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Stellar Protocol 25 (Project X-Ray) launches native ZK primitives including BN254 and Poseidon, enabling production-ready privacy infrastructure. Boundless verifier and NetherMind's Groth16 implementation are now live on Stellar Mainnet, allowing developers to build configurable, compliant privacy applications.

Stellar launches a zero-knowledge gaming hackathon running February 9-22 with a $10,000 XLM prize pool. Participants can use Stellar Game Studio, Risc Zero, and Noir to build on-chain games with zero-knowledge proofs on Stellar testnet.

Joaquín Farfán from Blessed UX demonstrates building smart contracts on Stellar's Soroban using OpenZeppelin libraries, showing how developers can create secure contracts without deep software engineering expertise.

A tutorial demonstrates building a rebasing token (RUSD) on the Stellar blockchain that accepts USDC deposits and automatically accrues yield by increasing holders' balances. The token uses a share-based system where added collateral, simulating yield from protocols like Blend, proportionally boosts all users' balances without needing to stake or interact further. Users can hold RUSD in their wallets and watch balances grow in real-time.

Stellar protocol discussion covering three CAPs: CAP-78 on improved DTL extension management for contracts, CAP-79 adding host functions for muxed address conversions, and CAP-77 proposing a protocol-level mechanism to freeze corrupted ledger entries during emergencies.

The Stellar Developer Meeting features the OpenSapplin team presenting Q4 2025 library releases: WAD for high-precision decimal arithmetic in Soroban smart contracts, fee abstraction for paying transaction fees with tokens like USDC instead of XLM, and the timelock module as the start of a governance package. These tools enhance developer experience, enable smart account functionality via relayers, and improve contract governance transparency and safety. The team highlights ongoing momentum and community adoption.

Educational overview of Stellar's mission to create accessible global finance, explaining the Stellar Consensus Protocol, anchors as fiat bridges, and introducing Soroban smart contracts with a practical crowdfunding example.

OpenZeppelin releases smart account libraries for Stellar smart contracts, enabling programmable authorization systems with context rules, signers, and policies. The demo showcases USDC payments, forex swaps, and multisig treasury operations.

A technical walkthrough of an auto-compounding USDC vault built on Stellar using Blend Protocol, OpenZeppelin vault libraries, and Comet DEX. The vault automatically claims BLND rewards, swaps them to USDC, and reinvests them for users.

Developer builds a selective disclosure KYC system using zero-knowledge proofs and BLS ring signatures on Stellar Soroban. Users can prove attributes like residency or age without revealing full identity, with credentials verified on-chain while personal data stays off-chain.

Joaquín Farfán leads a hands-on workshop deploying a smart contract on Stellar's testnet using Soroban and Rust, demonstrating how developers can build financial applications with real-world impact in Latin America.

At the Zama CoFHE Shop, the Stellar Development Foundation and Predicate discussed the emerging balance between privacy, compliance, and auditability on blockchains. SDF's Chief Product Officer Tomer argued that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to privacy. Instead, Stellar is building the cryptographic primitives so developers can layer whatever privacy solutions their use cases require. Predicate's head of business development emphasized that privacy and compliance evolve together, not sequentially. Key blockers to adoption include the lack of user-friendly products and regulatory uncertainty. SDF announced Protocol 25 X-Ray, bringing cryptographic building blocks (pairing-friendly elliptic curves, Poseidon hash functions) to Stellar, along with integrations for Noir, a zero-knowledge DSL, and RISC-Zero verifiers. SDF is collaborating with Nethermind on Stellar Private Payments, a privacy-preserving protocol based on Privacy Pools research, and shipping a confidential tokens implementation. The consensus: the cryptographic infrastructure is ready; the market needs better products and regulatory clarity.

Governance Futures finale explores neural quorum governance, a voting model that prevents plutocracy by weighting inputs (Discord tier, voting history, trust) and enabling group delegation. Discussion covers how community culture and long-term commitment define genuine ecosystems.

OpenZeppelin presents new Stellar smart contract libraries including a smart account framework for passkey-based authorization, an ERC-4626 compatible token vault, and real-world asset (RWA) contracts with identity and compliance modules.

Dock Protocol presents DOP Token Studio, a decentralized funding platform for Latin American infrastructure operators. The system tokenizes future revenue from projects like solar energy installations, enabling crowdfunded investment with smart contract-based revenue distribution and on-chain verification.

OpenZeppelin presents their managed Stellar Relayer service with a channels plugin for parallel transaction processing. The service enables gasless, high-throughput transactions on Stellar with automatic fee bumping and sequence number management.

Developer demonstrates a zero-knowledge login system built on Stellar using ring signatures and BLS12381 cryptography, enabling users to prove access rights without revealing identity.

Stellar's Chief Product Officer Tomer Weller discusses the blockchain's evolution from cross-border payments to a booming DeFi ecosystem with smart contracts. Key highlights include partnerships like MoneyGram for on/off-ramps, recent Meridian conference announcements such as PayPal USD on Stellar, and a strong focus on advancing privacy solutions using cutting-edge cryptography. Stellar emphasizes real-world utility, financial inclusion, and metrics like transaction velocity over TVL.

Pam and Willem from AHA Company introduce the Stellar Registry and Registry CLI, a package manager for Soroban smart contracts that enables human-readable naming, versioning, and simplified contract deployment and upgrades on Stellar.

CAP75 proposes adding two native host functions to Soroban for Poseidon and Poseidon 2 permutations, enabling efficient zero-knowledge proof operations on BLS and BN254 fields without expensive contract-side implementations.

OpenZeppelin's UI Builder tool for Stellar enables developers to quickly create interactive frontends for smart contracts on Stellar Mainnet and Testnet without extensive coding, featuring React components, form customization, and export capabilities.

Scaffold Stellar tutorial covering smart contract development on Stellar, including project setup, the guess-the-number contract walkthrough, and improvements like moving random number generation to the constructor and better error handling.

Developer shares updates on small.xyz, a generative AI music project on Stellar, including a modified Comet pool with dynamic fees to enable fair token distribution and a new mixtapes feature for batch collecting tracks.

Tutorial on creating and distributing tokens on Stellar using Merkle trees for efficient airdrop verification. Demonstrates building a token contract with claim functionality, using Soroban smart contracts and a React frontend.