Stellar Ecosystem
News

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.

Stellar Development Foundation released stellar-core v11.2 with automatic quorum configuration and a quorum intersection checker to help validators manage Byzantine Agreement Systems more easily and safely.

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.

On May 15th, the Stellar network halted for 67 minutes due to consensus failure, but the ledger state remained safe and consistent. The outage revealed the need for better validator monitoring, faster restart procedures, and improved community standards around validator maintenance and configuration.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced a new ticker API providing real-time market data about assets, markets, and issuers on the Stellar Network. The API offers enhanced functionality including OHLC values, orderbook statistics, and a GraphQL interface, with the previous SDF-hosted ticker instance decommissioned on January 3, 2024.

Stellar Development Foundation announces ZkVM, an experimental zero-knowledge virtual machine for scalable and confidential smart contracts. The research explores sidechain architectures to enhance Stellar with privacy features and flexible contract capabilities.

The Stellar Development Foundation announces the release of a new Go SDK for the Stellar network, featuring horizonclient for Horizon server access and txnbuild for transaction construction. This is the third official SDK alongside JavaScript and Java, designed with Go-specific idioms and improved developer experience.

Stellar suffered a critical inflation bug in April 2017 where an attacker exploited the merge function to create 2.2 billion XLM (worth ~$10M at the time). The SDF patched the bug, disclosed it in release notes, and burned equivalent XLM from reserves to prevent dilution.

The Stellar Development Foundation announces a new roadmap organizing 2019 projects across five teams: Horizon, Stellar Core, Product, Ecosystem, and Organization. The roadmap will eventually become a living document tracking progress on multiple initiatives.

SatoshiPay received a $1 million grant from the Stellar Development Foundation to expand micropayments adoption beyond publishing into gaming, tipping, and other industries through a marketing program offering up to $100,000 grants to companies implementing paywalls.

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.