DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
An article advocating for Stellar's adoption by the U.S. government for efficient aid disbursement and public sector payments, highlighting the Stellar Disbursement Platform's proven track record with UNHCR and other organizations.
Stellar's Disbursement Platform and Decaf Wallet offer NGOs and humanitarian organizations a faster, cheaper, and more transparent alternative to traditional cross-border payment methods like cash delivery and prepaid cards.
COCA, a non-custodial stablecoin payments app with over 1 million users, secured strategic funding from the Stellar Development Foundation and FunFair Ventures to accelerate growth and deepen integration with Stellar's ecosystem, including MoneyGram remittances and Soroban smart contracts.
COCA, a stablecoin payments platform, has secured strategic investment from the Stellar Development Foundation and FunFair Ventures. The funding will accelerate COCA's expansion within the Stellar ecosystem, enabling seamless stablecoin payments through non-custodial debit cards and IBANs to over 80 million merchants worldwide.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #33 round awarded $1,033,620 in XLM to 14 projects across Build Awards. Highlights include Stellarcarbon for carbon offsetting, CodeLnPay for cross-border payments, and Warmancer: Black Friday for blockchain gaming. The round introduced SCF 6.1 updates streamlining submissions for future rounds.
Coala Pay, an SCF-funded project by anthropologist Melyn McKay, is a public aid funding marketplace and weather oracle built on Stellar to accelerate humanitarian aid delivery in regions like Somalia. The platform enables organizations to manage programs and payments through private marketplaces while a weather oracle allows preemptive crisis response funding in under 24 hours.
TruBit, Latin America’s leading crypto payment platform, has integrated with MoneyGram Access™, developed by MoneyGram in collaboration with the Stellar Development Foundation. This partnership enables seamless cash-to-USDC conversions at MoneyGram locations across key LATAM markets, targeting the region's $82 billion+ remittance economy. It leverages Stellar's blockchain for efficient cross-border payments and financial inclusion.
The Stellar Foundation released its 2025 roadmap with three primary objectives: achieving $1.5 billion TVL and top-ten DeFi status, reaching 5 million monthly active addresses, and scaling Real World Assets to $3 billion while maintaining its second-place position in the RWA category.
Hana Wallet introduces the Hana Card, a multi-chain virtual debit card for spending crypto from non-custodial wallets anywhere Mastercard is accepted. It supports top-ups with ETH, AVAX, XLM and more, integrating seamlessly with Apple Pay and Google Pay. Launching first in Australia via partnership with Immersve, with global pre-registration open.
Ondo Finance announces plans to deploy USDY, its yield-bearing stablecoin backed by US Treasuries, on the Stellar network in the coming months. The integration will enable Stellar users to access institutional-grade yield-bearing assets for treasury management, cross-border payments, and wealth preservation.
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 Glo Foundation has selected Coala Pay as the first recipient of its 'Strengthen Humanitarian Aid' funding, backed by a $250,000 donation from the Stellar Development Foundation. Glo Dollars on the Stellar blockchain now automatically support Coala Pay's platform for efficient international aid delivery. Users can fund humanitarian efforts seamlessly without additional donations.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) Round 31 awarded $2,068,710 in XLM to 22 projects, including payment solutions, DeFi platforms, developer tools, and RWA tokenization engines. The round received 123 submissions, with 71 being first-time applicants, demonstrating strong ecosystem growth.
Messari released a comprehensive PayFi Ecosystem Analysis report highlighting how blockchain technology on Stellar is enabling payment financing applications through instant liquidity and reduced costs. The report covers PayFi infrastructure, stablecoin adoption, and emerging use cases.
PayFi integrates payments with on-chain financing and blockchain technology to enable the free flow of value on-chain. By combining Web3 payments, Real-World Assets, and DeFi, PayFi unlocks new financing opportunities and helps businesses unlock liquidity through tokenized assets.
Empowch discusses blockchain's role in rebuilding financial systems in crisis-affected regions like Syria and Ukraine, highlighting how Stellar-based solutions enable direct aid distribution and financial inclusion through self-custody wallets and stablecoins.
The Stellar Development Foundation published a comprehensive 2024 year-in-review highlighting major ecosystem achievements including the mainnet launch of Soroban smart contracts, expansion of DeFi protocols like Blend, integration of payment solutions with MoneyGram and Stripe, real-world asset adoption through Franklin Templeton and Paxos, and humanitarian aid initiatives through UNHCR partnerships.
Stellar Aid Assist, a blockchain-based humanitarian aid disbursement solution built on Stellar, has successfully deployed with UNHCR to distribute $4.6 million in direct cash assistance to 2,500 households in Ukraine, with expansion planned to Argentina.
Huma Finance published a detailed breakdown of the PayFi Stack, a six-layer framework for blockchain-based payment financing inspired by the OSI model. The framework addresses limitations in traditional finance by enabling real-time, programmable, borderless payments through structured layers covering transactions, currencies, custody, compliance, financing, and applications.
A blog post exploring how programmable payments and blockchain technology could improve charitable aid distribution by reducing inefficiencies and human fallibility in philanthropy. The author argues that using Stellar's infrastructure for conditional, automated payments could enable more direct and traceable delivery of disaster relief and social programs.
Shaheen, a UAE-based fintech app built on blockchain, launches to serve unbanked populations across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia with cross-border payments, multi-currency wallets, and financial inclusion tools. Parent organization Empowch expands globally with API solutions for NGOs and financial institutions.
This guide explains how Ghanaian users can withdraw stablecoins like USDC and USDT from Binance to Ghanaian Cedi via mobile money or bank accounts using Bingtellar. Bingtellar is a web3 payments platform that supports Stellar, Solana, and BEP20 networks for seamless conversions. It offers speed, convenience, security, and fair rates as key benefits.
This article explains USDT and USDC stablecoins, their features, blockchains, use in payments, comparisons, stability issues, and alternatives. USDC is highlighted on Stellar among other chains, while USDT supports a broader range. Both are key for stable crypto transactions despite past depegging events.