurt discusses the organization's blockchain initiative on Stellar to deliver cash assistance to 100 million displaced people globally. The project uses USDC, Circle, MoneyGram, and the Stellar Disbursement Platform to provide refugees with financial autonomy and transparency.

Soroban design discussion on Auth Next proposal covering account abstraction and standardized invocation authorization. The proposal aims to simplify authentication, enable complex multi-contract calls with single signatures, and support custom account implementations beyond classic accounts.

Anthony Scaramucci discusses the FTX collapse and Sam Bankman-Fried's arrest, reflecting on his investment in FTX and lessons learned. He emphasizes blockchain's real-world use cases like remittances and payments while advocating for regulatory clarity and decentralized systems.

Stellar Development Foundation and UNHCR launched a blockchain-based aid disbursement system live in Ukraine, delivering digital cash assistance to internally displaced persons using USDC stablecoins, Vibrant wallets, and MoneyGram's cash-out network.

Danelle Dixon, CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation, interviews Ginger Baker, SDF's newest board member and head of financial access at Plaid. They discuss Baker's career spanning financial inclusion work at Facebook, Visa, Ripple, and Square, her focus on empowering women in emerging markets through financial services, and insights on solving real-world problems with blockchain technology.

Danelle Dixon (Stellar Development Foundation CEO) interviews Marique Flament (NEAR Foundation CEO) about leading nonprofit foundations supporting open source blockchains, navigating market volatility, grant-making challenges, and the FTX crisis impact on industry trust and regulation.

Zach Freund and Justin Rice from Stellar Development Foundation discuss the FTX collapse's impact on crypto industry trust, regulatory challenges, and SDF's continued focus on use cases and ecosystem building through grants and Soroban smart contracts development.

Raheem, a computer science student from Curacao, discusses his DAO smart contract submission to Soroban-a-thon. The contract uses reputation instead of tokens for governance, allowing members to create and vote on proposals that execute cross-contract instructions.

Sorbonne Talks stream featuring Stellar Development Foundation developers demonstrating Gitpod instant dev environment for Soroban smart contract development, showing how to build, test, and deploy contracts on Futurenet with minimal setup.

Stellar Development Foundation team discusses critical decision on how stellar assets are represented in Soroban: single balance approach (assets stored in trust lines, exposed via Soroban interface) versus dual balance approach (separate Soroban and classic balances). Community consensus strongly favors single balance for simplified user experience and ecosystem interoperability.

Stellar protocol discussion on CAP 46-06 covering the standardized token contract for Soroban smart contracts, including updates to token balances, naming conventions, clawback functionality, and solutions for handling auth-required assets from Stellar Classic.

Panel discussion on tier one asset issuance on Stellar, featuring developers from Brazil discussing native asset primitives, real-world tokenization use cases, and a CBDC pilot project with fractionalized assets using Stellar's DEX and multi-signature features.

AlfredPay, a USDC-based payments platform, launches a direct-to-bank transfer service and hybrid wallet for LATAM markets, starting with Dominican Republic operations and expanding to Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia by year-end.

Stellar Development Foundation announces the Anchor Platform, a new open-source tool designed to simplify anchor deployment on the Stellar network. The platform reduces setup complexity and costs, enabling businesses to connect payment infrastructure with minimal development effort.

Helgaard from Reive presents their fintech app builder platform that enables founders to launch financial products without building from scratch. Reive provides white-label wallet infrastructure, compliance through Wire integration, and Stellar network support to reduce time and cost to market for emerging fintech businesses.

Stellar founder David Mazieres argues that proof of agreement, not proof of work or stake, is better suited for issuer-backed tokens. He explains how Stellar's consensus protocol uses quorum slices with known validators to enable low-cost, censorship-resistant transactions while protecting against double redemption attacks.

Shift Markets announced Cables, a semi-decentralized exchange coming to Stellar that combines centralized liquidity with user self-custody, enabling faster cross-border payments and trading with better rates than traditional channels.

Panel discussion featuring Stellar anchors Settle Network, Tempo France, and Wire discussing fiat on-ramps, stablecoin issuance, cross-border payments infrastructure, and the future of crypto adoption through seamless payment experiences.

Jed McCaleb and David Mazieres discuss founding Stellar, the consensus protocol, and the network's future at Meridian. They cover smart contracts, scalability, CBDCs, and the importance of execution over ideas.

Script3's Alex Moots discusses building a decentralized money market on Stellar's Soroban smart contract platform, highlighting how Soroban's interoperability with Stellar Classic and flexible authorization enable efficient DeFi protocols tailored to Stellar's anchor ecosystem.