DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
Stellar introduces Soroban, its WebAssembly-based smart contract platform built in Rust, enabling developers to create DeFi applications, tokenized assets, DAOs, and other decentralized applications while maintaining low costs and high security on the Stellar network.
An educational article explaining the distinction between composability and interoperability in Web3, with emphasis on how Stellar's modular development approach enables developers to build applications like LEGO bricks using tools like Stellar CLI, Lab, and SDKs.
Nansen and Slice Analytics released a comprehensive H2 2024 report on the Stellar ecosystem, highlighting Protocol 22's launch, Galexie data platform, Anchor Directory expansion to 180 countries, and significant partnerships with MoneyGram, Stripe, and Mastercard. On-chain metrics show steady growth with daily transactions reaching 2.4M and active addresses peaking at 172K, driven by regulatory optimism and ecosystem maturation.
This article explains composability in DeFi and blockchain development using a hot rod analogy, detailing how different protocols and smart contracts can integrate seamlessly on Stellar to create more powerful financial systems. It covers DeFi building blocks, composability benefits, TVL growth, and practical considerations for building composable projects on Stellar.
The Stellar Development Foundation announced the winners of a global challenge that received over 250 submissions from 20+ countries. The top three visionary ideas include The Crypto Oracle's education funding platform, José Toscano's biometric crypto wallet, and 8 other finalists spanning payments, real estate tokenization, carbon credits, and more.
The Stellar Development Foundation commissioned PwC to develop an addendum to the Blockchain Sustainability Framework addressing EU MiCA regulation requirements. The addendum provides methodologies for assessing sustainability metrics and applies them to benchmark the Stellar network's environmental performance.
Stellar Quest is a gamified platform for learning Stellar blockchain through interactive missions, from wallet setup to advanced transactions. Users cover topics like creating accounts, payments, trustlines, DEX offers, and path payments. It includes live Twitch streams and opportunities to win exclusive swag.
The Stellar Development Foundation's research team published a 2024 recap highlighting their expansion to two full-time researchers, three peer-reviewed publications on distributed computing and consensus algorithms, five research talks at major conferences, and funding for 14 academic research groups globally.
The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q4 2024 report highlighting a transformative year with 18 billion network operations, $32 billion in payment volume, and significant ecosystem growth including 640% Soroban TVL expansion and Protocol 22 upgrade.
Executioners Esports publishes an educational guide on Stellar blockchain, covering its fast, low-cost payment infrastructure, the Stellar Consensus Protocol, and Soroban smart contracts. The article provides developer onboarding steps and real-world use cases including DeFi, NFTs, and gaming.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #32 awarded $1,377,495 worth of XLM to 17 projects, including wallets, DeFi platforms, payment solutions, and developer tools. The round received 78 submissions, with 40 being first-time applicants, demonstrating continued ecosystem growth and innovation.
Stellar RPC, formerly known as Soroban RPC, has been rebranded with Protocol 22 to serve as the unified data access layer for all Stellar developers. The rename reflects the tool's broader applicability beyond smart contracts and positions it as the recommended entry point for new builders, moving away from the increasingly impractical Horizon infrastructure.
A developer tackles a challenge to create the smallest invokable Soroban smart contract on Stellar mainnet, beating the previous 66-byte record by using an empty export name. The solution shrinks the WASM binary to 39 bytes including the required metadata section. Mainnet transaction hashes are provided for upload and invocation.
The Stellar Development Foundation launched #BetterOnStellar, a global campaign inviting innovators to share ideas for blockchain solutions across finance, creativity, and access. Winners share $30k in USDC awards, with the top entry earning $10k.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #30 round awarded $2.17 million in XLM to 22 projects in the first round of SCF 6.0, including initiatives for DeFi, payments, humanitarian aid, NFTs, developer tools, and financial inclusion across the Stellar ecosystem.
A tutorial demonstrating how to build a Soroban smart contract that automates savings by fetching real-time XLM prices from Reflector Oracles and triggering conversions when price thresholds are met.
George Kudrayvtsev demonstrates how the Composable Data Platform (CDP) and Galexie enable efficient backfilling of Stellar RPC with historical ledger data in just 12 minutes—a task that would take over an hour using traditional captive core replay. The prototype required only 80 lines of Go code and showcases CDP's flexibility for building composable ingestion pipelines.
This article explores how passkeys—a secure, user-friendly authentication method already adopted in Web2—are being integrated into Stellar's blockchain to improve user experience and drive adoption. Stellar gained a significant advantage by implementing native secp256r1 support in Protocol 21, enabling passkey functionality directly at the protocol level rather than through third-party solutions.
Stellar launches Build Better, a community-driven initiative that collects ideas from the ecosystem across three focus areas (finance, creativity, access) and translates them into hackathon tracks. The program offers a $30K prize pool and aims to bridge Web3 vision with real-world implementation using Stellar's smart contract platform.
Stellar-core 22.1 will drop SQL support for ledger state and transaction history tables. The release introduces a new high-throughput HTTP query server with the `getledgerentryraw` endpoint as the replacement for direct SQL access.
A detailed recap of Meridian 2024's Dev Underground stage in London, where 80+ Stellar Community Fund winners pitched their projects over two days in a casual, collaborative environment. The article highlights standout projects, community collaborations, and the vibrant energy of builders across the Stellar ecosystem.
The Stellar Development Foundation has achieved a 9x speedup in Horizon reingestion by leveraging the Composable Data Platform (CDP) with precomputed ledger metadata, reducing full history reingestion from approximately 66 days to 7 days.
Protocol 22 is coming to Stellar Testnet on November 12 and will go to Mainnet validator vote on December 5. The upgrade introduces constructors for Soroban contracts (CAP-0058) and BLS12-381 cryptographic host functions (CAP-0059), enabling more efficient smart contracts and advanced privacy features like zk-SNARKs.
A developer shares how they deployed their Stellar-based dApp 'Tansu' on IPFS using Storacha for storage and xlm.sh as a Stellar-aware gateway. The tutorial covers IPFS basics, uploading files, handling CSP issues with Soroban RPC, and leveraging Stellar's manage data operations for CID resolution. This enhances decentralization while integrating seamlessly with Stellar and Soroban ecosystems.
Reflector has launched its 2nd developer contest with a 120,000 xRF prize pool across multiple categories including oracle-based smart contracts, subscription apps, and creative implementations. The contest also includes separate prizes for content creators and runs from October 16 to December 15, 2024.
Hubble's Stellar ETL has been refactored to use the Composable Data Platform (CDP), replacing Captive Core with Galexie and a Ledger Metadata Store. This architectural change delivers 93% faster processing, 90% cost reduction, and significantly simplified maintenance.
Mercury has released Retroshades, a smart contract indexing technology designed specifically for Soroban-supporting chains. Retroshades allows developers to build custom indexers in minutes by defining data structures directly within smart contracts, eliminating the need to learn new technologies or manage complex infrastructure.
The Build Better on Stellar Smart Contract Challenge concluded with winners across tutorial and dApp categories, featuring projects like Entry•X (decentralized ticketing), DVILLA (sustainable e-commerce), and Soroban by Example. Winners received up to $13,000 USD and invitations to Meridian 2024, with next steps including SCF Kickstart and the Stellar Community Fund.
The Stellar Community Fund launches version 6.0 with enhanced support for ecosystem projects, integrating a new Kickstart bootcamp program, streamlined Build Awards up to $150K, post-launch growth initiatives including DraperU's Embark Accelerator, and category-specific delegate panels for improved governance.