Stellar Ecosystem
News

The Stellar Newsletter highlights the 2023 roadmap emphasizing utility through tools like Stellar Aid Assist and Soroban smart contracts. It introduces the Stellar Asset Sandbox for easy testnet asset issuance, reviews Q4 2022 achievements, and announces Sorobanathon: Equinox. Additional updates cover TASCOMBANK's blockchain pilot in Ukraine, SDF's CFTC involvement, network growth milestones, and developer resources.

The Stellar Development Foundation launched Sorobanathon: Equinox, the next phase of its $100M Soroban Adoption Fund. Running from February 3 to April 1, developers can earn 25 to 10,000 XLM for submitting Soroban tools, tutorials, bug reports, and content.

This article explains why Stellar requires rigorous testing of blockchain upgrades before deployment to mainnet, and details how Stellar Supercluster—an automated testing framework—enables developers to validate code changes in simulated network environments.

Stellar introduces asset tokenization capabilities with the Stellar Asset Sandbox, a testnet tool by Cheesecake Labs that enables issuers to create, manage, and control assets using native protocol features like minting, burning, freezing, and clawback operations.

Stellar is introducing BucketListDB, a new unified storage mechanism that replaces its dual database system. The upgrade cuts disk usage by 45%, increases read speeds 400%, and halves validator startup time, preparing the network for Soroban's mainnet launch and continued growth.

Merkle Science, a Web3 risk and compliance platform, partnered with Stellar Development Foundation to bring its Compass transaction monitoring tool to the Stellar network, providing developers and operators with institutional-grade security and compliance solutions.

SDF launched the Anchor Platform at Meridian, a new product that reduces development time for fintechs integrating into Stellar by translating existing APIs into SEP-compliant interfaces. Bitso and Red Chapina are already using it for cross-border payments.

Soroban, Stellar's smart contracts platform, is now live on Futurenet. The SDF launched Sorobanathon: First Light, the first program under its $100M Soroban Adoption Fund, offering developers 250-3,000 XLM rewards for creating tutorials, code examples, and documentation.

Stellar Development Foundation announced Soroban, its native smart contracts platform, is now live on Futurenet testnet, alongside a $100M adoption fund to support developers building on the platform.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced a $100M Soroban Adoption Fund to support developers building on Soroban, its native smart contracts platform now live on Futurenet. The fund includes Sorobanathon: First Light, an incentive program rewarding developers for testing and providing feedback.

Soroban, Stellar's native smart contract platform, launched on Futurenet with a $100 million Adoption Fund from the Stellar Development Foundation. The platform emphasizes lower gas fees and consistent pricing through optimized contract design and a calibrated fee model.

Synced's development log details progress on new dashboards and bounty features, with ongoing experimentation with Stellar Soroban smart contracts. Key activities include merging dashboards into core, preparing for a Shenzhen innovation competition, and attending the Stellar Meridian conference. The log spans from early October to mid-November 2022.

Stellar Quest Learn launches Level Three with XLM rewards (up to 100 XLM total), introduces a Pioneer Quest for wallet onboarding, and removes wallet connection requirements to reduce friction for new users.

Stellar's developer documentation received a major overhaul with new structure, reorganized sections including a new Fundamentals and Concepts area, and an expanded Encyclopedia. The update aims to improve the developer experience with iterative improvements rolling out over coming months.

Stellar Development Foundation released the second preview of Soroban, its smart contracts platform, featuring built-in contracts, expanded metering, a new Auth SDK, and significant SDK/CLI improvements including new commands for local development and contract inspection.

Stellar Protocol 19 enables payment channels through CAP-21 and CAP-40, allowing off-chain transactions at 1.19 million payments per second while maintaining cryptographic security. Starlight demonstrates this capability with only three on-chain transactions needed regardless of channel activity.

The Stellar Development Foundation unveiled Soroban, a new smart contracts platform built on WebAssembly and Rust. The preview release lets developers write and test contracts locally, marking the SDF's first early-stage public preview and inviting community feedback.

Stellar network successfully upgraded to Protocol 19 on June 8, 2022, introducing new transaction preconditions and signer types that enable payment channels, blockchain bridges, and key recovery solutions.

Freighter 2.0, the Stellar browser wallet, now enables users to create, sign, and submit transactions directly from the extension, including trustline management and payments. The update features a refreshed UI built on the Stellar Design System and sets the foundation for future capabilities like asset swaps and claimable balance management.

Stellar Protocol 19 upgrade is scheduled for June 8, 2022. Node operators and developers must update Stellar Core, Horizon, and all SDKs before the network upgrade to avoid losing sync or breaking integrations.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced Project Jump Cannon will use WebAssembly (WASM) as its smart contract runtime. After evaluating EVM, Move, eBPF, and other options, the SDF chose WASM for its robust execution environment, thriving ecosystem, and alignment with Stellar's values of safety, scalability, and equitable access.

Stellar Quest is splitting into two components: Stellar Quest Learn, an evergreen educational platform launching today with five initial quests and NFT badges, and Stellar Quest Live for periodic competitive events. The redesign addresses community feedback about accessibility and consistent engagement.

Aquarius is upgrading its SDEX rewards engine from v1 to v2 following successful nine-day tests on seven Stellar markets. The v2 engine uses a more sophisticated formula considering offer size, duration, spread proximity, and fulfillment to better reward genuine liquidity providers. Testing showed reduced rewards for wash traders, more users receiving rewards, and significantly increased market liquidity.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced its 2022 roadmap, with smart contracts as the primary focus. SDF plans to research, develop, and collaborate with the community to implement smart contracts on Stellar while maintaining the network's core values of accessibility, security, and low fees.

Muxed accounts, a Stellar feature that maps a single address to multiple virtual accounts, are now live and available to all ecosystem products. All services must support sending to muxed accounts, while custodial services should implement them on the receive side to eliminate memo-related user errors.

Stellar Core v18.2.0 introduces a traffic-shaping feature to mitigate failed arbitrage bot transactions that have been bloating the ledger and increasing network fees. The feature allows validators to filter circular path payment transactions destined to fail while preserving healthy arbitrage activity.

Stellar Development Foundation introduces Starlight, a Layer 2 payment channel protocol achieving 1+ million payments per second while maintaining fast finality. The protocol leverages new Stellar protocol upgrades (CAP-21, CAP-40) and buffering techniques to enable high-throughput transactions between two participants.