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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.

Scaffold Stellar by AHA Labs is a Rust-based development framework that provides a complete boilerplate for building Soroban smart contracts with pre-integrated frontend wallet support, enabling developers to initialize projects, deploy contracts, and iterate in real-time.

Tutorial on building a custom stablecoin on Soroban using OpenZeppelin contracts. The creator demonstrates how to create a SEP41 token called JUSD that accepts USDC deposits and mints a corresponding stablecoin in a 1:1 ratio, using a new online IDE.

Sertora presents Sunbeam, a formal verification tool for Soroban smart contracts that uses SMT solvers to mathematically prove code correctness against specifications written in Rust, enabling developers to catch bugs early in the development cycle.

Tutorial on using OpenZeppelin's Monitor software to track USDC transfers on the Stellar network and send real-time notifications to Telegram. Covers setup, configuration, contract interaction, and bot integration.

Tutorial on creating and deploying an NFT smart contract on Stellar's Soroban network using OpenZeppelin libraries, including contract modifications, metadata creation, and testnet deployment.

Chad and Feefo from Aha Labs discuss Scaffold Stellar, a developer framework designed to lower the barrier to entry for building on Stellar. The tool automates smart contract deployment, generates TypeScript bindings, and uses React with Vite for frontend development.

Jane from SDF and Chad from Aha Labs discuss Scaffold Stellar, a developer onboarding tool inspired by Scaffold ETH. Aha Labs is building it to help developers quickly set up local networks, deploy contracts, and create UIs, with an early version available by end of May 2025.

Stellar developers discuss launching an idea bank to help builders discover needed projects and coordinate ecosystem development. The initiative aims to guide hackathon participants and identify gaps in the Stellar and Soroban ecosystem.

Karsten Jacobsen from Stellar Development Foundation walks through the Guestbook demo DAP, a complete example built on Stellar using smart contracts, TypeScript bindings, and passkey authentication for wallet-less user signup and login.

Penfield (Tupuy) discusses Tansu, a decentralized platform built on Soroban that brings transparency and community governance to open source projects by storing commit hashes on-chain, enabling DAOs per project, and implementing anonymous voting.

Educational overview of Stellar anchors, their four main types, and the Stellar Anchor Platform. Covers how anchors bridge traditional finance and digital assets, with practical deployment via Docker and MoneyGram as a real-world use case.

StellarQuest bootcamp walkthrough covering wallet setup with Albedo, account creation on Stellar testnet, and payment transactions using Stellar Lab. Participants earned NFTs by completing each mission step.

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.

Stellar DevX team showcased new Stellar Lab features for smart contracts, including contract explorer, storage management, and an upcoming invoke contract UI. OpenZeppelin presented a new upgradeable smart contract standard (SAP) for Soroban.

Developer builds AI-powered MCP (Model Context Protocol) server on Cloudflare that dynamically exposes Stellar smart contract interfaces to LLMs, enabling voice-controlled token deployment and contract interaction without manual signing or XLM management.

Garen Tyson from SDF explains state archival, Stellar's solution to blockchain state bloat. The protocol uses rent-based storage fees and Merkle proofs to archive inactive entries, reducing validator costs while maintaining security and user experience through RPC abstraction.

Nick Neumann demonstrates building remote MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers on Cloudflare to enable AI models like Claude to interact with Stellar smart contracts dynamically, including deploying tokens and managing transactions through smart wallets without storing secret keys.

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.

A deep dive into Kale, a proof-of-teamwork mining token on Stellar that uses hash mining, staking, and time gaps to distribute rewards. The speaker demonstrates how invocation counts have grown dramatically post-launch, discusses technical challenges like failed transactions and surge pricing, and shows how to set up a Kale farmer on a Raspberry Pi.

Tutorial on setting up and configuring a C++ GPU/CPU miner for the Kale protocol, covering compilation, build options, configuration settings, and farming strategies.

OpenZeppelin announces a two-year partnership with Stellar to improve developer experience through Soroban contract libraries, the OpenZeppelin Wizard for Stellar, and developer tooling including relayers, monitors, and code analysis.

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.

OpenZeppelin's contract wizard now integrates Stellar contracts, enabling Soroban developers to generate smart contract code through a simple point-and-click interface. This integration marks a major milestone for developer tooling in the Stellar ecosystem.