Stellar Ecosystem
News

A comprehensive guide to issuing assets on the Stellar network, covering both classic asset issuance through a four-step process and advanced smart contract-based tokenization using Soroban. The article explains how Stellar's design enables efficient, low-cost asset tokenization with global accessibility.

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.

Dfns introduces BYOABI, enabling clients to import smart contract ABIs and interact with them natively from Dfns wallets. This upgrades Dfns to manage full smart contract lifecycles like minting, burning, and pausing under its security and governance model. Future expansions include support for Stellar and other networks.

Meridian 2025 featured an innovative NFT activation that transformed the conference into an interactive art experience, with 24 global artists creating 80 unique works. Attendees collected proof-of-attendance NFTs via QR codes and tap-to-collect mechanics using Meridian Pay smart wallet, marking the first major real-world implementation of Stellar's SEP-50 NFT standard.

Stellar Protocol 25 X-Ray, voting tomorrow, introduces native zero-knowledge proof verification capabilities to Stellar smart contracts, including support for BN254 elliptic curves, Poseidon hashing, and Noir circuit verification.

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.

Inference, a formal verification framework, analyzes three WebAssembly-based blockchain platforms—Polkadot Substrate, Stellar Soroban, and Arbitrum Stylus—evaluating their architectural suitability for formal verification of smart contracts and core infrastructure.

Stellar hackathons are driving innovation by fostering collaborative development of decentralized apps on the Stellar blockchain and Soroban smart contracts. Key initiatives like the Build Better Contest and partnerships with UNDP's SDG Blockchain Accelerator turn ideas into real-world impact projects. These events build a thriving developer community through learning, networking, and funding opportunities.

Trustless Work introduces an escrow-based solution for grants, bounties, and hackathons on Stellar, making funding flows transparent and auditable. The platform locks sponsor funds upfront, maps winners on-chain, and releases payments only after multi-party approval, eliminating payment delays and opacity.

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.

Trustless Work reviews its 2025 achievements, including completion of the Draper University/Stellar Embark program, extensive hackathon participation across chains like Stellar and Solana, and shipping production-ready escrow infrastructure. The project highlights builder adoption, enterprise pilots in real estate tokenization and private credit, and Stellar's ecosystem growth with milestones like PYUSD launch. Looking to 2026, they aim to accelerate integrations, volume, and tokenized assets while preparing to raise capital.

Boundless has won a Stellar Community Fund Build Award to develop its milestone-based funding platform on Stellar. The platform uses Soroban smart contracts and escrow to ensure accountable, verifiable payouts for grants, bounties, and crowdfunding. This addresses key Web3 funding issues like upfront payments and lack of transparency.

SorobanDomains is upgrading to NFDs (Non-Fungible Domains) using the SEP-0050 NFT standard on Stellar's Soroban. A new Registry v2 removes collateral requirements in favor of yearly fees and adds Soroban Events for better indexing. Existing domain owners get 90 days to migrate for free before new registrations open.

This article describes the prototyping of Privacy Pools on Stellar's smart contracts platform, implementing a privacy-preserving protocol that uses zero-knowledge proofs and Association Set Providers (ASPs) to enable private transfers while maintaining compliance standards.

KALE is a proof-of-teamwork farming game on Stellar that launched in November 2024 and became a major ecosystem phenomenon, driving significant smart contract activity, stress-testing the network for Protocol 23, and serving as a foundational project for composability experiments at HackMeridian 2025.

The Stellar network is introducing the X-Ray protocol upgrade, which adds native support for BN254 elliptic curve operations and Poseidon hash functions to enable developers to build zero-knowledge privacy applications. The upgrade, scheduled for testnet vote on January 7, 2026 and mainnet vote on January 22, 2026, establishes cryptographic foundations for privacy-preserving applications without compromising Stellar's transparency.

The article details the design philosophy behind Cyberbrawl, a blockchain game built on Stellar, emphasizing that fun and core game loops should not depend on blockchain finality. The author argues for prototyping simple loops first, targeting casual-midcore players, and using blockchain solely as a continuity layer for ownership and persistence. Stellar's speed and efficiency enable this seamless integration without disrupting gameplay.

Stellar's Soroban runtime engineers have integrated Solidity support into Soroban via Hyperledger Solang, enabling developers to write smart contracts in Solidity and compile them to WebAssembly. The Solang Playground Web IDE is now available for developers to write, compile, and deploy Solidity contracts on Soroban Testnet.

The article explains the lifecycle of Trustless Work escrows on blockchain, detailing six phases from initiation to dispute resolution. It highlights how programmable trust, roles, and on-chain immutability ensure transparency, accountability, and auditability in payments. This structure benefits businesses, enterprises, and developers by replacing blind transactions with verifiable actions.