Stellar Ecosystem
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Stellar Quest Live Series 6 launches February 15th with monthly Soroban-based challenges. Participants compete across three categories (Fast, Cheap, Out of Control) for USDC rewards and NFT badges, with leaderboards remaining open indefinitely.

Stellar Development Foundation announced a $10 million Soroban-focused awards program through the Stellar Community Fund, offering developers up to $150,000 in XLM to build smart contracts, DeFi protocols, and dApps on Soroban ahead of its mainnet launch.

The Stellar Development Foundation published its 2023 Strategic Roadmap, prioritizing utility as the growth driver through three building blocks: making innovation easy, winning over builders, and focusing on real-world solutions to strengthen network effects.

The Stellar Development Foundation launched Sorobanathon: Equinox, the next phase of its $100M Soroban Adoption Fund. Running from February 3 to April 1, developers can earn 25 to 10,000 XLM for submitting Soroban tools, tutorials, bug reports, and content.

This article explains why Stellar requires rigorous testing of blockchain upgrades before deployment to mainnet, and details how Stellar Supercluster—an automated testing framework—enables developers to validate code changes in simulated network environments.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q4 2022 report highlighting major achievements including Soroban smart contracts launching on Futurenet, the Sorobanathon program exceeding targets, Stellar Quest Live Series 5 reaching record participation with 2k+ new developers, and the introduction of regulated stablecoins GYEN and ZUSD to the network.

Stellar is introducing BucketListDB, a new unified storage mechanism that replaces its dual database system. The upgrade cuts disk usage by 45%, increases read speeds 400%, and halves validator startup time, preparing the network for Soroban's mainnet launch and continued growth.

Stellar Development Foundation explains why Soroban's initial release uses the WASMI interpreter instead of a JIT compiler, citing security concerns, simplicity, and the complexity of integrating JIT with blockchain-specific requirements like metering.

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's 2022 year-in-review highlights major milestones: 7M+ network accounts, Soroban smart contracts launching mid-2023, MoneyGram Ramps enabling cash-to-crypto conversion, and Stellar Aid Assist delivering humanitarian aid via blockchain.

Sorobanathon: First Light, the inaugural program of the $100M Soroban Adoption Fund, concluded December 15th with 59 technical submissions from 27 developers and 93,600 XLM distributed. Highlights include smart contracts for DAOs, lotteries, Dutch auctions, and developer tools, plus NFT art contributions for Stellar Quest Live Series 5.

Stellar Quest Live Series 5 concluded after a year-long hiatus, attracting 2,344 unique accounts and distributing over 1 million XLM across six Soroban-focused challenges. The series was the most successful to date, driving 50+ submissions to Sorobanathon: First Light despite technical challenges and XLM farming issues.

Synced's December 2022 development log outlines aims to release dashboards on their dev web app, learn Rust and Soroban, and test a simple DAO contract. Progress includes merging dashboards into the main product and gaining comfort with Rust, noting Soroban's simplicity. The log is signed by Tejas.

Stellar Quest Live Series 5 celebrates community resilience through memorable bugs and breakthroughs. From crashed anchors to Futurenet peer limits, the Lumenaut volunteer team has repeatedly turned infrastructure failures into network improvements while maintaining humor and camaraderie.

The Stellar Newsletter highlights recent ecosystem developments including Soroban smart contracts live on Futurenet with a $100M developer fund and Sorobanathon. It covers Meridian 2022 on-demand sessions, Stellar Quest Live Series 5, bridge bounty grants, and the new Anchor Platform. Additional updates include stablecoin launches, SDF investments in NetXD and Wave, and community fund discussions.

Stellar Quest Live Series 5 returns after a year hiatus, featuring six Soroban smart contract challenges running November 10 through December 1. Developers compete in real-time quests to earn NFT badges and share 534k XLM in rewards.

Starbridge protocol uses Stellar's existing features to enable secure token bridging between Ethereum and Stellar without smart contracts. The team formally verified the protocol with Ivy to ensure users cannot double-spend or exploit withdrawal and refund mechanisms.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q3 2022 report highlighting major progress: Soroban smart contracts launched on futurenet, a $100M adoption fund was announced, Meridian 2022 conference drew 380+ attendees, and the Anchor Platform entered final testing.

Soroban, Stellar's smart contracts platform, is now live on Futurenet. The SDF launched Sorobanathon: First Light, the first program under its $100M Soroban Adoption Fund, offering developers 250-3,000 XLM rewards for creating tutorials, code examples, and documentation.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced a $100M Soroban Adoption Fund to support developers building on Soroban, its native smart contracts platform now live on Futurenet. The fund includes Sorobanathon: First Light, an incentive program rewarding developers for testing and providing feedback.

Synced's development log details progress on new dashboards and bounty features, with ongoing experimentation with Stellar Soroban smart contracts. Key activities include merging dashboards into core, preparing for a Shenzhen innovation competition, and attending the Stellar Meridian conference. The log spans from early October to mid-November 2022.

Stellar's developer documentation received a major overhaul with new structure, reorganized sections including a new Fundamentals and Concepts area, and an expanded Encyclopedia. The update aims to improve the developer experience with iterative improvements rolling out over coming months.

Stellar Protocol 19 enables payment channels through CAP-21 and CAP-40, allowing off-chain transactions at 1.19 million payments per second while maintaining cryptographic security. Starlight demonstrates this capability with only three on-chain transactions needed regardless of channel activity.

This article explains how to integrate the Stellar Network into SME businesses, focusing on public-key cryptography, federation for human-readable addresses, and QR code support in Stellar wallets. It highlights Stellar's advantages over Ethereum ENS and compares it to Bitcoin's bip 0021 payment URIs. Examples include smart anchors like Flutterwave for simplified bank integrations.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q2 2022 report highlighting progress on three strategic pillars: Protocol 19 went live enabling payment channels, Project Jump Cannon smart contracts advanced with WASM, and ecosystem funding reached 10.5M XLM across 15 projects through the Stellar Community Fund's 10th round.

Stellar network successfully upgraded to Protocol 19 on June 8, 2022, introducing new transaction preconditions and signer types that enable payment channels, blockchain bridges, and key recovery solutions.

Deep dive into Stellar's native multi-signature feature, exploring how m-of-n multisig enables advanced use cases like multi-party consensus, pre-authorized transactions, commitment schemes, and proof-of-work incentives without smart contracts.