Stellar Ecosystem
News

Elliot Voris has joined the Stellar Development Foundation as a DevRel team member after years of community contributions. He discovered Stellar through Stellar Quest during COVID and has since become a key contributor to community education, Soroban documentation, and developer tools.

AMA recap with MYKOBO CEO Seyi Akin-Olugbemi, issuer of the EURC Euro stablecoin on Stellar. He discusses his background in fintech, the motivation behind MYKOBO for financial inclusion in Africa, and why Stellar is ideal for value transfer. MYKOBO app supports EURC, USDC, XLM, and AQUA, all on Stellar, with upcoming liquidity pools.

Thomaz Texeira, CEO of nTokens, discusses building fintech solutions on Stellar in this founder interview. He explains how blockchain democratizes finance globally and why smart contracts will enable programmable money for underserved markets.

Blend is a new liquidity protocol primitive for Stellar, enabling anyone to create insured lending pools with Soroban smart contracts. It provides lending and borrowing capabilities, adapting to market conditions while protecting suppliers via a backstop module. The protocol enhances Stellar's ecosystem for fintech, trading, DAOs, and DeFi applications.

Coinme integrated USDC on Stellar across its 40,000+ U.S. cash locations, enabling low-fee cash-to-digital conversions and near-instant peer-to-peer payments. The partnership brings financial inclusion to unbanked Americans through Stellar's efficient payment infrastructure.

MoneyGram won the 2023 FinTech Breakthrough Award for Best Use of Blockchain in FinTech, recognized for its on/off-ramp service on Stellar that bridges digital assets and local currency through MoneyGram retail locations worldwide.

Three Soroban projects born from hackathons and adoption programs showcase the ecosystem's early momentum. Sorobix, Chaincerts, and useSoroban.app demonstrate how developer tools and community support are accelerating smart contract adoption on Stellar.

MYKOBO has reduced its minimum crypto-to-crypto send and buy/sell values from €20/20 EURC to €1/1 EURC, making trading and transfers more accessible. This change aims to empower users of all trade sizes in the crypto economy. MYKOBO issues the EURC stablecoin on the Stellar blockchain, bridging European finance to blockchain.

Arf, a Swiss-regulated settlement banking platform backed by the Stellar Development Foundation, launched Arf Credit Line, offering unsecured USDC-based working capital financing for licensed financial institutions. The solution enables same-day cross-border settlements without pre-funding, addressing liquidity constraints in the payments industry.

Soroban smart contracts on Stellar enable a unique cash-to-DeFi pathway through the network's anchor infrastructure and MoneyGram Ramps, allowing underserved populations to access financial services directly from cash deposits to income-generating protocols.

Litemint has launched a fully non-custodial ERC-721 compliant bridge for Stellar NFTs to Ethereum, enabling secure use as profile pictures on Web3 services like Twitter. The bridge locks Stellar assets and mints corresponding non-transferable NFTs on Ethereum, with decentralized recovery mechanisms. It leverages Stellar's SEP-39 for metadata and ensures high security without relying on central entities.

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.

The Stellar Newsletter highlights the Soroban Adoption Fund with $100M in opportunities, including a $10M Stellar Community Fund program for Soroban projects and developer initiatives like Sorobanathon. It covers UNHCR's nomination for blockchain impact award using Stellar for aid in Ukraine, partnerships like Beans App with MoneyGram, and technical updates on Pull Mode and Ubuntu upgrades. Community events, policy priorities, and developer resources are also featured.

The Stellar Development Foundation appointed Asiff Hirji, President of MoonPay, to its board of directors. Hirji brings 30+ years of fintech experience from roles at Coinbase, Figure, and other major financial services companies, strengthening SDF's mission to make cross-border payments cheaper and more accessible.

Tori Samples, co-founder of Leaf Global Fintech (now BOSS Money Africa), discusses her journey building blockchain solutions for financial inclusion in Africa. She recently joined the Stellar Development Foundation as Senior Product Manager, leading work on Stellar Aid Assist for humanitarian disbursements.

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.

Mercado Bitcoin and Stellar successfully tested a Brazilian CBDC on public blockchain, demonstrating delivery versus payment transactions with digital real. The pilot was part of Brazil's Central Bank LIFT Challenge to explore digital real use cases.

EURC is a Euro-pegged stablecoin launched on the Stellar blockchain by UAB MYKOBO, offering secure, fast, and sustainable transactions. It has seen significant adoption with over 150k in circulating supply and substantial trading volume on Stellar's DEX. To celebrate its launch and MYKOBO's anniversary, zero transaction fees are offered throughout March 2023.

BP Ventures has launched three new open-source crypto wallets to facilitate company integration with the Stellar Blockchain. These include a white-label retail wallet supporting key SEPs, a compact command-line wallet, and documentation for Stellar Anchor integration. The initiative underscores BP Ventures' commitment to open blockchain networks.