DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
Stellar upgraded to Protocol 18, adding native AMM functionality to the blockchain. This enables liquidity pools for cross-currency payments without smart contracts or high gas fees, making Stellar one of the earliest Layer 1 blockchains with protocol-native AMMs.
YieldBlox, from the Script3 team, aims to address Stellar ecosystem challenges like poor capital efficiency and weak incentives by introducing money markets for lending and borrowing. It enables passive users to earn interest on deposits while active users leverage assets, boosting liquidity and productivity. Additionally, it provides fintech platforms with revenue models through yield delegation and staking incentives.
Protocol 18 upgrade vote on Nov 3rd will bring automated market maker (AMM) functionality to Stellar. SDF collaborated with ecosystem projects like Settle Network, Ultra Stellar, and Stellarport.io to ensure AMM features launch immediately upon validator approval, democratizing liquidity provision and enabling new financial services use cases.
YieldBlox announces updates to its YBX airdrop due to bot activity, introducing day-zero staking with a 10x multiplier for genuine users and staggering payouts over six weeks. The testnet beta saw over 472,000 YBX farmed, revealing key insights into user strategies and protocol improvements on Stellar. Upcoming changes include UX enhancements, smart contract fixes, and mainnet launch by late November.
Protocol 18 will introduce automated market makers (AMMs) to Stellar through deep protocol integration. The article explores the design decisions behind AMMs, including how they leverage existing path payment operations to avoid coordination problems and provide seamless liquidity routing for developers.
Aquarius shares a progress update on their Stellar-based project, highlighting a successful airdrop using claimable balances that reached 272,980 wallets with over 918 million AQUA claimed. They've developed a Rewards Engine and Voting Tool to boost liquidity on the Stellar DEX (SDEX), with testing starting soon and community voting to follow. The protocol will integrate with upcoming AMMs, advancing their roadmap ahead of schedule.
The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q3 2021 report highlighting Protocol 18 AMM upgrade preparations, a $40 million investment in Tala for digital banking, new payment corridors in Europe-Philippines and Latin America, and Canadian stablecoin VCAD launch by VersaBank and Stablecorp.
Stellar Protocol 18 introduces breaking changes including Automated Market Makers (AMMs) and liquidity pools. Developers and node operators must upgrade Stellar Core, Horizon, and all SDKs before the November 3, 2021 upgrade vote to ensure compatibility.
This article explains liquidity pools on the Stellar network, introduced in Protocol 18. It covers how constant product price curves work, how they integrate with path payments to improve trading efficiency, and their potential for future evolution.
Answerly closes SCF panel voting with milestones from three years of self-funded operation: a community of 50,000 members, 20,000 active users, and token listings on five major exchanges. Founders Raza Rizvi and Zain Haider seek SCF support to accelerate Stellar DEX integration and build partnerships across the Stellar ecosystem.
Stellar Development Foundation shares how the ecosystem accelerated Automated Market Maker (AMM) development for Protocol 18 by involving developers early with API specs, mock environments, and Futurenet testing, enabling simultaneous product launches upon network upgrade in November.
This article provides a deep dive into the tokenomics of YBX, the platform token for YieldBlox, a decentralized money market protocol on the Stellar blockchain. It outlines five growth-positive utilities including staking, governance, lending/borrowing incentives, and future AMM integration, designed to bootstrap growth for both YieldBlox and the Stellar ecosystem. The model emphasizes cooperative strategies for maximum value accrual through fee redistribution and reduced sell pressure.
The article details the YBX airdrop for YieldBlox, a DeFi protocol on the Stellar blockchain, with 10 million YBX tokens distributed across three airdrops targeting community members, beta testers, and Stellar ecosystem users. Participants must meet Stellar account age requirements and set up a YBX trustline. Additional incentives include ScripTee NFT distributions for educational content and community engagement.
THORWallet now supports Stellar asset management with single and multisig wallets, enabling XLM and USDC swaps on mobile. The integration includes Blend protocol access for yield generation, bringing institutional-grade DeFi security to Stellar.
