Stellar Ecosystem
News

Flipside Quests launches on Stellar, offering an interactive way to earn rewards while learning DeFi through simple tasks and guided onboarding.

Usher Labs shifts focus to zkTLS for verified private data on blockchains. Verity zkTLS, now in early testing, lets apps prove data from APIs without revealing secrets. Partners ChainSight and Truflation are pilot users. A foreign exchange liquidity protocol launches in fall 2025.

Templar Protocol, a decentralized lending platform, published its roadmap for expanding Cypher Lending across multiple blockchains. Starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum in Q2 2025, the protocol plans to add Stellar, Solana, Cardano, and dozens more chains through 2026, with privacy features and chain abstraction.

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.

Hoops Finance, originating from a hackathon demo, has rapidly grown into a leading DeFi infrastructure on Stellar mainnet, securing $150K in Stellar Community Fund grants and winning multiple hackathons. The platform boasts strong traction with thousands of daily API requests, high user engagement, and tracks over $25M in TVL. It offers risk-assessed savings, AI analytics, and tools like Comet Swap to simplify DeFi for the masses.

COCA delivered major Q2 growth with 74% increase in monthly active users, 101% growth in card holders, and 199% increase in card transaction volume. The platform launched ETH staking, COCA cashback rewards, and new integrations including Ramp and Uniswap listings.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #36 round received 53 submissions and awarded $2,088,654 worth of XLM to 23 innovative projects. Funded initiatives span stablecoin payments, DeFi infrastructure, cross-border remittances, compliance tools, and Soroban smart contract enhancements. Highlights include Stables, Splyce Finance, and Uniblock, showcasing the ecosystem's growing sophistication.

Pacto is a non-custodial, decentralized peer-to-peer exchange for Stellar-based stablecoins, built in 48 hours at the Casa Builder Hackathon using Trustless Work. It enables merchants and users to trade stablecoins for local fiat via on-chain smart escrow contracts without intermediaries. The open-source project supports community ramps, merchant off-ramps, and DAO payouts.

Balanced protocol is transitioning post-merger with ICON into SODAX on Sonic, with PARROT9 taking over the app. They've added Stellar support for intent-based trades, fixed bugs, and supported Stellar campaigns. Q3 plans include money market demos, full intent trades, and shipping Balanced v2.

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.

June 2025 marked significant growth for the Stellar ecosystem with major European engagement, landmark DeFi product launches, and powerful developer tools. Key highlights include Berlin and Istanbul blockchain weeks, the launch of Beans Earn with Defindex, PayPal's intent to bring PYUSD to Stellar, and new developer infrastructure from OpenZeppelin and Creit Tech.

Normal has partnered with Halborn for a comprehensive security audit, backed by the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF). This initiative aims to ensure world-class security using industry-leading solutions.

Normal announces the hiring of skilled developer Niko Gorjan to strengthen its team and leadership structure. Niko's expertise is key to the upcoming launch of the Normal Protocol on the Stellar blockchain mainnet in August 2025. The protocol offers custom crypto indexes, trading of top 200 cryptocurrencies, and lending/borrowing without centralized exchanges.

Stellar released its 2025 developer roadmap, featuring upgrades to Lab 3.0/4.0 developer tools, Protocol 23 targeting 5,000 TPS, and enterprise payment features to position the network as a major DeFi and institutional blockchain.

Flipside Crypto is partnering with Stellar to onboard new users to the network's growing DeFi ecosystem through incentivized quests. Users can earn rewards up to 10% of transaction value by swapping assets, providing liquidity, and using lending protocols like Blend and Aquarius.

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.

May was a dynamic month for Stellar featuring major global events (Consensus in Toronto, Ledger Leaders Week in Mexico City), new DeFi adoption programs (Hana Wallet & Balanced rewards, Dogstar Protocol), and significant technical upgrades including Stellar Core's TPS nearly doubling to 2,032.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #35 round received 77 submissions and awarded $1,840,348 worth of XLM to 21 innovative projects. Funded initiatives span payments, DeFi, cross-chain infrastructure, wallets, and developer tools on the Stellar network. Highlights include AirGap's secure cold wallet, Wirex Pay's Visa-supported payment solution, and Cobo's institutional custody integration.

Blend is a DeFi protocol primitive on Stellar that enables users to create customizable lending pools for depositing assets to earn interest or borrowing against collateral. The article explains Blend's core components including isolated pools, backstop modules, BLND tokens, and its integration with applications like the SCF-funded Meru wallet to expand financial inclusion.

The Huma Foundation has unveiled the tokenomics for $HUMA, the native utility and governance token of the Huma Protocol, ahead of its Season 1 airdrop. The token supports governance, LP rewards, ecosystem incentives, and value accrual, with a total supply capped at 10 billion. Allocations prioritize liquidity providers, community, and long-term growth via vesting schedules.

This article explains composability in DeFi—the ability to combine different protocols and smart contracts to create innovative financial products. It highlights how Stellar's existing features like its DEX, multi-asset support, and path payments enable developers to build connected financial applications, contrasting DeFi's permissionless, transparent approach with the siloed nature of traditional finance.

Stellar aims to become a top 10 DeFi chain by TVL, targeting $1.5 billion from current $48 million. The network has seen explosive growth since Soroban smart contracts launched in 2024, with daily contract interactions exceeding 400,000 and weekly fees hitting their highest level since 2021.

Balanced's Q1 2025 update details major cross-chain expansions including support for Stellar, Polygon, and others, with launches of cross-chain Savings Rate, liquidity pools, and rewards. The project announces a transition to SODAX as part of ICON's shift to a DeFi platform, with PARROT9 taking ownership. Financials show $50k in fees earned, alongside governance and enshrinement progress.

The Stellar Development Foundation has released a series of 2025 policy briefs addressing critical blockchain and crypto issues, covering payments with digital assets, tokenization for investments, and DeFi opportunities.

An educational introduction to Stellar's DeFi ecosystem, covering its core strengths in interoperability, scalability, and low-cost transactions. The article explains key technologies like Soroban smart contracts and asset tokenization, while highlighting use cases in cross-border payments, remittances, and financial inclusion.