DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
The Stellar Development Foundation launched #BetterOnStellar, a global campaign inviting innovators to share ideas for blockchain solutions across finance, creativity, and access. Winners share $30k in USDC awards, with the top entry earning $10k.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #30 round awarded $2.17 million in XLM to 22 projects in the first round of SCF 6.0, including initiatives for DeFi, payments, humanitarian aid, NFTs, developer tools, and financial inclusion across the Stellar ecosystem.
DIA has deployed its price oracle infrastructure on Stellar's Soroban testnet, enabling developers to build DeFi applications with real-time market data feeds. The deployment was supported by a Stellar Community Fund award and provides access to price feeds for over 2,500 cryptocurrency tokens.
A tutorial demonstrating how to build a Soroban smart contract that automates savings by fetching real-time XLM prices from Reflector Oracles and triggering conversions when price thresholds are met.
George Kudrayvtsev demonstrates how the Composable Data Platform (CDP) and Galexie enable efficient backfilling of Stellar RPC with historical ledger data in just 12 minutes—a task that would take over an hour using traditional captive core replay. The prototype required only 80 lines of Go code and showcases CDP's flexibility for building composable ingestion pipelines.
Huma Finance published a detailed breakdown of the PayFi Stack, a six-layer framework for blockchain-based payment financing inspired by the OSI model. The framework addresses limitations in traditional finance by enabling real-time, programmable, borderless payments through structured layers covering transactions, currencies, custody, compliance, financing, and applications.
A blog post exploring how programmable payments and blockchain technology could improve charitable aid distribution by reducing inefficiencies and human fallibility in philanthropy. The author argues that using Stellar's infrastructure for conditional, automated payments could enable more direct and traceable delivery of disaster relief and social programs.
Runtime Verification details their process for building formal verification and fuzzing tools using the K Framework to enhance smart contract security. They highlight tools like Kontrol for Ethereum and Komet specifically for Soroban smart contracts on Stellar. The post aims to bridge the gap between developers and advanced security tooling.
This article explores how passkeys—a secure, user-friendly authentication method already adopted in Web2—are being integrated into Stellar's blockchain to improve user experience and drive adoption. Stellar gained a significant advantage by implementing native secp256r1 support in Protocol 21, enabling passkey functionality directly at the protocol level rather than through third-party solutions.
Tansu is launching a DAO system that enables communities to govern their projects in a decentralized fashion. All projects created on Tansu will receive their own DAO with transparent, immutable governance through smart contracts and IPFS-stored proposals.
Stellar launches Build Better, a community-driven initiative that collects ideas from the ecosystem across three focus areas (finance, creativity, access) and translates them into hackathon tracks. The program offers a $30K prize pool and aims to bridge Web3 vision with real-world implementation using Stellar's smart contract platform.
Balanced, a cross-chain DeFi app on ICON, has integrated Solana as its 11th blockchain connection, enabling users to swap SOL, transfer assets cross-chain, use SOL and JitoSOL as collateral to borrow bnUSD, and supply liquidity on ICON. This expands Balanced's reach to Solana's 5 million daily active users with audited smart contracts and low fees. The integration leverages ICON's GMP protocol, which also connects to Stellar and other chains.
Balanced, a cross-chain DeFi app, has launched on the Stellar blockchain, enabling users to swap XLM for assets on other chains, use it as collateral to borrow bnUSD stablecoin, and transfer to ICON for liquidity provision. The integration includes a Stellar Community Fund grant, audited smart contracts, and fast, low-cost transactions. It leverages ICON's GMP for seamless interoperability.
Stellar's DeFi ecosystem reached a record $61 million TVL on November 24, more than 150% above its mid-November peak, driven by surging XLM prices and growth across DEXs like Aquarius, LumenSwap, and Soroswap, plus the lending protocol Blend.
A detailed recap of Meridian 2024's Dev Underground stage in London, where 80+ Stellar Community Fund winners pitched their projects over two days in a casual, collaborative environment. The article highlights standout projects, community collaborations, and the vibrant energy of builders across the Stellar ecosystem.
Empowch launches Shaheen, a self-custody blockchain wallet for underserved users across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The app offers multi-currency support, peer-to-peer transfers, and cross-border payments without traditional banking intermediaries.
The Stellar Development Foundation has achieved a 9x speedup in Horizon reingestion by leveraging the Composable Data Platform (CDP) with precomputed ledger metadata, reducing full history reingestion from approximately 66 days to 7 days.
USDx stablecoin from FxDAO protocol is now live on Soroswap Finance, the first DEX on Soroban Blockchain, with a $190,000 TVL liquidity pool for the XLM/USDx pair. Users can issue USDx by locking Lumens as collateral in FxDAO vaults for liquidity without selling assets. The article guides on acquiring, swapping, and providing liquidity for USDx on Soroswap.
The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q3 2024 report highlighting major ecosystem milestones including 9 million network addresses, $5M+ in Enterprise and Matching Fund investments, and the launch of Stellar Community Fund 6.0. Key achievements include Franklin Templeton's Benji platform reaching $450M in supply, Protocol 22 development nearing completion, and expanded ecosystem integrations with Dune and DefiLlama.
Protocol 22 is coming to Stellar Testnet on November 12 and will go to Mainnet validator vote on December 5. The upgrade introduces constructors for Soroban contracts (CAP-0058) and BLS12-381 cryptographic host functions (CAP-0059), enabling more efficient smart contracts and advanced privacy features like zk-SNARKs.
This guide explains how Ghanaian users can withdraw stablecoins like USDC and USDT from Binance to Ghanaian Cedi via mobile money or bank accounts using Bingtellar. Bingtellar is a web3 payments platform that supports Stellar, Solana, and BEP20 networks for seamless conversions. It offers speed, convenience, security, and fair rates as key benefits.
This article explains USDT and USDC stablecoins, their features, blockchains, use in payments, comparisons, stability issues, and alternatives. USDC is highlighted on Stellar among other chains, while USDT supports a broader range. Both are key for stable crypto transactions despite past depegging events.
Hana Wallet now integrates Soroswap, allowing users to easily swap Stellar tokens like XLM and USDC directly from their mobile devices. The article provides a step-by-step guide to installing Hana Wallet, setting it up for the Stellar network, and accessing Soroswap via the app's DApps directory. This enhances decentralized finance accessibility on the Soroban ecosystem without KYC requirements.