Stellar Ecosystem
News

An essay arguing that blockchain protocols and traditional payment systems will coexist and complement each other rather than compete. The author, from the Stellar Development Foundation, advocates for building bridges between code-based coordination (open protocols) and committee-based coordination (legacy financial rails) to serve different use cases and global financial needs.

Denelle Dixon interviews Ben Milne, founder and CEO of Brale, about building regulated stablecoin infrastructure. Brale enables companies to issue and operate fiat-backed stablecoins without building their own banking, compliance, or blockchain stack, dramatically lowering barriers to entry from ~$100M to near-zero.

At Davos 2026, Arf, LuLu Financial Holdings, and the Stellar Development Foundation presented PayFi as a production payments layer. Moving beyond pilots, the framework integrates programmable liquidity, embedded compliance, and autonomous settlement directly into transaction execution. The panel demonstrated how this enables live cross-border payment flows without prefunding or manual orchestration on Stellar infrastructure.

This article provides a comprehensive Spanish-language guide to Stellar Community Fund (SCF) 7.0, explaining its funding process, key changes, and application steps for builders in the Stellar ecosystem. It covers the Interest Form entry point, three Build tracks (Open, Integration, RFP), tranche-based funding up to $150K-$300K in XLM, and practical tips for maximizing success. SCF emphasizes real products, execution, and community governance over mere ideas.

Litemint has launched a wallet-first redesign of its NFT Marketplace on the Stellar blockchain, eliminating registrations and logins for seamless wallet-based interactions. It features one-click minting for various media types, full SEP-1 compliance, and trading across 50+ Stellar markets including StellarExpert Top50. The platform leverages Stellar's first-class asset model for NFTs, ensuring universal interoperability without smart contracts.

Hana Earn allows users to passively earn yield on USDC while maintaining full liquidity and control within the Hana crypto app. It eliminates DeFi complexities like monitoring, locking funds, or switching apps by leveraging an onchain stack including Stellar for fast, low-cost settlements. Users can spend or swap USDC anytime without interrupting earnings.

CME Group is launching futures contracts for Cardano, Chainlink, and Stellar (XLM) on February 9, offering both standard and micro contract sizes pending regulatory approval. The expansion reflects growing institutional demand for regulated crypto derivatives.

This article explores how zero-knowledge privacy technology will shape the future of blockchain finance, enabling users to maintain privacy while transacting on public ledgers. Stellar is positioned at the forefront of this transformation, building privacy and compliance tools to serve both individual users and regulated financial institutions.

The article critiques the false dichotomy between privacy and compliance in crypto, arguing that neither extreme—full anonymity nor total transparency—will enable mainstream onchain payments. It highlights Stellar Development Foundation's stance that privacy must be compliance-ready from the start, and promotes Fairblock's selective disclosure model as a balanced solution. This approach offers confidential transactions with onchain, condition-based disclosure for regulators and auditors.