DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
Kik's Kin Foundation announced it will fork Stellar to create its own blockchain for the Kin token, eliminating transaction fees entirely to enable micropayments. The move trades some decentralization for zero-cost transactions, using federated nodes run by ecosystem partners rather than Stellar's validator model.
Kik announced its kin token will operate on both Ethereum and Stellar blockchains simultaneously using atomic swaps. Stellar will handle transactions with faster confirmation times and lower fees, while Ethereum maintains liquidity, allowing the messaging app to scale its cryptocurrency payments system.
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.
Stellar Development Foundation invested in Keybase, a cryptography startup co-founded by OKCupid creators, to build person-to-person cryptocurrency payments using Stellar's lumens blockchain with near-zero fees.
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.
Mobius Network raised $35 million in a token presale on Stellar, exceeding its $25 million goal. The smart contract platform plans to facilitate machine-to-machine micropayments and will launch its full ICO on January 18, 2018.
Pundi X, a cryptocurrency POS provider, partnered with Stellar to become an Indonesian Rupiah anchor on the network, enabling faster and cheaper cross-border payments while supporting XLM in its retail payment platform.
Kik announced plans to migrate its Kin token from Ethereum to Stellar, citing Ethereum's scaling limitations and high transaction fees. CEO Ted Livingston stated Stellar's design is better suited for Kin's needs, with testing beginning by end of December and a potential Q2 rollout.
IBM and Stellar announced a partnership settling real cross-border payments using lumens as a bridge currency across Pacific currencies. The platform integrates private and public blockchain, with IBM handling transaction clearing while Stellar's blockchain conducts settlement.
Stellar, IBM, and KlickEx announced a blockchain-based cross-border payments solution now processing live transactions across 12 currency corridors in the Pacific Islands, Australia, New Zealand, and UK, dramatically reducing costs and settlement times.
Stellar co-founder Jed McCaleb launched Lightyear.io, a for-profit company to help financial institutions integrate Stellar's open-source payments network. The move acknowledges that traditional banks are essential to building a global financial system.
Stellar.org announced a second lumen distribution program offering 16 billion lumens (16% of initial supply) to bitcoin holders, with claims opening June 27, 2017. The giveaway reflects Bitcoin's influence on Stellar's design and aims to build community ownership of the network.
Tempo Money Transfer integrated with Stellar blockchain to enable remittances from Europe to the Philippines via Coins.ph, allowing customers to send funds using just a recipient's name and phone number with 3-second settlement times.
Stellar announced partnerships with ICICI Bank, Tempo Money Transfer, Flutterwave, and Coins.ph to build cross-border payment solutions using its blockchain infrastructure, targeting remittances and international money transfers with reduced fees.
Coins.ph, Flutterwave, ICICI Bank, and Tempo Money Transfer have integrated with Stellar, enabling near-free remittances and cross-border payments across Southeast Asia, Africa, and India. The Philippines now has 22,000 cash-out locations for Stellar-based transfers.
Stellar cofounder Jed McCaleb discusses how banks are exploring blockchain partnerships to stay competitive, noting that understanding the technology and managing compliance remain the biggest hurdles for financial institutions adopting distributed ledger solutions.
Deloitte integrated with Stellar to launch a Digital Bank application enabling instant cross-border payments for consumers and businesses, with transactions resolving in around 5 seconds and plans for multiple financial institution partnerships by 2017.
Stellar co-founder Jed McCaleb is taking on a more public role after his co-founder's resignation, focusing on enterprise adoption. Barclays and Deloitte are building payment prototypes on Stellar's network to serve underbanked populations in Africa, with Nigeria as the initial target market.
Joyce Kim, co-founder of Stellar, resigned as executive director in May 2016, passing the role to co-founder Jed McCaleb while remaining as board chairperson. Kim cited slow legal changes and specialized product design as factors in her decision, planning to explore microfinance work in developing regions.
Stellar partnered with Oradian, a fintech providing core-banking software, to launch instant money transfers across 200 microfinance branches in Nigeria, serving 300,000+ clients in rural areas with affordable, real-time payments replacing traditional cash delivery methods.
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.
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 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.
Stellar Development Foundation removed a partial payments feature from the protocol after discovering it could cause fund loss if anchors weren't aware of the DeliveredAmount field requirement. The legacy feature has been eliminated and all known anchors were notified.
Stellar, a decentralized gateway for digital currency to fiat transfers founded by Jed McCaleb, officially launched with a native currency called 'stellar' distributed free to users. The platform aims to bridge fiat and digital currencies for mainstream adoption.
