Stellar Ecosystem
News

Stellar launched the Spacewalk bridge to Polkadot and Kusama via Pendulum, connecting DeFi applications to forex markets and Stellar's fiat on-ramps across 300,000+ MoneyGram locations worldwide. The bridge enables stablecoin transfers including USDC and regional currencies like Argentine pesos and Brazilian reals.

Stellar was designed for interoperability, enabling low-cost transfers of all asset types across traditional finance, different blockchains, and web applications. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, Stellar facilitates value movement between all systems rather than replacing them.

The Stellar Newsletter highlights recent ecosystem developments including Soroban smart contracts live on Futurenet with a $100M developer fund and Sorobanathon. It covers Meridian 2022 on-demand sessions, Stellar Quest Live Series 5, bridge bounty grants, and the new Anchor Platform. Additional updates include stablecoin launches, SDF investments in NetXD and Wave, and community fund discussions.

Starbridge protocol uses Stellar's existing features to enable secure token bridging between Ethereum and Stellar without smart contracts. The team formally verified the protocol with Ivy to ensure users cannot double-spend or exploit withdrawal and refund mechanisms.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced five winners of its $5 million Bridge Bounty Program, awarding up to $1 million in XLM each to teams building cross-chain interoperability solutions connecting Stellar with other DeFi ecosystems. Winners include Allbridge, Axelar, Cubist, Kaladin, and Multichain.

Wyre integrated with MoneyGram's Stellar-powered on/off-ramp service, enabling users to convert between cash and cryptocurrency globally. The zero-fee service for 12 months lets users move fiat to blockchain in five minutes and cash out digital assets from nearly anywhere.

Stellar network successfully upgraded to Protocol 19 on June 8, 2022, introducing new transaction preconditions and signer types that enable payment channels, blockchain bridges, and key recovery solutions.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q1 2022 report highlighting major initiatives: Project Jump Cannon for native smart contracts, Starbridge for Ethereum interoperability, $1.5M in Matching Fund investments, and continued USDC adoption across exchanges.

Stellar Development Foundation announces Starbridge, a trust-minimized bridge enabling bidirectional asset transfers between Stellar and Ethereum. The project uses decentralized m-of-n signer architecture to lock assets and facilitate wrapped asset transfers across blockchains.

Velo Labs is building a Federated Credit Exchange Network on Stellar that enables partners from legacy finance, CeFi, and DeFi to issue digital credits pegged to fiat currencies by staking VELO tokens, using the Hermes Warp Protocol to bridge Stellar with other chains for smart contract functionality.

Nodle, an IoT platform that processed ~1M daily microtransactions on Stellar, is migrating to Polkadot's Substrate network to build its own blockchain called Arcadia. The team cited need for custom blockchain functions beyond Stellar's capabilities, though plans a future bridge between the networks.

IBM has launched Blockchain World Wire, a cross-border payment solution built on Stellar that reduces costs and speeds up international transactions by converting currencies to digital assets through the World Wire API.

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.