Stellar Ecosystem
News

Tribal Credit, Bitso, and the Stellar Development Foundation partnered to launch instant, low-cost cross-border B2B payments between Mexico and the US using Stellar USDC, targeting SMBs in Latin America.

SDF CEO Denelle Dixon testified before the US House Committee on Financial Services on digital assets and blockchain's role in financial innovation, highlighting Stellar's use cases in cross-border payments, remittances, and stablecoin issuance while addressing regulatory frameworks and environmental sustainability.

Stellar Development Foundation introduces Starlight, a Layer 2 payment channel protocol achieving 1+ million payments per second while maintaining fast finality. The protocol leverages new Stellar protocol upgrades (CAP-21, CAP-40) and buffering techniques to enable high-throughput transactions between two participants.

Benkiko, a micropayment protocol building on Stellar, is evolving to a decentralized autonomous organization. Its core innovation is a six-tier tokenization economy where communities create and trade custom tokens representing any item of economic value. The model draws from economic theory around monetary demand and peer-to-peer exchange, enabling micropayments, community economies, and full token-based systems.

Meridian 2021, Stellar's annual conference, concluded with keynotes on climate and economy, a MoneyGram partnership announcement enabling cash on/off ramps via 400k+ agent locations, ecosystem builder sessions, regulatory debates, and SDF's 2022 strategic priorities focused on utility, participation, ecosystem growth, inclusion, and policy impact.

MoneyGram and the Stellar Development Foundation launched a live pilot enabling cash deposits and international payments via Stellar USDC with near-instant settlement, marking one of the fastest blockchain integrations for a major money transfer company.

SPEEDEX is a new decentralized exchange design for Stellar that processes trades in batches, eliminating front-running, ensuring fair pricing for all users, and scaling throughput by parallelizing computation across multiple CPU cores.

Stellar upgraded to Protocol 18, adding native AMM functionality to the blockchain. This enables liquidity pools for cross-currency payments without smart contracts or high gas fees, making Stellar one of the earliest Layer 1 blockchains with protocol-native AMMs.

Flutterwave launched two new remittance corridors between Europe and Africa on Stellar, partnering with TEMPO to offer cost-effective money transfers using Stellar USDC, expanding Pan-African digital payments infrastructure.

Flutterwave launched two new remittance corridors between Europe and Africa on the Stellar network, partnering with TEMPO to enable cost-effective money transfers using Stellar USDC. The expansion aims to strengthen Pan-African digital payments infrastructure and reduce remittance costs to sub-Saharan Africa.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q3 2021 report highlighting Protocol 18 AMM upgrade preparations, a $40 million investment in Tala for digital banking, new payment corridors in Europe-Philippines and Latin America, and Canadian stablecoin VCAD launch by VersaBank and Stablecorp.

MoneyGram announced it will use Stellar blockchain to enable USDC stablecoin payments and near-real-time settlement for its customers, with rollout beginning this year and international expansion in 2022.

MoneyGram partners with Stellar Development Foundation to enable crypto payouts in local currencies using Circle's USDC stablecoin, integrating MoneyGram's network with Stellar blockchain for cross-border payments and settlement.

Arf and Tempo Payments launched a Stellar-based payment corridor from Europe to the Philippines using Circle's Stellar USDC, enabling compliant cross-border transactions with near-zero fees and instant settlement.

VersaBank and Stablecorp are launching VCAD, a Canadian stablecoin issued by a North American bank and live on Stellar. Each VCAD unit represents a one-dollar deposit with VersaBank, offering fast, low-cost cross-border transactions.

Anclap launched the first Peruvian sol stablecoin on Stellar, 100% backed by local currency. The digital asset is exchangeable for multiple Latin American currencies and wallets, advancing Anclap's goal to build a cross-border payment network reducing remittance costs.

DFS Lab is hosting a three-day Blockchain Bootcamp in collaboration with the Stellar Development Foundation for nine African startups building financial solutions on Stellar. Winners will receive prizes and pitch to investors at a demo day.

Stellar Development Foundation moved $150 million of USDC on-chain to provide debt financing and working capital loans to ecosystem projects, expanding financial support beyond grants to accelerate growth in cross-border payments and remittances.

Jason Chlipala, COO of Stellar Development Foundation, discusses how blockchain enables safer, more efficient payment systems on shared infrastructure. He highlights Stellar's advantages for asset issuance, cross-border transactions, and financial inclusion, particularly in remittances where fees could drop from 7-15% to fractions of pennies.

Wilhelm Wanecek's research study estimates Stellar network electricity consumption at 0.222 Wh per transaction, with network traffic accounting for 94% of power use. The findings demonstrate Stellar's energy efficiency compared to proof-of-work blockchains and highlight the protocol's successful decoupling of decentralization from extreme power consumption.

Stellar's Meridian 2021 conference (Nov 17-18) will showcase local builders creating financial inclusion solutions on the network. The event features ecosystem updates, debates on regulation and digital currencies, and community product demos under the theme Build Locally, Impact Globally.