DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
A 2019 blog post explaining Stellar's Surge Pricing mechanism during a period of high network congestion. The post clarifies that the network is functioning as designed, describes how fees work during peak activity, and outlines SDF's scaling efforts.
Jed McCaleb, creator of Stellar, discusses the project's 2018 emergence as a mature blockchain platform after years of obscurity, highlighting partnerships with IBM and Blockchain.com, the Chain acquisition, and his vision for Stellar as a payments protocol connecting financial institutions.
SDF announces the Stellar Developer Program, replacing the Build Challenge format with monthly funding for long-term projects, plus new wallet guidelines and a developer mailing list to improve ecosystem collaboration.
Stellar Development Foundation announces three major lumen distribution initiatives: the Stellar Community Fund for community-voted grants, updates to the Partnership Grant Program which has funded 34 companies, and launch of an Academic Research Program for blockchain research.
The 7th Stellar Build Challenge concluded with 107 submissions and 3.52M lumens in total awards. StellarGuard and dotnet-stellar-sdk contributions won top honors, with 53 projects receiving recognition across multiple categories including wallets, SDKs, tutorials, and trading applications.
Stellar Build Challenge 7 launches with two submission routes: contributing to open-source Stellar projects or building one of four new cornerstone apps (quorum explorer, trade bot maker, social trading, peer-to-peer wallet). Submissions open June 1st with awards based on merit.
The 6th Stellar Build Challenge concluded with record submissions and a 5x prize pool increase to 2.7M XLM. Winners include Soneso's iOS SDK, Stellarport.io exchange, and Python SDK documentation improvements, with 113 total projects receiving awards.
Stellar Development Foundation released a formal specification for adopting Lightning Network technology to improve transaction scalability. The roadmap targets testnet launch by April 1 and production implementation by autumn, addressing demands from partners like Kik and IBM.
Mobius Network raised $39 million in an ICO on Stellar, hitting its hard cap in just two hours. The startup chose Stellar over Ethereum due to speed, cost, and security concerns, positioning itself to make crypto integration easy for traditional tech companies.
Stellar's 2017 year-in-review highlights 128 merged pull requests, smart contract functionality, IBM partnership with 12 currency corridors, and growing ICO adoption including Mobius and Smartlands. The foundation emphasizes that Stellar's proven performance metrics (1000 ops/sec, 4.96s settlement) position it as a leading global payment protocol.
Lightyear.io counsel Em Lindsay clarifies three common misconceptions about ICO legal compliance: utility tokens can still be securities, the Howey test isn't the only framework courts use, and regulatory compliance extends beyond securities law to taxes, consumer protection, and AML requirements.
Stellar offers a superior platform for ICOs compared to Ethereum, featuring built-in token issuance, a decentralized exchange, lower fees, faster transactions, and enhanced security for projects that don't require complex smart contracts.
Tutorial on issuing custom tokens on Stellar, demonstrating how to create, distribute, and manage tokens like the example HUG token with fixed supply and built-in exchange capabilities.
Stellar Development Foundation announced the creation of Lightyear.io, a for-profit company to handle partnerships, integrations, and commercial services, while SDF refocuses on protocol development and governance as a neutral non-profit steward of the Stellar network.
Stellar.org announced the Stellar Build Challenge, a grant program offering awards across four categories: Anchors, Applications, Exchanges, and First-Time Submissions. Winners will be announced October 1, 2016, with funding from unclaimed lumens.
Stellar Core has been upgraded with significant code improvements, now 50% smaller and faster while maintaining security through the Stellar Consensus Protocol. Developers can upgrade their accounts and begin building financial services on the improved network.
Stellar Development Foundation released an upgraded distributed network codebase with improved security, scalability, and modularity. The new version introduces batching operations and multisignature accounts, enabling developers to build financial services like crowdfunding without scripting.
Stellar network upgrade launching in November will rebrand stellars to lumens and require user account upgrades. The nine-month development effort delivers a safe, scalable, and accessible network for global financial services.
Stellar celebrated its first anniversary, growing from two cofounders to a 16-person team while launching the Stellar Consensus Protocol, building global partnerships, and establishing a thriving developer community across multiple continents.
The Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) introduces federated Byzantine agreement, a consensus mechanism that achieves decentralized control, low latency, flexible trust, and asymptotic security simultaneously. SCP enables a worldwide financial network where participants reach agreement without relying on centralized institutions.
The Stellar Foundation released details on its new Stellar Consensus Protocol, based on federated Byzantine agreement, designed to replace the existing consensus mechanism. The protocol has been stress-tested to handle 100 million accounts and hundreds of transactions per second, with deployment targeted for summer.
Stellar.org introduces the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), a federated Byzantine agreement mechanism designed for decentralized payments. SCP offers four key properties: decentralized control, low latency, flexible trust, and asymptotic security, with a new open-source codebase now available for peer review.
Stellar co-founder Joyce Kim discusses the project's launch challenges, consensus protocol issues being addressed by Chief Scientist David Mazières, and efforts to drive developer adoption and financial inclusion in emerging markets like Nicaragua and Vietnam.
A ledger fork in the Stellar network sparked debate over the Ripple consensus protocol's safety. Stellar Development Foundation attributed the incident to protocol flaws, while Ripple Labs disputed the claims, arguing the issue stemmed from Stellar's modifications to the code.
Stellar experienced a ledger fork due to weaknesses in its Ripple-based consensus algorithm. The network temporarily switched to a single validator node and is prioritizing development of a new provably correct consensus system to prevent future forks and double-spend risks.
Stellar network experienced a 16-hour outage on September 20, 2014, caused by validator nodes running out of RAM, halting consensus and all transactions. The foundation addressed communication gaps and began work on scalability improvements to prevent recurrence.