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Stellar Development Foundation leaders discuss Soroban smart contracts launch, addressing past skepticism, scalability concerns, and the $100M Sorobanathon First Light developer fund. Soroban launches Q2 2023 with two execution lanes preserving low-cost Classic payments.

Paul from SDF presents Soroban smart contracts on Stellar, covering environment setup, hello world examples, and a full crowdfunding dapp. Soroban enables programmable token control and reliable neutrality through on-chain code, with deployment available now on FutureNet.

Tomer from the Stellar Development Foundation announced Soroban, a Turing-complete smart contract platform native to Stellar, now live on FutureNet testnet. The SDF is allocating $100 million to support Soroban adoption and launched Sorobanathon First Light to reward developers building and providing feedback.

Panel discussion on blockchain solutions for financial inclusion in emerging markets, focusing on serving the 4 billion people at the base of the economic pyramid. Speakers discuss challenges like lack of formal banking access, trust issues, and regulatory barriers, while exploring how distributed ledger technology and local stablecoins can enable cross-border transfers and peer-to-peer payments.

Hidenori Shinohara from Stellar's core team discusses Pull Mode, a new transaction broadcasting optimization that removes duplicate messages across the network. Simulations showed TPS improved from 326 to 563 transactions per second, a 73% increase.

Stellar core developers discuss Soroban smart contracts launch, scalability roadmap, governance challenges, and state management. Key topics include extensibility through Soroban, L1 optimization before L2 solutions, fee metering complexity, and ledger state expiration.

Torsten from Pendulum presents Spacewalk, a decentralized bridge connecting Stellar to Polkadot through Pendulum parachain. The bridge uses a novel vault-based architecture with collateralization and a Stellar Oracle to ensure security comparable to Stellar consensus.

Panel discussion on custodial versus non-custodial wallets featuring experts from Ledger, Wirex, and academia. Panelists debate the spectrum of wallet solutions, regulatory compliance, privacy, and the role of self-custody versus institutional custody in crypto adoption.

Technical deep dive on integrating MoneyGram's fiat on/off ramp with Stellar wallets, covering authentication flows, transaction initiation, USDC settlement, and best practices for handling deposits and withdrawals.

BlockDemon chief engineer Nai Lu discusses infrastructure challenges across 50+ blockchain protocols, including Stellar's federated consensus model, validator decentralization, and how reputation-based trust differs from proof-of-work and proof-of-stake incentive structures.

Panel discussion on blockchain's role in financial inclusion, featuring experts from Nigeria, UN, AFI, and academia debating whether blockchain represents hope or hype for expanding economic opportunities in developing nations.

Researcher from Red Bay Network presents scientific analysis of blockchain transaction throughput (TPS) claims versus real-world performance, revealing significant gaps between announced metrics and observed results across major blockchains including Algorand, Avalanche, and Solana.

Beans is a non-custodial wallet on Stellar that abstracts away crypto complexity, offering free remittances and yield-bearing savings accounts. Users can send money across currencies with zero fees and earn returns on stablecoins, Bitcoin, Ethereum, or XLM.

Panel discussion on liquidity provision for Stellar cross-border payments, featuring Script3's money market protocol and ARF's credit line product for financial institutions. Speakers explore how DeFi infrastructure enables capital efficiency in remittances and FX markets.

Aquarius, a liquidity management layer for Stellar, incentivizes market making and liquidity provision through the Aqua token. The platform has distributed 107 million payments across 156,000 wallets since launch in May 2021, with plans to integrate Soroban smart contracts for further decentralization.

SDF's Q3 2022 review highlights 7M+ Stellar accounts, 64M payments, and Sorobon smart contracts launching on FutureNet with a $100M adoption fund. Key ecosystem wins include USDC integrations across YRX, Ledger, and BitWage, plus the Anchor platform for streamlined integrations.

Danelle Dixon, CEO of Stellar Development Foundation, interviews Janet Foudy, Executive Chair of Deloitte US Board, discussing women's leadership in tech and web3, digital transformation, and authentic leadership. They explore Deloitte's decade-long involvement in blockchain and digital assets, governance challenges in web3 adoption, and how breaking cultural orthodoxies drives equity and inclusion.

Fabrice Deltrian, Head of Developer Ecosystem at Ledger, discusses how Ledger supports Stellar and other blockchains through open developer partnerships. Ledger recently added Stellar asset support to Ledger Live and is preparing for Soroban smart contracts integration.

DFS Lab and Stellar Development Foundation announced a virtual bootcamp (November 1-4) for Stellar Community Fund applicants, featuring design sprint methodology to rapidly prototype and validate financial products. Participants will work with mentors, community members, and Stellar engineers to move from problem definition to tested prototype in four days.

Donnell Dixon, CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation, testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee on the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, highlighting Stellar's real-world payment solutions like the MoneyGram-Circle-USDC service enabling cash-to-digital conversions for unbanked populations globally.

Panel discussion on succeeding in the Stellar Community Fund, featuring winners from previous rounds sharing strategies for application, community engagement, and product development.

Donnell Dixon, CEO of Stellar Development Foundation, interviews Seagal Mandelker, former US Treasury Undersecretary and current Ribbit Capital partner, discussing her career in public service, approach to crypto regulation, and transition to venture capital focused on fintech innovation.

CoinMe VP Sung Choi discusses how the company leverages Coinstar kiosks and physical locations to provide cash on and off ramps for crypto, with upcoming integrations for USDC on Stellar and expansion to 20,000+ ATM locations across the US.

Danelle Dixon of Stellar Development Foundation interviews Chad Cascarilla, CEO of Paxos, about building regulated crypto infrastructure, tokenized assets, stablecoins, and a pilot project for T-zero stock settlement using blockchain technology.