DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
Coins.ph, Flutterwave, ICICI Bank, and Tempo Money Transfer have integrated with Stellar, enabling near-free remittances and cross-border payments across Southeast Asia, Africa, and India. The Philippines now has 22,000 cash-out locations for Stellar-based transfers.
Stellar cofounder Jed McCaleb discusses how banks are exploring blockchain partnerships to stay competitive, noting that understanding the technology and managing compliance remain the biggest hurdles for financial institutions adopting distributed ledger solutions.
Deloitte integrated with Stellar to launch a Digital Bank application enabling instant cross-border payments for consumers and businesses, with transactions resolving in around 5 seconds and plans for multiple financial institution partnerships by 2017.
Stellar co-founder Jed McCaleb is taking on a more public role after his co-founder's resignation, focusing on enterprise adoption. Barclays and Deloitte are building payment prototypes on Stellar's network to serve underbanked populations in Africa, with Nigeria as the initial target market.
Stellar.org announced the Stellar Build Challenge, a grant program offering awards across four categories: Anchors, Applications, Exchanges, and First-Time Submissions. Winners will be announced October 1, 2016, with funding from unclaimed lumens.
Joyce Kim, co-founder of Stellar, resigned as executive director in May 2016, passing the role to co-founder Jed McCaleb while remaining as board chairperson. Kim cited slow legal changes and specialized product design as factors in her decision, planning to explore microfinance work in developing regions.
Stellar.org outlines a three-phase strategy to achieve financial inclusion: building the Stellar network infrastructure, establishing anchor partnerships to connect financial institutions, and creating a platform for developers to build financial services for underbanked populations.
Stellar.org announced a lumen giveaway program for Bitcoin holders, reserving 19 billion lumens (19% of initial supply). Starting July 5, 2016, Bitcoin holders can claim lumens proportional to their BTC holdings through a claim page or participating exchanges.
Stellar partnered with Oradian, a fintech providing core-banking software, to launch instant money transfers across 200 microfinance branches in Nigeria, serving 300,000+ clients in rural areas with affordable, real-time payments replacing traditional cash delivery methods.
Stellar Core has been upgraded with significant code improvements, now 50% smaller and faster while maintaining security through the Stellar Consensus Protocol. Developers can upgrade their accounts and begin building financial services on the improved network.
Stellar Development Foundation released an upgraded distributed network codebase with improved security, scalability, and modularity. The new version introduces batching operations and multisignature accounts, enabling developers to build financial services like crowdfunding without scripting.
Stellar network upgrade launching in November will rebrand stellars to lumens and require user account upgrades. The nine-month development effort delivers a safe, scalable, and accessible network for global financial services.
Stellar celebrated its first anniversary, growing from two cofounders to a 16-person team while launching the Stellar Consensus Protocol, building global partnerships, and establishing a thriving developer community across multiple continents.
A legal dispute over $1 million in XRP held by Bitstamp involves Ripple Labs, Stellar Development Foundation, and founder Jed McCaleb. The case centers on whether McCaleb breached a settlement agreement by selling XRP through his cousin, with both parties seeking the frozen funds and disagreeing on jurisdiction and discovery procedures.
The Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) introduces federated Byzantine agreement, a consensus mechanism that achieves decentralized control, low latency, flexible trust, and asymptotic security simultaneously. SCP enables a worldwide financial network where participants reach agreement without relying on centralized institutions.
The Stellar Foundation released details on its new Stellar Consensus Protocol, based on federated Byzantine agreement, designed to replace the existing consensus mechanism. The protocol has been stress-tested to handle 100 million accounts and hundreds of transactions per second, with deployment targeted for summer.
Stellar.org introduces the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), a federated Byzantine agreement mechanism designed for decentralized payments. SCP offers four key properties: decentralized control, low latency, flexible trust, and asymptotic security, with a new open-source codebase now available for peer review.
Bitstamp filed a legal complaint over $1m in disputed funds from a 96m XRP sale allegedly made by Jed McCaleb in violation of his agreement with Ripple Labs. McCaleb, who co-founded Ripple before leaving to establish Stellar, claims the XRP were gifted to family members before the agreement was finalized.
Stellar Development Foundation announced a public auction of stellars via Haste.co.nz, with 650 million STR placed at a 30-day trailing average price of $0.0031/STR. Bitcoin trading was added via Poloniex and Kraken to maintain price parity.
A New York Observer investigation details alleged interpersonal conflicts between Ripple Labs and Stellar founders Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim, claiming the feud disrupted crypto adoption efforts at Wells Fargo and derailed a Stripe acquisition deal.
Stellar co-founder Joyce Kim discusses the project's launch challenges, consensus protocol issues being addressed by Chief Scientist David Mazières, and efforts to drive developer adoption and financial inclusion in emerging markets like Nicaragua and Vietnam.
A ledger fork in the Stellar network sparked debate over the Ripple consensus protocol's safety. Stellar Development Foundation attributed the incident to protocol flaws, while Ripple Labs disputed the claims, arguing the issue stemmed from Stellar's modifications to the code.
Stellar experienced a ledger fork due to weaknesses in its Ripple-based consensus algorithm. The network temporarily switched to a single validator node and is prioritizing development of a new provably correct consensus system to prevent future forks and double-spend risks.
The Future of Money & Technology Summit in San Francisco featured a dedicated digital currency track with discussions on bitcoin, blockchain, and Stellar. Panelists highlighted emerging markets as key to cryptocurrency adoption and discussed innovations like sidechains.
Stellar Development Foundation removed a partial payments feature from the protocol after discovering it could cause fund loss if anchors weren't aware of the DeliveredAmount field requirement. The legacy feature has been eliminated and all known anchors were notified.
Stellar network experienced a 16-hour outage on September 20, 2014, caused by validator nodes running out of RAM, halting consensus and all transactions. The foundation addressed communication gaps and began work on scalability improvements to prevent recurrence.
Stellar, a decentralized gateway for digital currency to fiat transfers founded by Jed McCaleb, officially launched with a native currency called 'stellar' distributed free to users. The platform aims to bridge fiat and digital currencies for mainstream adoption.
