Stellar Ecosystem
News

Stellar Mainnet upgraded to Protocol 20 on February 20, enabling smart contract functionality through Soroban. This guide provides developers and businesses with upgrade instructions for SDKs, infrastructure, and related software to ensure compatibility.

This article provides a comprehensive overview of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and its implementation on the Stellar blockchain. It explains DeFi's core components—including blockchain, smart contracts, DEXs, and liquidity pools—and highlights how Soroban, Stellar's native smart contracts platform, enables developers to build DeFi applications with access to real-world financial rails.

A comprehensive tutorial on migrating smart contracts from Ethereum's Solidity to Soroban's Rust SDK, comparing the two languages and providing step-by-step examples of building a 'Hello World' contract in both environments.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q4 2023 quarterly report highlighting major ecosystem achievements including Protocol 20 support, Soroban mainnet rollout, $4M in SCF funding to 88 projects, and over $2M in humanitarian aid disbursed via the Stellar Disbursement Platform.

Stellar network validators postponed the Protocol 20 upgrade vote due to a bug discovered in Stellar Core v20.1.0. The SDF has outlined a new timeline with a bug fix release on February 2, testnet reset on February 6, and a target Protocol 20 upgrade vote on February 20.

Stellar Development Foundation delayed its Protocol 20 upgrade beyond Jan. 30 after discovering a bug in Soroban smart contracts software. Six of seven tier-1 validators signaled support for postponement, likely preventing the upgrade from reaching quorum.

The Stellar Development Foundation has decided to disarm its validators and postpone the Protocol 20 upgrade scheduled for January 30, 2024, following ecosystem concerns about a discovered bug in Stellar Core v20.1.0 affecting fee bumps for Soroban transactions.

The Stellar Development Foundation disclosed a bug in Stellar Core v20.1.0 affecting fee-bumped Soroban transactions, where refunds are incorrectly sent to the sponsored account instead of the sponsor. SDF decided to proceed with the Protocol 20 upgrade vote on January 30 as planned, citing low risk during early Soroban phases and the availability of mitigation best practices.

This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide to deploying a Soroban RPC server on DigitalOcean Kubernetes using Stellar Development Foundation Helm charts. It covers cluster creation, Helm repository setup, configuration for testnet, Nginx Ingress installation, DNS setup, and verification. Benefits include improved reliability, control, and performance for Stellar smart contract interactions.

Blend, a permissionless on-chain lending protocol, has launched on Stellar Testnet. Users can now test lending, borrowing, and backstopping features using browser wallets like Freighter. The protocol offers high capital efficiency, flexible pools, and risk mitigations for the Stellar DeFi ecosystem.

Eiger, a Rust-focused web3 engineering firm, published its first newsletter showcasing two years of growth to 40 people, recent blog posts on Soroban tooling (Nebula), privacy protocols, and partnerships with Fireblocks, plus updates on partner projects like Elusiv's private swaps on Solana.

Aquarius announces updates and 2024 plans for building AMMs on Stellar using Soroban smart contracts. They've developed CPMM and StableSwap models inspired by Uniswap and Curve, with AQUA rewards for liquidity providers. A new UI and integrations are planned post-Soroban mainnet launch on January 30, 2024.

Stellar Development Foundation announced Protocol 20 upgrade with Soroban smart contracts, scheduled for January 30 validator vote on Mainnet. The network will roll out smart contract functionality in three phased stages to ensure stability and performance.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced Protocol 20, which brings Soroban smart contracts to Stellar. The network will adopt a phased rollout approach to gradually increase smart contract capacity while monitoring network stability and performance.

Dropzey is a new platform revolutionizing airdrops on the Stellar blockchain. It leverages Stellar's Soroban smart contracts to automate eligibility verification, streamline token distributions, and enhance engagement for creators and participants. The platform addresses traditional airdrop challenges like verification complexities and limited visibility.

Stellar Community Fund launches SCF 5.0 with Neural Quorum Governance, a reputation-based voting mechanism built on Soroban. The fund deployed $10M to 130+ projects in 2023 and introduces streamlined Activation and Community Awards up to $50K and $100K respectively.

The Stellar Community Fund has distributed over $10M in XLM to 130+ projects across 10 review rounds and is scaling up funding by five times. The article provides eight key guidelines for submitting successful SCF proposals, emphasizing ecosystem impact, clear deliverables, and deep Stellar/Soroban integration.

RPCiege: Siege 5, Space Continuum launches December 4th with four Soroban smart contract challenges focused on state archival. Players can earn NFT cards and XLM rewards (up to 500 XLM for first place on each skirmish).

The Stellar Development Foundation announced the winners of Sorobanathon: Road to Mainnet, a month-long virtual hackathon held September-October 2023. Four projects were awarded: Cowchain Farm (gaming), Divify (expense management), Kwickbit & Paltalabs (compliance), and Soro-Shark (tokenization), with SDF planning additional hackathons for 2024.

The Stellar Development Foundation submitted a comprehensive response to the French financial regulator AMF's DeFi discussion paper, advocating for regulatory frameworks that balance innovation with consumer protection through open source technology and decentralization principles.

Stellar's Protocol 20 upgrade, which enables Soroban smart contracts on Mainnet, is approaching a validator vote. The upgrade implements 12 Core Advancement Proposals and unlocks new possibilities for developers while maintaining Stellar's existing capabilities.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) has launched its fifth iteration with major upgrades including Neural Quorum Governance, a new reputation-based voting mechanism built on Soroban, and a redesigned website with improved transparency and user experience. The updated award structure now offers Activation Awards (up to $50K) for new projects and Community Awards (up to $100K) for continued development.

RPCiege: Axe & Ember is a text-based adventure game built on Soroban smart contracts. Getting started guides show how to play via Gitpod, GitHub Codespaces, or local CLI setup, with NFT rewards available for players who connect a Stellar wallet.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q3 2023 report highlighting major progress on its roadmap, including Soroban's advancement toward Mainnet launch, security partnerships with Certora, enhancements to the Anchor Platform and Wallet SDK, and significant ecosystem milestones like Circle's EURC stablecoin launch and MoneyGram's planned wallet integration.