Stellar Ecosystem
News

Anke Liu, who has run the Stellar Community Fund since 2020, launches a Substack on governance in practice. Drawing from six years managing $38M+ in awards, she'll write about how voting mechanisms and capital allocation actually work—not how they're designed, but what happens when real money and incentives show up.

Stellar's curriculum becomes the first official blockchain program at VKU in Da Nang. Rise In and the university designed a structured three-phase course: foundations in blockchain and Stellar Core, hands-on building with Stellar's tools, and final demo day with 100+ students deploying dApps on Testnet.

The Stellar Development Foundation launched the Stellar Ambassador Program, a global initiative with four progression tiers: Explorer (onboarding), Contributor (workshops and mentoring), Builder (project deployment), and Ecosystem Leader (regional initiatives). The program connects local chapters to the Stellar Community Fund pipeline, offering up to $150K in XLM for projects moving from concept to mainnet.

On July 18, the largest Stellar hackathon ever held in APAC wrapped three simultaneous demo days across Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Vietnam's event drew 150+ attendees evaluating 75 project submissions, Indonesia's Yogyakarta attracted 400+ participants with 86 submissions, and the Philippines ran an eight-hour marathon with 56 live pitches at GCash. The program converted a hackathon into a builder pipeline: teams spent weeks shipping functional, user-facing financial applications addressing real payment and access problems in Southeast Asia. Finalists advance to the APAC Grand Finale on July 31, competing across Local Finance & Real World Access, DeFi & Ecosystem Composability, and Payments & Consumer Applications tracks for $60K in prizes.

Turkish-language developer handbook organizing Stellar resources across learning pathways. Covers journey to mastery program, starter projects (payment splitter, balance checker, wallet connect), smart contracts with Soroban, DApp development, oracles, privacy/ZK, and funding via SCF and InstAwards.

Stellar Wave 7 introduces an appeal process for rejected repository applications, cuts app loading times substantially on slower connections through frontend optimization, and improves the issue review bot to better assess CI failures. The update also includes 2.8x faster test transactions and unified support channels via a new status page.

A step-by-step guide to depositing assets into Sentora's vaults on the Stellar DeFi Hub. Covers wallet connection, vault selection, deposit confirmation, and position tracking for XLM, USDC, and PYUSD, with details on reward structures and early withdrawal consequences.

SDF publishes a practical guide to monitoring assets and positions on Stellar using Hypernative. Covers threat modeling, monitoring plan development, and two detailed examples: setting up large XLM transfer alerts and tracking Blend pool utilization thresholds.

SDF publishes a guide to onchain monitoring as essential operational practice for smart contract builders. Using threat modeling to identify what to watch, monitoring platforms keep protocols safe in production.

COZ supported StarBase Connect Day in Santos, Brazil, introducing Stellar to more than 140 students and regional innovators through an Ideathon. The event created a foundation for continued developer engagement in Baixada Santista, with a professional hackathon extending momentum into the region's tech community.

Rise In and Stellar Philippines hosted Build on Stellar at Philippine Blockchain Week, drawing 127 developers for hands-on Soroban training and ecosystem education. Day 1 featured technical workshops and hackathon winner showcases; Day 2 brought together founders, enterprises, and developers for collaborative panel discussions. The event also launched the APAC Stellar Hackathon with $60,000 in prizes.

Rise In and Stellar Philippines hosted the Build on Stellar bootcamp at Philippine Blockchain Week, drawing 127 developers for hands-on training on Stellar and Soroban smart contract development. The event showcased five hackathon winners and launched the APAC Stellar Hackathon with a $60,000 prize pool.

Alula publishes a technical guide to RWA-backed borrowing costs on Stellar, breaking down the full cost structure: kinked interest rates, reactive modifiers tied to pool utilization, one-time operation fees, and network transaction costs. Borrowing capacity is enforced atomically, and settlement is near-instant.

