Watch + listen

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ARF, a Swiss-regulated settlement banking platform, discusses its use of Stellar for B2B financing and short-term liquidity provision. The company has processed over 300 million in on-chain traffic in seven months and is expanding into DeFi protocols like Blend and Huma to offer receivables-based lending.

SDF Q2 2023 quarterly review covering Soroban smart contracts platform progress toward mainnet launch, MoneyGram access milestone reaching one year, Franklin Templeton's on-chain money fund surpassing $270M AUM, and ecosystem growth with 70+ projects building on Soroban.

SDF hosted the Stellar Community Fund 12 project pitch event featuring 10 Soroban and Stellar ecosystem projects presenting their proof of intent deliverables, including developer tools, DeFi protocols, infrastructure, and financial inclusion applications.

Lightecho is a crypto exchange rate search engine that helps traders find the best prices across decentralized, centralized, and instant exchanges for pairs like XLM, XRP, and stablecoins, emphasizing self-custody and security.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Torsten Stuber, CTO of SatoshiPay and Pendulum, discusses building Pendulum as a standalone blockchain with smart contracts and Spacewalk, a decentralized bridge connecting Stellar to Polkadot parachains. The bridge uses collateralization to ensure security and launches on Kusama in Q3 2024.

Louisa from Stellar Development Foundation's BD partnerships team discusses key ecosystem partnerships including Coinbase, Fireblocks, and OKCoin, and explains the strategy to expand Stellar's utility beyond payments into DeFi and tokenized assets.

Justin Rice, head of ecosystems at SDF, discusses Stellar's protocol upgrade process, recent features like asset clawback and AMMs, and upcoming changes including payment channels and dynamic fee management at South by Southwest.

Stellar Open Protocol meeting discussing CAP 42 (multi-part transaction sets) and CAP 44 (SpeedX configuration). CAP 42 is ready for committee vote; CAP 44 requires further work on asset selection governance and validator responsibilities.

Script3 discusses building YieldBlocks, a money market protocol on Stellar using Stellar Turrets for off-chain smart contract execution. The team explains their journey from options trading to recognizing the need for liquidity infrastructure, and how Turrets enable DeFi applications on Stellar.

Stellar Development Foundation held an open protocol discussion covering CAP 21 and CAP 40 approvals moving to final comment period, revised CAP 42 on multi-part transaction sets with validator fee control, and initial discussion of CAP 44 on SpeedX configuration for a decentralized exchange.

SDF Q4 2021 recap: 10 new anchors joined Stellar, Enterprise Fund invested $80.25M in 8 companies, Stellar Community Fund awarded $4M to 31 winners. Network processed 2B+ operations in 2021, payments grew 211% YoY. Protocol 18 enabled AMMs; MoneyGram pilot launched; smart contracts coming in 2022.

Jeff Ramsire presents SpeedX, a scalable batch-based DEX design that eliminates front-running, optimizes liquidity across asset pairs, and enables parallelizable transaction processing. The system could integrate into Stellar to support efficient cross-border payments at scale.

SatoshiPay's Torsten presents Pendulum, a blockchain connecting fiat to DeFi via Stellar. Pendulum brings smart contracts to Stellar, enabling AMMs, yield farming, and cross-chain asset transfers between Stellar and Pendulum.