DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
Yugo Cabrio and Changmin Cho completed Milestone #1 of the UltraHonk Verifier for Soroban project, delivering a pure Rust implementation of the UltraHonk proof verifier that enables Noir/Barretenberg proofs to be verified on Stellar Soroban. After discovering incompatibility with the Taceo-labs extraction approach, they implemented the verifier from scratch in Rust with full CI/CD integration.
Trustless Work is participating in OnlyDust OS Wave #1 from June 26 to July 6, offering high-impact tasks for contributors preparing for mainnet launch. Tasks include escrow viewer refactors, wallet analytics, smart contract optimizations, passkey integration, and backoffice enhancements on the Stellar blockchain. Contributors can join via OnlyDust to work on real smart contracts, UI features, and dev tools for the stablecoin economy.
Trustless Work has released a major update introducing two escrow contract types: Single-Release for one-shot payouts and Multi-Release for milestone-based payments. The API has been restructured with type-scoped endpoints, and a new React library is available in beta. Upgraded Backoffice and Demo dApps provide enhanced UX and examples for developers building on Stellar.
Tansu introduces anonymous voting for proposals on Soroban using zero-knowledge proofs and the BLS12-381 elliptic curve. The system employs Pedersen commitments to store encrypted votes on-chain, ensuring privacy while allowing verifiable tallies via homomorphic properties. Detailed smart contract interfaces and CLI commands are provided for setup, voting, and execution.
PayPal has launched its PYUSD stablecoin on the Stellar network, enabling native PYUSD escrows via Trustless Work. This unlocks programmable trust for gig platforms, marketplaces, and cross-border payments without bridges. Builders in emerging markets can now leverage PYUSD for milestone escrows and transparent financial flows.
Protocol 23 introduces eight Core Advancement Proposals (CAPs) to the Stellar network, featuring major performance improvements for Soroban including reduced costs, parallel transaction execution, and automatic state restoration. The mainnet vote is scheduled for September 3, 2025.
Stellar is advancing its blockchain with a public roadmap emphasizing scalability, usability, and developer tools like Soroban optimizations, Freighter wallet, AI assistants Stella and Contract Copilot, and integrations with OpenZeppelin. It powers real-world assets with $522 million on-chain and $17 billion in volume across 70 countries. The ecosystem offers robust support via the Stellar Community Fund and production-ready infrastructure.
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 has launched a live demo dApp at demo.trustlesswork.com, a testnet-ready reference implementation for integrating escrow flows using Stellar wallets. It serves as a teaching tool, playground, and launchpad for developers to explore escrow roles, milestone payments, and configurations. The open-source repo and NPM SDK enable quick integration from testnet to mainnet.
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.
The Stellar Development Foundation announced enhanced 2025 updates to the Soroban Security Audit Bank, which has conducted over 40 audits and deployed $3 million in support. The program now offers complimentary initial audits with co-payment refunds for swift vulnerability remediation, incentivized follow-up audits at TVL milestones, advanced security tooling, and enhanced audit readiness support.
A technical deep-dive comparing authorization mechanisms across Ethereum, Stellar Soroban, and Solana blockchains, examining how each handles token approvals, fee sponsorship, and cross-contract calls through practical smart contract examples.
Dropzey is a tool built on the Stellar blockchain using Soroban smart contracts to simplify and automate airdrops, making them transparent and trustworthy. It verifies participant actions like social media follows and distributes tokens automatically. Backed by the Stellar Community Fund, Dropzey is currently running a presale for its $DROPZ token.
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.
Soroban introduces smart contracts to the Stellar blockchain, leveraging WebAssembly and Rust for secure, efficient execution. Integrated natively into Stellar, it enables DeFi, tokenization, DAOs, and more without compromising speed or low costs. Launched on mainnet in 2023, it positions Stellar as a full-fledged dApp ecosystem.
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.
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.
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.
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.
xcapit shares hands-on experience building on Soroban, Stellar's Rust-based smart contract platform. Covers architecture, tooling, developer experience, and why Soroban is optimized for financial instruments rather than general-purpose computation.
OpenZeppelin's Contract Wizard now supports Stellar's Soroban smart contracts platform, enabling developers to easily generate secure SEP-41 fungible tokens. This tutorial walks through using the wizard and Stellar CLI to create and deploy tokens on the Stellar testnet.
Blend V2 is launching with audits wrapping up soon. The migration allows lenders, borrowers, and backstoppers to move to V2 at their own pace while V1 remains operational, with key improvements including flash loan support, expanded pool parameters, and better liquidation mechanics.
PaltaLabs attended BUIDL HERE conference in Puerto Rico, delivering university talks on blockchain development and participating in panels on talent pipeline and workforce preparation. The team presented Soroswap Finance and DeFindex, marking a strategic commitment to developing blockchain talent and building community across Latin America through planned workshops with Stellar Chile ambassadors.
OpenZeppelin's security audit of the Stellar Contracts Library, a new set of smart contract components for Soroban, identified one high-severity issue, one medium-severity issue, and five low-severity issues across fungible token and pausable utility modules. All issues have been resolved through pull requests.
PaltaLabs won the Best Oracle-Based Smart Contract Award at the 2nd Reflector Dev Contest for Trustless Portfolio Manager, an automated DeFi portfolio rebalancing tool built on Soroban that combines Reflector price feeds, DeFindex vaults, and Soroswap AMM functionality.
A comprehensive guide to testing smart contracts on Stellar using Soroban, covering unit tests, integration tests, fork tests, fuzzing, differential testing, and code coverage strategies all built into the Rust SDK.
The Stellar Community Fund returns for its sixth iteration with a focus on Soroban smart contracts, introducing new focal points including the Kickstart bootcamp, SCF Build Awards (up to $150,000 in XLM grants), and delegate panels for expert mentorship.
