DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
Stellar validators will vote on Protocol 19 upgrade on June 8, 2022, introducing new transaction preconditions and signer types to enable payment channels, bridges, and key recovery solutions. The upgrade enables Layer 2 scaling with Starlight prototype achieving 1.19 million payments per second.
Novatti Group announced the launch of AUDC, an Australian Dollar-backed stablecoin on the Stellar blockchain. The 1:1 AUD-backed digital asset will integrate into Novatti's payment solutions, enabling faster, lower-cost domestic and cross-border transactions with support from the Stellar Development Foundation.
DFS Lab and the Stellar Development Foundation are launching their second Blockchain Bootcamp in April 2022, bringing together 10 African startups to build payment and financial inclusion solutions on Stellar over three days, with winners receiving prizes and demo day pitching opportunities.
Newton, a Canadian crypto trading platform with 450,000 users, now supports USDC deposits and withdrawals on Stellar, offering near-zero transaction fees and instant settlement alongside multichain USDC support.
The Stellar Development Foundation and Wirex released a 2022 cryptocurrency adoption report surveying 8,257 people across the UK, US, Singapore, and Mexico. Key findings show 81% of the general population has heard of crypto, 39% own or have owned it, and adoption is spreading beyond the stereotypical young male demographic to women and older adults.
Velo Labs and Philippine Digital Asset Exchange (PDAX) partnered to improve cross-border payments to the Philippines using blockchain technology, targeting the $34 billion annual remittance market with faster, cheaper, and more secure transactions.
Three African fintech leaders building on Stellar discuss why they chose the network for payments infrastructure, the $95B+ remittance opportunity across Africa, and advice for entrepreneurs launching in the space ahead of the Stellar Blockchain Bootcamp.
Shift Markets and Nexus Markets integrated USDC on Stellar, enabling institutional and retail clients to deposit, withdraw, and swap USDC across blockchains while earning yield through Nexus Vaults.
Stellar is a blockchain focused on cross-border remittances and peer-to-peer payments, powered by the XLM token. Founded by Jed McCaleb, it differs from Ripple by targeting individuals rather than banks, enabling transactions in seconds for pennies while integrating with traditional financial systems through anchors and partnerships.
One year after USDC launched on Stellar, the ecosystem has grown significantly with new payment corridors across Africa, Europe, Philippines, and Latin America, plus integrations from major exchanges like Bitso, Liquid, and Okcoin enabling faster, cheaper cross-border payments and financial inclusion.
Okcoin becomes the first US exchange to offer USDC deposits and withdrawals on Stellar, enabling faster and cheaper stablecoin transactions with near-zero fees and 5-second settlement times.
Tribal, a fintech platform serving SMBs in emerging markets, raised $60 million in Series B funding led by SoftBank Latin America Fund. The company plans to expand across Latin America, building on its cross-border payment system with Bitso and the Stellar Development Foundation.
The Stellar Development Foundation released its 2021 Q4 report, highlighting major achievements including USDC integration, MoneyGram partnership for cash-in/cash-out services, $80.25M in Enterprise Fund investments, three protocol upgrades, and international CBDC pilots in Ukraine.
Muxed accounts, a Stellar feature that maps a single address to multiple virtual accounts, are now live and available to all ecosystem products. All services must support sending to muxed accounts, while custodial services should implement them on the receive side to eliminate memo-related user errors.
Velo Labs and FinClusive announced a strategic partnership to enable faster, cheaper cross-border payments by combining Velo's Stellar and BSC blockchain solutions with FinClusive's embedded compliance controls for remittances and value transfers.
Tribal Credit, Bitso, and the Stellar Development Foundation partnered to launch a cross-border B2B payment platform enabling Mexican businesses to send payments in pesos to the U.S. and receive dollars, leveraging Stellar's blockchain network for faster, cheaper transactions.
Tribal Credit, Bitso, and the Stellar Development Foundation launched a cross-border payment system enabling SMBs in Mexico and the U.S. to transact using USDC stablecoins, reducing costs and settlement times for international payments.
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.
