Stellar Ecosystem
News

Soundness Labs and Mysten Labs have developed PQ-Chain, a backward-compatible upgrade for EdDSA-based blockchains like Stellar, Solana, Sui, and Aptos that adds quantum resistance without hard forks or address changes. It leverages the existing quantum-secure seed in EdDSA keypairs, proven via PQ-NIZK proofs at the transaction and account levels. This opt-in approach provides immediate protection during the transition to native post-quantum signatures.

Freighter Wallet is a non-custodial browser extension for Stellar that enables secure transaction signing and dApp interaction while keeping private keys on the user's device. It serves as the primary gateway for Web3 participation on Stellar, with full Soroban smart contract compatibility.

An article discussing the importance of financial privacy in blockchain systems and how Stellar's upcoming Protocol X-Ray upgrade will enable zero-knowledge proof verification in Soroban smart contracts, allowing developers to build privacy-preserving applications while maintaining blockchain transparency.

This article explores Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) support on the Stellar blockchain, focusing on Soroban's host functions for BLS12-381 and upcoming X-Ray upgrade adding BN254 and Poseidon hash functions. It explains elliptic curves, their security differences, and how these primitives enable efficient ZK smart contracts. The enhancements promise smoother migrations, better performance, and lower costs for privacy-preserving apps on Stellar.

The article critiques the false dichotomy between privacy and compliance in crypto, arguing that neither extreme—full anonymity nor total transparency—will enable mainstream onchain payments. It highlights Stellar Development Foundation's stance that privacy must be compliance-ready from the start, and promotes Fairblock's selective disclosure model as a balanced solution. This approach offers confidential transactions with onchain, condition-based disclosure for regulators and auditors.

Normal's 2025 recap highlights its evolution from a centralized product to a fully self-custodial, decentralized protocol built on Stellar. Key achievements include 30,000 lines of smart contract code for wallets, AMMs, DEX, synthetic assets, and on-chain indexes, a Halborn security audit backed by SDF, and a Stellar Community Fund grant. The team expanded with key hires like CTO Jay and frontend lead Niko, while hosting global community events.

Range recaps its 2025 achievements in building stablecoin payments infrastructure, highlighted by the launch of Faraday for real-time routing, screening, and compliance, and the Stablecoin Explorer for cross-chain observability. The company expanded support across ecosystems like Solana, Stellar, and others, while publishing in-depth research on stablecoin usage, including USDC on Stellar. Amid major hacks and regulatory shifts like MiCAR, Range positioned itself as a leader in proactive security and enforcement for maturing stablecoin rails.

Faraday, Range's unified platform, streamlines stablecoin routing, risk management, compliance, and analytics compared to multi-vendor stacks like 0x, LI.FI, TRM Labs, and Dune. It offers a single API supporting chains including Stellar, reducing integration overhead and improving efficiency for fintechs like AcmePay. The article details advantages across routing, risk, data, and maintenance dimensions.

The Stellar Development Foundation disclosed a bug in Soroban Live State Prioritization (introduced in Protocol 23) that corrupted 478 data entries starting September 4, 2025. The issue was in the eviction mechanism that moved outdated versions of persistent entries to hot-archive storage instead of the latest versions, affecting network data consistency.

Trustless Work is a Stellar-based escrow system where roles define permissions for managing funds in a trustless manner. Key roles include Issuer, Funder, Service Provider, Approver, Release Signer, Receiver, Platform Address, Dispute Resolver, and Observer. This design ensures transparency, security, and programmability without single-party control over funds.

EquitX partners with Runtime Verification for a comprehensive security audit of its v1 core contracts ahead of its December mainnet launch on Stellar. The audit, supported by the Stellar Development Foundation's Soroban Audit Bank, ensures the protocol's synthetic equities are trustless, transparent, and robust. This step underscores EquitX's commitment to security as it introduces borderless access to equities.

ChainPatrol announces the launch of its redesigned website, ChainPatrol.com, featuring 24/7 booking, streamlined landing pages, fresh blog content, updated product info, changelog, and new customer testimonials. The platform protects Web3 projects from phishing and impersonations. Notable clients include Stellar among others like MetaMask, TON, Sui, Polkadot, and Polymarket.

