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A guide to earning money on Stellar through DeFi platforms including Aquarius liquidity rewards, Blend Capital lending, Dogster prediction league, and Phoenix DeFi hub, with the creator sharing personal earnings of 10% monthly APY from Aquarius.

Stellar ecosystem recap from Istanbul covering Berlin Blockchain Week, the Istanbul hackathon with 67 submissions, Beans Earn integration with Blend, DeFi Index launch, Scaffold Stellar updates, and upcoming Hack Meridian in Rio de Janeiro with 50K in prizes.

Orbit CDP is a decentralized stablecoin protocol built on Stellar's Blend that lets users mint collateralized stablecoins for any currency with a price feed, from Mexican pesos to Brazilian reals. The team is launching with blind pay integration for zero-fee on/off-ramping and building Hermes, a perpetual exchange for FX trading.

Dogstar is a DeFi learning platform built on Stellar that lets users practice trading and earn rewards risk-free through the Dogstar League competitive game, featuring a non-custodial wallet, decentralized exchange, and liquidity pools.

Toma Weller, CPO at Stellar Development Foundation, discusses how Stellar powers real-world finance through native cash-to-DeFi experiences, institutional partnerships like MoneyGram, and the launch of Soroban smart contracts platform with focus on security, developer experience, and privacy solutions.

Developer tutorial demonstrating how to build a web-based wallet using the Stellar SDK and integrate it with Blend Capital smart contracts to enable users to deposit funds and earn yield on their holdings.

Stellar Development Foundation Q1 2025 webinar covering three growth goals: top 10 DeFi by TVL, top 10 monthly active addresses, and 10x increase in yield-bearing RWAs. RWA supply reached $757M with $472M in yield-bearing assets; $3.4B in RWA payments processed. Protocol 23 upgrades targeting 5,000 TPS and 2.5-second block times launching soon.

Esteban from Palta Labs discusses SorosWap's DeFi Index product, wallet integrations, and crypto adoption across South America, highlighting Brazil's advanced fintech infrastructure and the potential for blockchain-based financial services.

Axel, an AI-powered automation platform, discusses its journey from hackathon project to A16Z-backed startup, its expansion onto Stellar through the Kickstarter program, and plans to bring verifiable agent-powered automations for yield and portfolio management to underserved users.

Carlos from Flipside discusses how on-chain analytics and data curation drive blockchain ecosystem growth, focusing on metrics like TVL, user engagement scores, and protocol differentiation to help communities understand and optimize their on-chain activity.

Palta Labs presented ZoroSwap, a decentralized exchange (AMM) built on Stellar's Soroban, demonstrating token swaps, liquidity pools, and smart contract architecture. The team discussed DeFi opportunities on Stellar and answered questions about integration, wallet support, and yield strategies.

Paltalabs team presents DeFi products built on Stellar, including ZoroSwap DEX and Defindex protocol, while discussing blockchain fundamentals, developer opportunities through Stellar Community Fund grants up to $150k, and real-world applications like music tokenization via SkyHits.

Equitex, a DeFi platform built on Stellar, is running a testnet airdrop campaign with three completion levels. Users can earn XP points through social tasks like Twitter engagement to qualify for rewards, with less competition than typical airdrops.

Tomer from the Stellar Development Foundation discusses how Stellar's new smart contracts VM enables a DeFi ecosystem that bridges traditional finance and crypto, emphasizing financial inclusion, developer security support, and bottom-up innovation over waiting for institutional adoption.

Stellar Development Foundation leaders discuss Soroban smart contracts, the anchor network with MoneyGram integration, DeFi ecosystem growth, and the Stellar Community Fund's grant program. Runtime Verification auditors highlight the quality of Soroban's Rust codebase and unique design features like state archival and batteries-included developer experience.

Orbit Lens presented Stellar Broker, a multi-source liquidity swap router addressing fragmented liquidity across classic Stellar and Soroban protocols, plus updates to Stellar Expert's smart contract analysis and transaction tracking features.

Blend Capital hosted a developer meeting showcasing Blend V2 security initiatives, including a $125,000 USDC competitive audit and formal verification competition. The first-ever open security competition in the Stellar ecosystem runs through March 17th, inviting developers to find bugs and write formal verification rules.

Ada Vaughan from Stellar Development Foundation discusses DeFi's real-world impact, highlighting practical use cases like supply chain financing and emerging market lending while acknowledging gaps between crypto enthusiasm and mainstream adoption.

Orbitlands presented Reflector, a decentralized oracle protocol for Stellar DeFi providing free on-chain price feeds updated every 5 minutes plus premium subscriptions with custom triggers. The team also showcased Refractor, a multisig transaction aggregator tool for DAO management and secure custody operations.

Hoops Finance presented major UI overhaul and new features at Stellar dev meeting, including risk analytics dashboard, API with AI endpoints, and smart savings account contracts using Soroban for automated liquidity management.

Herbal Karman from Huma and Tomer Weller from Stellar discuss PayFi, a new financial sector combining payment financing with blockchain. They cover the $2.8B in PayFi transactions, the six-layer OpenPayFi stack, and how Stellar's infrastructure powers real-world payment solutions globally.

Phoenix DeFi Hub completes Phase 1 on Soroban with live swap and LP functionality. The team is now applying for Phase 2 funding to add routing APIs, fiat onramps via Kato, SubQuery integration, and a public data API for the Stellar ecosystem.

Balanced, a cross-chain DEX and stablecoin protocol, has launched on Stellar. The platform enables swaps across 12 blockchains, minting of the BNUSD stablecoin backed by 18+ assets, and borrowing at 2% annual rates with savings yields over 15%.

Tomer, head of product at Stellar, discusses 2025 as the year of adoption where TradFi meets DeFi. He highlights Stellar's focus on real-world utility, the launch of Soroban smart contracts, and the intersection of DeFi with cash access through interoperable on and off ramps.