DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
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.
Range's Cross-Chain Explorer now tracks Allbridge Core, enabling real-time monitoring of $2.6B in cross-chain stablecoin flows across 12 chains. Users can set custom alerts on transfers, analyze flow patterns, and investigate suspicious activity. Data is available via Range's API for custom dashboards and compliance tools.
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.
This article introduces Stellar DeFi, highlighting its strengths in interoperability, scalability, and low-cost transactions. It covers key features like the Stellar Consensus Protocol, Soroban smart contracts, asset tokenization, and applications in cross-border payments and financial inclusion. Stellar is positioned as a leader in building scalable DeFi solutions for both retail and institutional users.
Untangled introduces an Embedded Yield Layer to simplify access to fragmented DeFi and RWA yields across multiple blockchains. It features modular components like Untangled Vault, Credio, and Untangled Pool for automated capital allocation, risk management, and private credit tokenization. Products like USDyc are live on Stellar, Celo, and Polygon, enabling seamless yield for users and institutions.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #34 round awarded $1,717,287 worth of XLM to 17 innovative projects building on the Stellar blockchain. Projects span DeFi, payments, developer tools, gaming, and infrastructure, showcasing Stellar's growing ecosystem for serious builders. Highlights include Greep Pay for stablecoin POS, NebulaVRF for on-chain randomness, and DappRadar for Soroban tracking.
A step-by-step guide for asset issuers to list their assets on the Stellar Reflector Oracle, ensuring reliable price tracking across the Stellar network. The process involves establishing liquidity, maintaining trading activity, gathering community feedback, submitting a DAO proposal, and ongoing monitoring.
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.
This article explains how to monitor Soroswap, the first DEX on the Soroban Blockchain within the Stellar ecosystem, using Alterscope's risk infrastructure. Alterscope provides real-time metrics on security, liquidity, development activity, audits, TVL, volume, and social engagement for informed DeFi risk management. Soroswap, developed by Palta Labs, offers fast, low-cost token swaps with strong security features including audits by OtterSec and Runtime Verification.
Pelago Labs announced its integration with Stellar to build a crypto-enabled supply chain financing platform that tokenizes account receivables and provides working capital to suppliers through USDC settlements on Stellar.
