Stellar Ecosystem
News

This article explores the history and advantages of asset tokenization on the Stellar network, highlighting how institutions like Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and the Bank for International Settlements leverage Stellar's native asset control features for issuing securities, money market funds, and bonds with operational efficiency, transparency, and sustainability benefits.

The Stellar Development Foundation joined the CALP Network as its first Layer 1 blockchain member, advancing humanitarian cash and voucher assistance programs. SDF's Stellar Aid Assist platform, powered by the Stellar Disbursement Platform, enables rapid, low-cost digital payments to crisis-affected populations worldwide.

The Stellar Development Foundation highlights five outstanding submissions from the Sorobounty Spectacular program, a content bounty initiative that encouraged developers to build Soroban dapps with educational tutorials. Featured projects include a regulated assets dapp, a snooker game, a farming game, a payment streaming app, and a Bitcoin price oracle.

Stellar is launching Soroban, a smart-contract platform built with Rust and WebAssembly, to compete with Ethereum and other chains. The upgrade, expected by year-end, includes a $100M adoption fund and partnership with Certora for security verification.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced updates to the Stellar Disbursement Platform (SDP), an open-source tool for bulk payments that now supports supplier payouts, global payroll, government transfers, and enterprise remittances. The platform features self-hosting, on-demand wallet creation, multi-level access controls, and support for any Stellar-based digital asset.

Stellar Development Foundation partners with Certora to conduct security audits for Soroban, its upcoming WebAssembly-based smart contracts platform. The formal verification tools will provide continuous integration security checks as the platform approaches mainnet launch in early 2025.

Stellar's Testnet upgraded to Protocol 20 on September 20, enabling Soroban smart contract support. Developers can now test DeFi applications in a sandbox environment, with Mainnet upgrade expected before year-end. This unlocks cash-to-DeFi opportunities through partnerships like Moneygram.

Beans App and Boss Money wallet have integrated with the Stellar Disbursement Platform, enabling global bulk payments and financial access across 185+ countries and 10+ African nations respectively.

Meridian 2023, the annual Stellar conference held in Madrid, showcased major ecosystem developments including MoneyGram's non-custodial wallet launch, Circle's EURC stablecoin deployment, and significant upgrades to developer tools like the Anchor Platform and Stellar Disbursement Platform.

Qolaq opens final beta testing for its community-driven health insurance platform on Stellar. Users can enroll in Critical Illness or Life programs with QLQ tokens, participate in community voting on claims, and access full wallet functionality. Beta participants earn rewards in XLM and USDC.

Circle launched EURC, its euro-backed stablecoin, on Stellar as the third blockchain after Ethereum and Avalanche. The stablecoin enables 24/7 global transactions with low costs and near-instant settlement, with integration into aid disbursement systems and expansion by Ripio to Spain.

The article explores the evolution of identity authentication from paper documents to Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs), emphasizing self-sovereign identity on blockchain. It highlights benefits like ownership, privacy, interoperability, and real-world applications in government, refugees, finance, and more. It teases upcoming content on implementing DIDs on the Stellar network.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced its support for the World Economic Forum's Humanitarian and Resilience Investing Initiative, positioning itself as the sole blockchain organization in the initiative. SDF aims to leverage blockchain technology to address poverty and insecurity affecting 2 billion people globally while advancing its mission of inclusive financial infrastructure.

This article explains the importance of swap functionality and Automated Market Makers (AMMs) for financial inclusion, detailing how AMMs work, their advantages, and challenges like impermanent loss. It highlights how Soroban smart contracts on Stellar enable developers to build sophisticated AMM protocols for trustless, incentivized liquidity provision.

Beans, a non-custodial payments app on Stellar, announced major updates including a redesigned UI, support for Nigerian Naira and USD bank deposits/withdrawals via new partners Link and Kado, an in-app QR scanner, and a new support page. The app has doubled its user base over three consecutive months.