Stellar Ecosystem
News

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 now live on Stellar Mainnet. This guide provides developers and businesses with upgrade instructions, key dates, release links for all Stellar infrastructure and SDKs, and important changes including the Soroban RPC rebrand to Stellar RPC and upcoming Horizon transaction meta defaults changes.

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.

The Stellar Development Foundation introduced Galexie, the first component of the Composable Data Platform, a lightweight application that extracts and stores Stellar ledger data in cloud-based data lakes. Galexie decouples data extraction from transformation, enabling tools like Horizon and Hubble to access precomputed transaction metadata more efficiently than relying on Captive Core.

The Stellar Development Foundation and DEV announced the winners of the Build Better on Stellar: Smart Contract Challenge, with over $50,000 in prizes distributed across tutorial and dApp categories. Winners included projects like Soroban by Example, Entry X (decentralized ticketing), and DVILLA (sustainable e-commerce), with overall winners receiving $13,000 and all-expenses-paid trips to Meridian conference.

This article explains smart contract wallets (smart wallets) and their advantages over traditional crypto wallets, including enhanced functionality, security features, and passkey support. It highlights how Stellar's Protocol 20 and 21 enable passkey-powered smart wallets to improve user onboarding and accessibility.

This article explains the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), Stellar's unique approach to blockchain consensus that prioritizes speed, reliability, and decentralization without resource-intensive proof of work. It covers key concepts like quorum sets, voting mechanisms, quorum intersections, and the security benefits of using nodes operated by well-known organizations.

This article explains the role and importance of Lumens, Stellar's native currency, detailing how they function as transaction fees, maintain network security through minimum balance requirements, and serve as a bridge currency for cross-border payments. It also highlights Stellar's unique consensus protocol (SCP) and its advantages over traditional blockchain networks.

Stellar introduces State Archival, a protocol solution to blockchain state bloat that archives unused ledger entries while maintaining security through Merkle proofs stored in History Archives. This approach enables Stellar to maintain low validator costs, high throughput, and scalability without requiring expensive hardware.

This article compares Stellar's State Archival solution with Solana's State Compression (Avocado), arguing that Stellar's approach is more efficient and scalable. The analysis highlights fundamental flaws in Solana's design including poor data availability guarantees, increased network congestion, and higher costs.

The Stellar Development Foundation and DEV Community are launching the Build Better on Stellar: Smart Contract Challenge, running through August 18, offering a $50,000 prize pool and free trip to Meridian Conference for developers building dApps with Soroban smart contracts.

Stellar's newly launched Soroban smart contracts platform addresses key Web3 pain points including liquidity fragmentation, high transaction costs, and accessibility. With 80,000+ USDC on-ramps globally, an established user base of 8.4 million accounts, and a $100 million SDF commitment to builders, Stellar offers a mature, scalable foundation for DeFi development.

Stellar Protocol 21 went live on June 18, 2024, introducing five Core Advancement Proposals including native secp256r1 verification for passkey support in smart contracts, alongside efficiency improvements for state archival and transaction costs.

A step-by-step tutorial for setting up three Stellar Core validation nodes on Ubuntu 22.04, covering domain configuration, PostgreSQL setup, and Stellar Core installation with example configuration files.

Stellar and Soroban documentation sites have merged into a unified developer experience. The Stellar Development Foundation is launching the Deep Dive Docs Bounty program from May 29 to August 7, 2024, offering XLM rewards for community contributions to improve developer documentation.

This article introduces Stellar and its Soroban smart contract platform to Polkadot users, highlighting integration via the Spacewalk bridge by Pendulum. It covers asset transfers for Stellar's stablecoins, use cases in DeFi and payments, and provides a getting started guide. The synergy aims to enhance cross-chain financial inclusion and innovation.

Stellar Surge is a developer community program designed to engage African engineers and startups building on Stellar and Soroban, offering learning resources, innovation support, and funding opportunities including access to the Stellar Community Fund.