Stellar Ecosystem
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The article argues that Web3, including blockchain technologies, may succeed like cloud computing by becoming invisible infrastructure for developers rather than a consumer-facing product like ChatGPT. It outlines key barriers to adoption such as poor UX, fragmentation, unclear regulations, and onboarding challenges, and emphasizes the need for unique value propositions like trustless coordination. A linked post highlights Stellar's role in bridging assets with Near intents, tying into broader interoperability discussions.

Stellar Development Foundation outlines a three-part strategy to bring privacy to Stellar while maintaining openness and compliance. The approach includes funding research, building zero-knowledge infrastructure, and developing open-source privacy solutions like confidential tokens.

The Stellar Development Foundation outlines its comprehensive strategy for implementing privacy on the Stellar blockchain while maintaining openness and compliance. The approach combines opt-in, configurable privacy at the application layer with three key work streams: supporting research and innovation, investing in core privacy infrastructure like zero-knowledge proofs, and building open-source solutions including confidential tokens.

Stellar completed a mainnet vote to launch Protocol 23, introducing eight Core Advancement Protocols that enable parallel smart contract execution, faster transaction processing, and improved scalability. The upgrade comes as Stellar's DeFi ecosystem surges with institutional adoption, including Franklin Templeton's BENJI fund and Circle's USDC.

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.

Stellar Development Foundation details major upgrades to Stellar Core aimed at achieving 5000 TPS and reducing block time to 2.5 seconds. The improvements parallelize transaction dissemination, consensus voting, and block execution across separate threads, with v22.1.0 already deployed and showing significant main thread pressure reduction.

Stellar Protocol 23, named Whisk, introduces unified events and parallel transaction processing to improve developer experience and network scalability. The protocol launches September 3rd and includes fee reductions, state archival foundational work, and configurable network parameters.

Trustless Work released Escrow Blocks, a production-ready React library that provides pre-built UI components and providers for integrating stablecoin escrows into applications in minutes. The library abstracts away smart contract complexity, enabling developers to build escrow flows from funding through milestone approvals and disputes without extensive development time.

CHATS is a blockchain-powered platform revolutionizing humanitarian aid distribution with transparency, smart contracts, and direct cash/voucher assistance to vulnerable communities. It runs on multiple chains including Stellar and Polygon, using non-custodial, gasless smart contracts and stablecoins for secure, efficient fund disbursement. Key features include offline NFC transactions, real-time dashboards, and fraud prevention, benefiting NGOs, donors, vendors, and beneficiaries.

A comprehensive guide to 'vibe coding'—using AI and large language models to assist with software development. The article covers best practices for prompting, providing context to AI models, and recommends tools including AI code editors, various LLMs, and MCP servers to enhance the development workflow.

Trustless Work presents a modular toolkit for integrating escrow functionality into products, featuring an API, Next.js SDK, Back Office dApp, Demo Lab, and Escrow Viewer that can be combined to launch escrow flows in a day.

Trustless Work explains how non-custodial, milestone-based escrows solve crowdfunding challenges by ensuring funds are only released when agreed conditions are met. The platform offers flexible roles, transparent on-chain tracking, and multiple integration options for crowdfunding platforms.

An educational guide on using Blend, a permissionless lending protocol on Stellar, to transfer funds between accounts while avoiding cryptocurrency exchange rate volatility by borrowing XLM as collateral.

SDF plans to scale Stellar Core to 5000 TPS in 2025 through Protocol 23, parallel execution, decoupled consensus, aggressive caching, and improved benchmarking. These upgrades enable Soroban to handle higher transaction volumes without requiring node operators to upgrade hardware.

Mercury, a Stellar ecosystem runtime platform, is shifting to a Light Client deployment model that unbundles data sourcing, execution, and delivery into modular, open-source components. This redesign reduces operational overhead while preserving Mercury's Zephyr and Retroshades runtime technology and enabling third-party infrastructure operators to run Mercury services independently.

