Stellar Ecosystem
News

The Stellar Development Foundation invested $5 million in Abra, a crypto wallet service, to integrate Stellar's blockchain into Abra's payment and investment products. The partnership aims to expand financial services on Stellar and improve access to on and off ramps for traditional finance.

The Stellar Foundation partnered with blockchain forensics firm Elliptic to help Stellar-based businesses screen transactions for money laundering, sanctions, and compliance risks. The service is optional for businesses; XLM wallet users won't be automatically surveilled. Stellar argues regulatory compliance and privacy can coexist.

The Stellar Development Foundation will present at Consensus: Distributed 2020, sharing updates on network growth, strategic investments, and ecosystem success stories focused on interoperability and financial inclusion.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced a 2.5M XLM donation-matching program for April in partnership with Lumenthropy, supporting six charities including UNICEF, The Tor Project, and Watsi. The SDF will provide initial 100,000 XLM donations to each organization and match community contributions weekly.

Nodle, an IoT platform that processed ~1M daily microtransactions on Stellar, is migrating to Polkadot's Substrate network to build its own blockchain called Arcadia. The team cited need for custom blockchain functions beyond Stellar's capabilities, though plans a future bridge between the networks.

The Stellar Development Foundation joined the Blockchain Association, a crypto industry lobbying group, to advocate for favorable blockchain regulation and policy with US policymakers and Congress.

The Stellar Development Foundation joined the Blockchain Association to advocate for smart regulatory policy and help policymakers understand blockchain's potential to enhance the financial system and promote equitable access.

Bank von der Heydt, a 270-year-old Munich bank, partnered with Bitbond to tokenize securities on Stellar and issue a euro stablecoin for institutional private placements, launching a production version in April.

The Stellar Winter Roundup 2019 recaps key achievements and events from December through October, including ecosystem expansion, the Meridian conference, lumen distribution updates, and new partnerships. Highlights feature SDF's new mandate, Horizon and Core releases, Stellar Community Fund voting, and integrations like Travala.com and BitGo support for XLM. It also announces new hires and job opportunities at SDF.

Stellar Development Foundation reflects on 2019 achievements: team grew from 11 to 56 employees, Stellar accounts doubled to 4.1M, protocol upgrades improved capacity and fairness, and ecosystem matured with stronger validator infrastructure and real use cases like AnchorUSD.

Keybase ended its Stellar Lumens airdrop after just 90 days due to spam attacks. The messaging platform received 2 billion XLM tokens to distribute over 20 months, but spam bots forced early termination with only 300 million XLM distributed instead.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced a major strategic pivot at Meridian 2019, burning 55.5 billion lumens and reducing its total allocation from 105 billion to 50 billion. SDF is shifting from broad giveaway programs to focused investments in direct development, ecosystem infrastructure, use-case development, and targeted user acquisition.

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.

The Stellar Monthly Roundup for September 2019 covers ecosystem updates including collaborations, AMAs, new hires at SDF, developer releases, community fund proposals, and ecosystem projects like Cowrie Systems and Bitbond. Highlights include the upcoming Meridian conference in Mexico City and a proposal to disable inflation. New features on stellarbeat.io and protocol upgrades prepare the network for future improvements.

Coinbase expanded XLM and LINK trading to New York residents after regulatory approval. Both tokens were previously unavailable in the state due to strict financial regulations, but are now accessible alongside other US jurisdictions.

Binance.US announced it will support Stellar alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and other cryptocurrencies at launch, with five additional assets including Stellar becoming available for deposits shortly after.

StellarX outlines how Anchors bridge fiat and crypto assets to the Stellar network, enabling faster, cheaper cross-border payments. Path payments let users send any asset and have it automatically convert to the recipient's preferred currency.

Mike Kennedy, creator of Zelle, became CEO of Interstellar, a Stellar-based blockchain payment platform competing with Ripple and Swift. Interstellar is crypto-agnostic and aims to enable faster, cheaper cross-border payments for banks without correspondent banking networks.

Stellar Development Foundation and Keybase announced a 2 billion XLM airdrop worth roughly $120 million, distributing 100 million XLM monthly to Keybase's 300,000 active users over 20 months. The partnership aims to introduce cryptocurrency to non-crypto-native users through an existing messaging platform.

Stellar, Ethereum, Tezos, Oasis, and NEAR foundations partnered with IDEO CoLab and CoinList on a hackathon running Aug 5-Sept 22 focused on building user-friendly blockchain applications. Teams compete to simplify crypto UX and drive mainstream adoption, with prizes up to $10,000.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced Stellar Meridian, its first sponsored conference, taking place November 4-5, 2019 in Mexico City. The event will bring together developers, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem projects to discuss financial inclusion, regulation, and Stellar's role in the future of finance.

IBM's global blockchain head Jesse Lund has departed the company. Lund led IBM's Stellar-based World Wire payment network, which connected six banks across 72 countries. Stellar co-founder Jed McCaleb said the departure won't impact the platform.