Hoops Finance releases version 0.5.0, introducing a unified identity layer with WebAuthn passkeys, zero-knowledge SRP authentication, and seamless Stellar wallet integration via SEP-10. Developers gain enhanced API keys, token logos, and standardized data endpoints for easier integration. The update improves performance, security, and sets the foundation for upcoming Smart Accounts, Vault Rewards, and onchain risk algorithms on Stellar.

On October 9, SDF discovered a bug in Stellar's state archival feature (Protocol 23) that caused outdated entries to be archived and restored incorrectly. The network immediately paused archival eviction and deployed a patch to quarantine corrupted entries, affecting only 478 smart contract entries out of ~47 million ledger entries.

An analysis debunking common blockchain decentralization myths, arguing that proof-of-stake systems concentrate power through wealth rather than validator count, and contrasting this with Stellar's Consensus Protocol (SCP), which grants power through explicit, community-chosen, and revocable trust rather than capital.

Veridise has published a security checklist for Soroban developers to prepare for smart contract audits. The guide covers best practices and vulnerability prevention for building on Stellar's native smart contract platform.

Webacy has been selected as a recipient of the Stellar Community Fund Build Award in SCF Round #38. Out of 83 submissions, 24 projects were chosen for their contributions to the Stellar ecosystem. Webacy will bring advanced risk intelligence and decisioning infrastructure to enhance security on Stellar.

Certora organized the first formal verification contests for Rust-based Soroban smart contracts on Stellar, partnering with Code4rena and Cantina. The contests for Blend v2 and Aquarius protocols featured a 40,000 USDC prize pool and used mutation testing to evaluate specifications. They demonstrated the effectiveness of Certora's Sunbeam prover in securing DeFi protocols on Stellar.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced that all SDF projects are unaffected by a major NPM supply chain attack discovered on September 8, 2025. SDF conducted audits and found no malicious packages in their projects, while providing guidance to the broader Stellar ecosystem on how to protect against the attack.

Tomer Weller (SDF CPO) and Kostas Ferles (Veridise) discuss the Soroban Security Audit Bank, an SDF program funding third-party security reviews for Soroban projects. The initiative represents a proactive security shift, and Weller unpacks how projects access audits and what common vulnerabilities to avoid when building on Soroban.

Vanish Trade, a privacy-first trading platform on Solana, partners with Range for real-time risk screening to balance privacy and compliance. Range provides cross-chain intelligence, sanctions monitoring, and KYB/KYT analytics to prevent illicit activity while protecting legitimate traders. Range also supports Stellar and other ecosystems in onchain compliance.

Range announces a partnership with zeroShadow to integrate forensic-grade incident intelligence into its blockchain security platform. This collaboration enhances threat detection and incident response for ecosystems including Stellar. Real-time data from zeroShadow's investigations will improve Range's Transaction Security and Risk API products.

Certora Prover Version 8.1.0 introduces breaking changes including minimum Java 19 and Python 3.9 requirements, default sanity checks, updated requireInvariant semantics, and dedicated commands for Solana and Soroban verifications. New features include CVL formatter, re-routing summaries, transient storage hooks, and Foundry remappings support. Users must review specs and workflows before upgrading.

In Q2 2025, human.tech expanded its identity and privacy infrastructure across three product lines. Human Passport launched on Base with model-based Sybil detection. Human Wallet entered beta with a browser extension and cross-chain gas tank. Human Network grew to 27 nodes securing $3.4B in restaked assets. Most notably, the foundation secured a Stellar Community Fund grant for WhatsApp-based instant payments and global offramps.

AirGap has integrated full Stellar support into its air-gapped cold wallet solution, enabling users to send, receive, and manage XLM and Stellar tokens while keeping private keys completely offline. The integration includes multi-signature account support, advanced security features like dice roll entropy and social recovery, and is being celebrated with a 30% discount promotion.

human.tech integrates privacy-preserving identity tools like Human ID, Human Passport, and Human Wallet with the Stellar blockchain to verify humans, simplify onboarding, and enable compliance. These zero-knowledge proof-based solutions address identity gaps for the unbanked, enhancing Stellar's applications in remittances, humanitarian aid, and tokenized assets. Supported by Stellar's Community Fund, the tools are now live and rolling out progressively.

This article provides a deep technical exploration of Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA), the consensus mechanism used by Stellar and Ripple, contrasting it with Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake. It examines FBA's architecture, the philosophical differences between Stellar's bottom-up approach and Ripple's managed model, discusses inherent risks like bootstrapping trust and quorum centralization, and explores emerging applications beyond cryptocurrency.