Project Venus is a DeFi protocol on Stellar using Turing Signing Servers (TSS) to enable trustless smart contracts without an on-chain VM. It implements short-term FX forwards to improve capital efficiency for Stellar-based financial institutions like remittance companies. TSS leverages off-chain servers (turrets) combined with Stellar's multi-sig for efficient DeFi.
SDF released its Q2 2021 report highlighting network growth, two protocol upgrades, $18M in Enterprise Fund investments, and the approval of Automated Market Makers for Protocol 18. The network demonstrated resilience after a temporary validator outage in April.
Stellar Protocol 18 proposal to add automated market makers (AMMs) was approved for implementation on June 25, 2021. AMMs will provide an alternative liquidity source alongside the existing order book exchange, enabling easier participation in market making and improving cross-asset payment efficiency.
Stellar Community Fund seed round №1 concluded with 8 projects receiving 5M XLM in grants. Winners include COINQVEST, Anclap, OptionBlox/YieldBlox, Task.io, Litemint, Leaf Global Fintech, Mojoflower, and Blocknify. Two additional rounds planned for 2021 with process improvements including Discord migration and budget requests.
The Stellar Community Fund announced its first Seed Round finalists: LITEMINT, a gaming platform with NFT marketplace on Stellar, and Script3's OptionBlox and YieldBlox, DeFi protocols for derivatives and lending. Voting begins April 26.
This article explains the Stellar DEX pricing limitation for indivisible NFT tokens due to INT32 constraints and presents Litemint's solution using synthetic assets and path payments. It details how small stroop amounts cause offer price overflows and demonstrates a workaround for high-value NFT trades. The post includes JavaScript code examples for implementing bids and offers that automatically handle the limitation.
Ultra Stellar LLC acquired StellarX, a popular decentralized exchange on Stellar, expanding its product portfolio alongside LOBSTR wallet and StellarTerm. StellarX enables peer-to-peer trading of digital assets and fiat conversions directly from user wallets.
StellarTerm announces major updates including a redesigned onboarding process, renewed Send form with SEP-0029 support, full Deposit/Withdraw functionality via SEP-0024, improved trading interface, desktop builds, hardware wallet support, and a new Help Center.
Kelp GUI v1.9.0 pre-release is now available, bringing a user-friendly interface to the open-source Stellar trading bot. The GUI eliminates the need for command-line configuration, offering bot management, real-time balances, and access to 100+ exchanges on testnet.
StellarTerm is an open-source trading client for the Stellar Decentralized Exchange (SDEX) with local key storage for enhanced security. It offers instant login via secret key, Ledger hardware wallet support, multisig accounts, and advanced trading features like real-time charts and notifications. Desktop apps are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Gauntlet announced partnerships with Stellar, Celo, and Compound to provide consulting and stress-testing services. The firm will help Stellar prevent network disruptions, assist Compound with market risk modeling, and support Celo's stablecoin stability mechanisms.
Stellar's Decentralized Exchange faces a liquidity problem that market makers can solve. The SDF built Kelp, a free open-source trading bot in Golang that automates market-making strategies on Stellar's DEX and centralized exchanges, with v1.7.1 now available.
Stellar Protocol 11 upgrade introduces three major improvements: better transaction pricing using VCG auctions, increased network capacity through operations-per-ledger limits, and new buy offer operations for clearer market ordering.
Coinsquare acquired StellarX, a Stellar-native decentralized exchange, and will rebrand its previously acquired BlockEQ wallet as StellarX's anchor wallet. StellarX will operate as a Bermuda-based subsidiary while continuing development under its own brand.
Celsius Network, a crypto lending platform, partnered with Lightyear.io to offer borrowing and lending services for Stellar-based projects and ICOs. Celsius will add Stellar Lumens support to its wallet and enable interest-earning on Stellar tokens.
Stellar's 2018 roadmap focuses on two main goals: launching SDEX, a world-class decentralized exchange front-end for on-chain token trading, and integrating the Lightning Network to improve scalability and privacy. The foundation also plans ecosystem improvements including better documentation and developer tools.
