Stellar Ecosystem
News

The Stellar Q2 testnet will reset on June 18 at 17:00 UTC, wiping all contracts, assets, accounts, and data. Simultaneously, Trustless Work v2.0 will launch on the main branch with major upgrades including multi-release escrows, API changes, and new escrow logic. Developers should prepare for breaking changes with upcoming guides and documentation.

Trustless Work launched v1 of its official NPM package (@trustless-work/escrow), enabling developers to integrate escrow infrastructure directly into their applications with minimal code. The release simplifies escrow deployment and is part of the project's roadmap toward mainnet launch.

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.

Tellus Coop explains why to learn blockchain with them, emphasizing a Latin American, collective approach with real projects. They highlight practical benefits like digital governance and decentralized projects. Stellar is chosen for its efficiency, financial focus, and active ecosystem, where Tellus contributes with open-source tools.

The Stellar Dev Diaries series follows the Freelii team's journey building a remittance chatbot on Stellar, from hackathon wins through securing Stellar Community Fund grants to mainnet launch. Episode 2 covers their pivot strategy, Telegram mini app development, and use of Stellar Anchors for on-ramping.

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.

The Stellar Community Fund Kickstart #10, held in March 2025, accelerated 32 blockchain startups from 16 countries through a five-day design sprint. 28 teams received $290,000 in XLM awards, with standout projects like Abokyh, Dayfi, and DeFarm recognized for their Stellar integrations. Participants praised the mentorship on Stellar tools, smart contracts, and GTM strategies.

The Stellar Dev Diaries series follows Freelii's journey from hackathon win to funded startup building on Stellar Network. Episode 1 features founders José Toscano and Joseph Anthony discussing their path to mainnet launch, including use of Soroban's PassKeys feature and Stellar Community Fund support.

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.