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Argentina Builder Challenge concludes two-week virtual hackathon (Sept 12-27) with winners announced. 44 developers created 20 projects across Genesis (new ideas) and Scale (existing) tracks, with participants from Argentina, Peru, Mexico, and Costa Rica. Third-place winner: Changuito, an AI shopping assistant using Stellar smart contracts for USDC payments.

The Stellar Developers Meeting introduces Raven, an AI assistant for builders navigating the Stellar ecosystem. Kaan from SDF and Themes from Guava Global discuss how Raven helps with documentation, context, and checking what's already been built. The meeting covers Hack Meridian details: a two-track hackathon (Oct 25-26 in Lisbon) with workshops and mentorship, plus 20+ activation events across European cities.

Hack Meridian (Oct 25-26, Lisbon) is Stellar's two-day hackathon with mentorship, office hours, and prizes. Two tracks: Genesis for new builders with ideas, Scale for lifting existing projects. 20+ European regional events running now to prepare.

The Stellar Journey to Mastery program wrapped its initial 6-month run with a demo day showcasing 10+ builders who shipped live products to mainnet. The belt-based progression system, which scaled from 5,000 applicants to 4,849 active participants across 32 countries, proved extended support produces shipped goods—not abandoned hackathon projects.

Kaan shares his journey from law degree to Web3 developer advocate at Stellar Development Foundation. After years in legal practice, he discovered blockchain's pace was a better fit. Now at SDF following Risein bootcamp, he encourages others to make the transition.

Turkish blockchain educator Aybars discusses his career path from founding blockchain education initiatives to becoming a Stellar ambassador and AI identity builder. He shares insights on ecosystem support mechanisms and his vision for scaling AI agents in e-commerce on Stellar mainnet.

Fundable Live: weekly Spaces on web3 earnings. Covers Fundable Finance's payment/payroll/offramping platform, token opportunities on Robinhood chain, and Drip, a Stellar-based open-source contributor rewards program.

Educational guide for new builders joining the Stellar ecosystem. Explains the three pillars of Stellar (SDF, independent validators/developers, and global community), then focuses on the Stellar Community Fund—how it works as a grants program, evaluation criteria, and the step-by-step process for submitting projects and connecting with other builders.

Weekly show Onchain Africa interviews Koxy, co-founder of Choppaddi, a Stellar-based food and grocery delivery platform serving Africa. Discussion explores blockchain payments, creator economy infrastructure, and multi-currency transaction options for vendors and riders across West Africa.

Vietnamese team SEI Lab discusses Family Haven, a non-custodial wallet for families built on Soroban. The product addresses $7 billion in elderly asset losses through guardian protection and recovery features, deployed on testnet. Team won third prize at the APAC Hackathon.

Emin Kargöz (Kaptan), a developer from Turkey, traces his path into blockchain from initial curiosity about the technology to becoming an active Stellar ecosystem builder. Hackathons proved the turning point, offering deadline pressure and community that tutorials couldn't match. His project Subrosa, a privacy and coordination infrastructure on Stellar and Soroban, won the Build on Stellar hackathon in Istanbul. Now as a developer advocate, he mentors others.

Three developers from Kolkata transition from hackathon wins to shipping production. Sachindra, Shomadeep, and Orko discuss how mentorship, team collaboration, and obsessive focus on security move projects beyond demos to mainnet. Their lesson: solo builders often stall; teams that emphasize production-readiness from day one ship live products.

Philippine developers Carl (Velo), Mark (Treasure), and Armie share their Web3 onboarding journeys and APAC Hackathon experience in a Rise In Builder Spotlight. They discuss how community support, mentorship, and hands-on hackathons helped them shift from blockchain skepticism to building live projects on Stellar.

The APAC Stellar Hackathon Grand Finale brought 30 finalists from Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam to pitch projects across three tracks—local finance, DeFi, and payments—competing for $60,000 in prizes.

Pebriansyah went from crypto educator in Indonesia to founder of ORBIT Protocol on Stellar. He won three hackathons learning that go-to-market strategy matters as much as code, and now mentors hundreds of builders via webcoding.id.

Stellar Raven, an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, ensures AI agents have accurate Stellar knowledge. Introduced at the Stellar Developers Meeting, the tool aggregates documentation, ecosystem data, and verified sources to prevent LLM hallucination when building on Stellar.

GrantFox community call #2 provides a comprehensive walkthrough of the platform's open-source contribution workflow. Covers the maintainer side: project onboarding approval criteria, repository linking and campaign registration, and detailed issue creation. Also demonstrates the contributor experience: application system with tier metrics, reputation tracking, and a newly-requested withdrawal feature to prevent stalled applications from blocking slots.

Ahmed, an international climber and developer from Yemen, shares his journey into Web3 through Istanbul's Y2 Blockchain club and work at early-stage startups. Now at Synchronicity building AI-powered trading strategies, he advocates for hackathons over traditional job applications as the path to Web3 opportunities.

Milan, 20, is building orbitkit.fun, a CLI tool that lets developers scaffold entire Stellar apps with one command. Winner of Best AI Dev Tool at Stellar Build residency, the tool addresses a core friction point: new builders arriving at Stellar face doc-heavy onboarding. Currently at 7,200 users, Milan is also running a web agency doing $12k MRR while studying engineering and working full-time.

Three builders discuss how Stellar Light, Stellar Passport, and Lumen Loop work together to solve the ecosystem's core visibility problem: new developers struggle to find projects and prove their contributions. The three tools form a complementary stack addressing onboarding, participation tracking, and signal aggregation.

Piggy Wallet brings family finance to Stellar to solve inflation in high-growth markets. Parents set up USDC savings accounts where kids complete chores to earn money. Founders Sofia Vasquez (CEO) and Matias (CPO) discuss gamifying financial literacy, why family finance is more than fintech, and how B2B2C partnerships with schools could drive mainstream adoption.

Two Indian developers, Surya and Saindipal, discovered Web3 through Ryzen's Kolkata hackathon community and won an Aptos competition with ZeroMove, an IDE for smart contract deployment that scaled to 3,000+ monthly users. They're now building on Stellar.

Introduction to Stellar Journey to Mastery 2.0, a 7-level learning program for building on Stellar. Video covers dashboard access, program structure, idea submission requirements, and how to navigate the progression from beginner to master builder track.

GrantFox community call walks through the redesigned open-source contribution platform on Stellar. Founders showcase new UI updates, a dual-sided rating system for contributors and maintainers, and a flagging mechanism with strikes to maintain code quality.