A developer shares her firsthand experience winning a track at Casa Builder México 2025 hackathon, building a Stellar/Soroban smart contract project with a mixed Web2/Web3 team despite having no prior Rust or Stellar experience. She details the technical stack, timeline, challenges, and key lessons learned about participating in hackathons.

The Stellar Development Foundation outlines its 2025 scalability roadmap to increase Stellar Core's theoretical throughput to 5000 TPS through five key initiatives: Protocol 23 with multi-threaded smart contract execution, increased parallelism in Core, decoupling consensus from execution, aggressive caching for state loads, and improved benchmarking frameworks.

Trustless Work participated in Casa Builders CDMX, a Stellar-hosted hackathon in Mexico focusing on financial inclusion, digital identity, and public good transparency. Their team built Pacto, a decentralized P2P stablecoin ramp using Trustless Work's programmable escrow, and won the event. The hackathon united Latin American builders, with strong Costa Rican representation.

Yugo Cabrio and Changmin Cho completed Milestone #1 of the UltraHonk Verifier for Soroban project, delivering a pure Rust implementation of the UltraHonk proof verifier that enables Noir/Barretenberg proofs to be verified on Stellar Soroban. After discovering incompatibility with the Taceo-labs extraction approach, they implemented the verifier from scratch in Rust with full CI/CD integration.

Trustless Work is participating in OnlyDust OS Wave #1 from June 26 to July 6, offering high-impact tasks for contributors preparing for mainnet launch. Tasks include escrow viewer refactors, wallet analytics, smart contract optimizations, passkey integration, and backoffice enhancements on the Stellar blockchain. Contributors can join via OnlyDust to work on real smart contracts, UI features, and dev tools for the stablecoin economy.

Trustless Work has released a major update introducing two escrow contract types: Single-Release for one-shot payouts and Multi-Release for milestone-based payments. The API has been restructured with type-scoped endpoints, and a new React library is available in beta. Upgraded Backoffice and Demo dApps provide enhanced UX and examples for developers building on Stellar.

Tansu introduces anonymous voting for proposals on Soroban using zero-knowledge proofs and the BLS12-381 elliptic curve. The system employs Pedersen commitments to store encrypted votes on-chain, ensuring privacy while allowing verifiable tallies via homomorphic properties. Detailed smart contract interfaces and CLI commands are provided for setup, voting, and execution.

PayPal has launched its PYUSD stablecoin on the Stellar network, enabling native PYUSD escrows via Trustless Work. This unlocks programmable trust for gig platforms, marketplaces, and cross-border payments without bridges. Builders in emerging markets can now leverage PYUSD for milestone escrows and transparent financial flows.

Protocol 23 introduces eight Core Advancement Proposals (CAPs) to the Stellar network, featuring major performance improvements for Soroban including reduced costs, parallel transaction execution, and automatic state restoration. The mainnet vote is scheduled for September 3, 2025.

The Stellar Q2 testnet will reset on June 18 at 17:00 UTC, wiping all contracts, assets, accounts, and data. Simultaneously, Trustless Work v2.0 will launch on the main branch with major upgrades including multi-release escrows, API changes, and new escrow logic. Developers should prepare for breaking changes with upcoming guides and documentation.

Trustless Work has launched a live demo dApp at demo.trustlesswork.com, a testnet-ready reference implementation for integrating escrow flows using Stellar wallets. It serves as a teaching tool, playground, and launchpad for developers to explore escrow roles, milestone payments, and configurations. The open-source repo and NPM SDK enable quick integration from testnet to mainnet.

Trustless Work presents escrow as a critical infrastructure layer for marketplace platforms, enabling non-custodial fund holding between buyers and sellers without requiring platforms to build custom payment systems. The article outlines how escrow solves the coordination problem in marketplaces and details the technical implementation using stablecoins and smart contracts.