DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
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.
Beans app announces partnership with Blend, a DeFi lending and borrowing protocol on the Stellar blockchain. They demoed the integration at Meridian 2023, showcasing seamless DeFi features. The integration is in proof-of-concept phase with plans for a safe release soon.
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.
This article explains how decentralized finance (DeFi) lending and borrowing markets work, contrasting them with traditional banking by highlighting their accessibility, trustlessness, and use of smart contracts. It covers the mechanics of liquidity pools, collateral requirements, and integration with oracles and AMMs, while discussing risks like liquidation and price volatility.
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.
The Stellar Development Foundation shared progress on Soroban's Minimum Viable Ecosystem, outlining priority building blocks like financial primitives, data tools, and wallets needed before mainnet launch this fall. The foundation is actively funding projects through the Stellar Community Fund and inviting developers to help shape the platform.
Aquarius announces participation in Stellar Community Fund round 15 to develop Soroban-powered AMMs on the Stellar network. The project aims to create Uniswap v2-style smart contracts, advanced AMM types, and AQUA reward distribution on Soroban futurenet. This builds on Aquarius' established liquidity incentivization system, which has distributed over $2.25M in rewards.
Allbridge launched a cross-chain bridge connecting Stellar to Ethereum, Solana, Celo, and Polygon, enabling seamless asset transfers and expanding DeFi opportunities on the Stellar network.
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.
An overview of the Stellar network, its foundation, and thriving ecosystem. The article explains Stellar's blockchain technology, the Stellar Development Foundation's role in supporting growth, and highlights real-world applications across various sectors.
Blend is a new liquidity protocol primitive for Stellar, enabling anyone to create insured lending pools with Soroban smart contracts. It provides lending and borrowing capabilities, adapting to market conditions while protecting suppliers via a backstop module. The protocol enhances Stellar's ecosystem for fintech, trading, DAOs, and DeFi applications.
Soroban smart contracts on Stellar enable a unique cash-to-DeFi pathway through the network's anchor infrastructure and MoneyGram Ramps, allowing underserved populations to access financial services directly from cash deposits to income-generating protocols.
EURC is a Euro-pegged stablecoin launched on the Stellar blockchain by UAB MYKOBO, offering secure, fast, and sustainable transactions. It has seen significant adoption with over 150k in circulating supply and substantial trading volume on Stellar's DEX. To celebrate its launch and MYKOBO's anniversary, zero transaction fees are offered throughout March 2023.
Soroban needs essential developer tools, financial primitives, and educational resources before Mainnet launch to attract developers and ensure ecosystem success. The article outlines key fundamentals including block explorers, security tools, oracles, and collateral-backed tokens.
Tommaso De Ponti, a Stellar developer since mid-2020, shares his journey from learning programming at age 11 to building Soroban smart contracts. His work includes DeFi projects and a zero-knowledge proof coin mixer built with his brother.
The Stellar Development Foundation announced five winners of its $5 million Bridge Bounty Program, awarding up to $1 million in XLM each to teams building cross-chain interoperability solutions connecting Stellar with other DeFi ecosystems. Winners include Allbridge, Axelar, Cubist, Kaladin, and Multichain.
Litemint has launched decentralized NFT auctions on the Stellar blockchain, utilizing time-bound transactions, pre-authorized transactions, and path payments for secure, trustless execution. The system ensures no third-party custody, bid protection until auction end, reserve price enforcement, and participant withdrawal rights. Full settlement occurs on the Stellar DEX via a pre-authorized contract transaction.
Aquarius announces ICE tokens, a new mechanism for AQUA holders on Stellar to freeze their tokens and receive boosted liquidity rewards and enhanced voting power. By locking AQUA via the locker tool, users gain four non-transferable ICE tokens (ICE, upvoteICE, downvoteICE, governICE) that increase yields on SDEX/AMM and enable simultaneous use in liquidity and governance voting. ICE tokens melt linearly over the lock period, up to three years, with voting power scaling up to 10x.
Aquarius Governance v2.0 launches with major upgrades including a mandatory discussion phase, editable proposals, redesigned fees, vote lock periods, and improved UI. These changes address low participation and other issues from v1.0, built on the Stellar blockchain via SDEX and AMM integrations. The system now encourages better proposals and early voting.
Stellar Development Foundation announces Starbridge, a trust-minimized bridge enabling bidirectional asset transfers between Stellar and Ethereum. The project uses decentralized m-of-n signer architecture to lock assets and facilitate wrapped asset transfers across blockchains.
Stellar Development Foundation is sponsoring SXSW's Finance 3.0 summit from March 11-13, hosting a 48-hour NFT hackathon, workshops, and panels on DAOs, DeFi, NFTs, and digital assets with industry leaders.
Aquarius is upgrading its SDEX rewards engine from v1 to v2 following successful nine-day tests on seven Stellar markets. The v2 engine uses a more sophisticated formula considering offer size, duration, spread proximity, and fulfillment to better reward genuine liquidity providers. Testing showed reduced rewards for wash traders, more users receiving rewards, and significantly increased market liquidity.
Aquarius introduces native 'Bribes' feature on the Stellar blockchain, enabling projects to reward AQUA holders for voting on liquidity markets without custom development. Bribes are set up via a simple interface at vote.aqua.network/bribes, using any Stellar asset with a minimum value equivalent to 100,000 AQUA. Distribution begins February 28th, with a 10M AQUA launch bonus for new markets.
Aquarius Governance is a decentralized system launched in November 2021 for AQUA token holders within the Stellar ecosystem to propose and vote on protocol changes. It features a 7-day discussion phase, fees for creation and publication that are burned for deflation, and a 10% quorum requirement. Successful proposals are executed by the Aquarius Signers Guild.
BravePay introduces liquidity rewards for the BRAVE-XLM pool on Stellar's AMM to boost adoption and returns beyond the standard 0.3% fee. The program adds 10% of the pool size in BRAVE rewards, distributed daily based on individual shares. It emphasizes fraud prevention, long-term commitments, and ecosystem growth.
Brave, a top-performing Stellar token, announces a redesigned staking rewards system to eliminate fraud from previous universal and trading rewards. The new Brave Staking offers tiered APYs up to 26% for 12-month periods, with flexible withdrawals and no minimums. Monthly burns of 24 million Braves and discontinuation of old rewards aim to stabilize price and foster long-term growth.
Stellar processed 2 billion operations in 2021, with relevant assets up 11.39% and transaction volume up 2.3x. The SDF invested $75.25M through its Enterprise Fund, launched educational programs reaching 10,000 students, and passed three protocol upgrades including AMM functionality and asset clawback features.
YieldBlox introduces Protocol Owned Debt to eliminate liquidation cascade risks by having lending pools borrow from themselves and settle via fees, enhancing stability and capital efficiency on Stellar. It also upgrades to Growing Liability Tokens for better interest tracking and ~30% performance gains. Launch delayed by a month, with community calls planned for December.