Stellar Ecosystem
News

A comprehensive overview of Africa's rapidly growing Web3 economy, highlighting major blockchain protocols (including Stellar), venture capital investments, NGO partnerships, and government initiatives shaping the continent's crypto and blockchain landscape.

The Stellar Development Foundation launched a $30 million matching fund for early-stage companies building on Stellar, with initial investments in cross-border payments and fintech platforms serving emerging markets.

SDF, MoneyGram, and Techstars launched a three-year startup accelerator program focused on blockchain-based cross-border payments solutions for Latin America. The program will select up to 12 FinTech startups for a 13-week mentorship initiative, with applications opening July 25.

Stellar Development Foundation announces Project Jump Cannon, a research initiative to bring native smart contracts to Stellar. SDF explains why the network initially avoided smart contracts and why ecosystem growth now demands this capability while maintaining Stellar's core values of safety, scalability, and equitable access.

The White House Executive Order on digital currencies marks a significant milestone for blockchain policy, directing government-wide strategy and regulatory clarity. The Stellar Development Foundation welcomes the order's call for inter-agency cooperation while emphasizing the critical need to include industry voices in the regulatory process.

The Stellar Development Foundation spotlights three women on its Developer Relations and Engineering teams, sharing their career paths, daily work, and advice for others entering blockchain and tech roles during Women's History Month.

Stellar Development Foundation is sponsoring SXSW's Finance 3.0 summit from March 11-13, hosting a 48-hour NFT hackathon, workshops, and panels on DAOs, DeFi, NFTs, and digital assets with industry leaders.

Stellar is a blockchain focused on cross-border remittances and peer-to-peer payments, powered by the XLM token. Founded by Jed McCaleb, it differs from Ripple by targeting individuals rather than banks, enabling transactions in seconds for pennies while integrating with traditional financial systems through anchors and partnerships.

DFS Lab and the Stellar Development Foundation launched a second Blockchain Bootcamp for African startups to build on Stellar, offering $5,000-$20,000 XLM prizes and follow-on funding opportunities. The virtual three-day sprint runs April 26-28, 2022, with applications due March 27.

The Script3 team announces that YieldBlox Protocol will delay its mainnet launch on Stellar Turrets and instead wait for Stellar's on-chain smart contracts due to superior security, community focus, and feasibility concerns. They detail the decision process following SDF's roadmap announcement and unsuccessful grant proposal. The project remains committed to launching securely with the YBX token once smart contracts are ready.

Aquarius is upgrading its SDEX rewards engine from v1 to v2 following successful nine-day tests on seven Stellar markets. The v2 engine uses a more sophisticated formula considering offer size, duration, spread proximity, and fulfillment to better reward genuine liquidity providers. Testing showed reduced rewards for wash traders, more users receiving rewards, and significantly increased market liquidity.

Aquarius introduces native 'Bribes' feature on the Stellar blockchain, enabling projects to reward AQUA holders for voting on liquidity markets without custom development. Bribes are set up via a simple interface at vote.aqua.network/bribes, using any Stellar asset with a minimum value equivalent to 100,000 AQUA. Distribution begins February 28th, with a 10M AQUA launch bonus for new markets.

The Stellar Development Foundation published its 2022 strategic roadmap with three core pillars: increasing scalability and network innovation, activating more network participation, and promoting financial inclusion. The roadmap outlines SDF's commitment to supporting ecosystem growth while maintaining transparency through quarterly reports and regular updates.

One year after USDC launched on Stellar, the ecosystem has grown significantly with new payment corridors across Africa, Europe, Philippines, and Latin America, plus integrations from major exchanges like Bitso, Liquid, and Okcoin enabling faster, cheaper cross-border payments and financial inclusion.

Okcoin becomes the first US exchange to offer USDC deposits and withdrawals on Stellar, enabling faster and cheaper stablecoin transactions with near-zero fees and 5-second settlement times.

Tribal, a fintech platform serving SMBs in emerging markets, raised $60 million in Series B funding led by SoftBank Latin America Fund. The company plans to expand across Latin America, building on its cross-border payment system with Bitso and the Stellar Development Foundation.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced its 2022 roadmap, with smart contracts as the primary focus. SDF plans to research, develop, and collaborate with the community to implement smart contracts on Stellar while maintaining the network's core values of accessibility, security, and low fees.

SDF published a guidebook for regulators on designing CBDCs, explaining how central bank digital currencies can improve financial inclusion through open blockchains like Stellar, with features like programmability, compliance controls, and privacy protections.

Muxed accounts, a Stellar feature that maps a single address to multiple virtual accounts, are now live and available to all ecosystem products. All services must support sending to muxed accounts, while custodial services should implement them on the receive side to eliminate memo-related user errors.