Stellar Ecosystem
News

The Stellar Development Foundation announced Protocol 20, which brings Soroban smart contracts to Stellar. The network will adopt a phased rollout approach to gradually increase smart contract capacity while monitoring network stability and performance.

Dropzey is a new platform revolutionizing airdrops on the Stellar blockchain. It leverages Stellar's Soroban smart contracts to automate eligibility verification, streamline token distributions, and enhance engagement for creators and participants. The platform addresses traditional airdrop challenges like verification complexities and limited visibility.

The Stellar Development Foundation submitted a comprehensive response to the French financial regulator AMF's DeFi discussion paper, advocating for regulatory frameworks that balance innovation with consumer protection through open source technology and decentralization principles.

Stellar's Protocol 20 upgrade, which enables Soroban smart contracts on Mainnet, is approaching a validator vote. The upgrade implements 12 Core Advancement Proposals and unlocks new possibilities for developers while maintaining Stellar's existing capabilities.

RPCiege: Axe & Ember is a text-based adventure game built on Soroban smart contracts. Getting started guides show how to play via Gitpod, GitHub Codespaces, or local CLI setup, with NFT rewards available for players who connect a Stellar wallet.

FxDAO announces a shift to quarterly updates and the deployment of its protocol on Soroban testnet. They've launched a new self-hosted website, a JavaScript SDK for integration, and an official Discord server. The team is preparing for Soroban mainnet launch.

Stellar is launching Soroban, a smart-contract platform built with Rust and WebAssembly, to compete with Ethereum and other chains. The upgrade, expected by year-end, includes a $100M adoption fund and partnership with Certora for security verification.

Stellar Development Foundation partners with Certora to conduct security audits for Soroban, its upcoming WebAssembly-based smart contracts platform. The formal verification tools will provide continuous integration security checks as the platform approaches mainnet launch in early 2025.

Stellar's Testnet upgraded to Protocol 20 on September 20, enabling Soroban smart contract support. Developers can now test DeFi applications in a sandbox environment, with Mainnet upgrade expected before year-end. This unlocks cash-to-DeFi opportunities through partnerships like Moneygram.

This article explains the importance of swap functionality and Automated Market Makers (AMMs) for financial inclusion, detailing how AMMs work, their advantages, and challenges like impermanent loss. It highlights how Soroban smart contracts on Stellar enable developers to build sophisticated AMM protocols for trustless, incentivized liquidity provision.

AssetDesk has secured an R&D grant from the Stellar Community Fund to develop the AssetDesk protocol, a new money markets protocol for Stellar's Soroban smart contracts platform. The protocol enables decentralized borrowing and lending with features like margin trading, flash loans, NFT lending, and stablecoin markets. It aims to enhance capital efficiency in Stellar's DeFi ecosystem.

RPCiege Siege 4 launches with three new Soroban Rust coding challenges (Skirmish 8-10) designed to teach smart contract development while gamifying the learning experience with a fantasy narrative.

This educational article explains blockchain oracles as bridges between smart contracts and real-world data, covering their types, decentralization levels, and the oracle problem. It highlights oracle use cases in DeFi and mentions Soroban as Stellar's native smart contracts platform.

This article outlines the essential building blocks required for a thriving smart contract ecosystem on Soroban, including financial protocols (AMMs, lending markets), data access tools (oracles, indexers), user interfaces (wallets, block explorers), and security mechanisms. It demonstrates how these interconnected components enable real-world DeFi use cases like decentralized lending.

Scalps leverages Soroban smart contracts on Stellar to power a loyalty management system for merchants worldwide, using the POINTS token for discounts and minting branded Loyalty NFTs. These NFTs include Discount, VIP Membership, Event Access, and Collectible types, each with specific smart contract features for minting, validation, and benefit application. The system optimizes storage with IPFS and Soroban storage types to manage fees effectively.

A comprehensive guide to Rust development for smart contracts on Soroban, covering setup, language advantages over Solidity, and resources from the Stellar Development Foundation for learning and building.

Soroban implements state expiration to address blockchain state bloat, becoming the first blockchain to deploy this solution at mainnet launch. The design includes an Expired State Store, two storage types (Temporary and Persistent), and a rent model to prioritize important data and improve network scalability.

Soroban Preview 10 introduces new State Expiration logic to address blockchain bloat issues, along with Rust SDK changes and clearer smart contract limits. July focused on refactors rather than new features, including rethinking governance token distribution. A new Stable Liquidity Pools contract for stablecoins is in development for future deployment.

Tech Talks with Tomer Episode 3 Season 2 features Chad Ostrowski from Aha Labs discussing smart contract development across NEAR, Soroban, and CosmWasm. The video series hosted by Tomer Weller, VP of Product at @StellarOrg, explores innovations in blockchain engineering.

Soroban is Stellar's smart contract platform launching on mainnet, combining Rust and WebAssembly to enable DeFi applications while leveraging Stellar's 8-year track record in payments and anchor network for global financial access.

EU regulators finalized MiCA crypto regulation and are working on a Data Act that could impose problematic requirements on smart contracts built on public blockchains, potentially hindering DeFi development across Europe.

Soroban, Stellar's native smart contract platform, learns from Ethereum's design mistakes to offer better developer experience. Key improvements include native XLM token integration without wrapping, built-in event emissions, re-entrancy attack prevention, checksummed addresses, and single-transaction token transfers.

Soroban is a high-performance smart contract platform built on Rust and WebAssembly, designed for developers to build secure decentralized applications with flexibility and scalability. The platform features a batteries-included developer experience, tunable gas model, and access to Stellar's financial infrastructure.

A DAO is nearing legal incorporation and aims to be the first fully operating on the Soroban network. They've completed the Safety Pool contract, which liquidates undercollateralized vaults to maintain protocol health, but face integration issues due to Soroban preview limitations. Next steps include refactoring contracts and developing the Staking Pool.

The Stellar Development Foundation showcases four Stellar Community Fund projects building on Soroban: Qolaq (mutual aid platform), Comet (weighted AMM), FxDAO (decentralized borrowing), and XycLoans (flash loans protocol). Each demonstrates innovative use cases for Soroban smart contracts on Futurenet.

The Stellar Development Foundation showcased Stellar's real-world utility at Paris Blockchain Week, featuring keynotes on humanitarian aid delivery via Stellar Aid Assist, Soroban smart contracts workshops, and panels on enterprise payments with stablecoins like GYEN and ZUSD.