Vietnam is rapidly shifting from an emerging opportunity into a builder-driven market attracting global foundations. At DAVAS 2026, regulatory openness around fintech and blockchain, government alignment on innovation, and strong developer talent converged. Stellar and Rise In show how direct founder support and mentorship create sustainable ecosystem outcomes rather than pursuing growth metrics.

Stellar Passport created nearly 200 new wallets at Istanbul's post-hackathon event, demonstrating how experiential marketing drives real ecosystem onboarding. A single QR scan gives users a passkey-secured wallet with instant access.

Istanbul Blockchain Week brought the Stellar community together through the Build on Stellar Hackathon and Sunset Party, drawing 80 builders to engage with the network's growing ecosystem and each other.

Stellar Security Portal redesigned for June 2026 with threaded comments on vulnerability reports, community ratings for protocols and auditors, and major performance improvements. Contributor access expanded beyond the Pilot tier, allowing SCF members and navigators to add and edit audits. The portal now tracks nearly 700 vulnerabilities ecosystem-wide.

Tellus Cooperative hosted Stellar Academy in Temuco, Chile, bringing 50+ participants together for hands-on smart contract training. The event centered on Stellar Passport, a Web3 identity tool that participants configured in real-time, demonstrating accessible onboarding for the Stellar ecosystem.

A 12-week ambassador program at iDEAUFRO in southern Chile introduces students from diverse backgrounds to Stellar blockchain and Web3 development. The program uses Stellar Passport for identity management and project tracking, emphasizing that blockchain extends far beyond cryptocurrency to enable open, accessible global finance.

This article explains the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) and its innovative use of quorum slices and Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) to achieve decentralized consensus. It details how SCP enables Stellar to operate with high security, low costs, and high performance while promoting organic network growth through open participation.

This guide explains how to receive and send USDC, XLM, EURC, and other tokens on the Stellar blockchain using HOT Wallet. It highlights HOT Wallet's advantages like free asset activation, protection against fund loss, full support for claimable balances, and low fees. The tutorial covers step-by-step processes for deposits, transfers, and claiming balances, making Stellar accessible for beginners.

This article explains the multi-layer architecture of modern Web3 blockchains, from Layer 0 foundations to Layer 3 specialized applications. It covers key examples like Cosmos, Ethereum, Optimism, and briefly mentions Stellar among supported L1 networks in the HOT Wallet. The piece promotes a multi-chain wallet for seamless interaction across these layers.

A retrospective on Stellar's 2025 hackathon ecosystem, highlighting how events evolved from weekend competitions into community-driven onboarding infrastructure. The article details 64 IRL events, 8,820 developer participants globally, and a shift toward long-term builder retention through mentorship and composability-focused hackathons.

This article provides a comprehensive Spanish-language guide to Stellar Community Fund (SCF) 7.0, explaining its funding process, key changes, and application steps for builders in the Stellar ecosystem. It covers the Interest Form entry point, three Build tracks (Open, Integration, RFP), tranche-based funding up to $150K-$300K in XLM, and practical tips for maximizing success. SCF emphasizes real products, execution, and community governance over mere ideas.

This article introduces Stellar blockchain as a solution to slow, expensive cross-border payments, highlighting its fast 3-5 second confirmations, minimal fixed fees, and real-world focus via anchors and SCP consensus. It covers Stellar's origins, differences from other blockchains, tools like Stellar Laboratory for testnet experimentation, and the recent Soroban smart contracts launch. The piece promotes the first episode of 'Hola Stellar' video series for beginners.

This article reviews top DeFi portfolio trackers for 2026, including CoinLedger, DeBank, Zapper, Plena Finance, and Bitwave, emphasizing their role in managing complex DeFi assets across chains. It highlights essential features like multi-chain support, real-time data, and tax integration. The piece promotes Hoops Finance AI Copilot for Stellar ecosystem insights.

Rise In's November 2025 monthly update highlights record-breaking HackStellar Istanbul with 52 projects, over 250 new projects from India events, and expansion into Vietnam. Top winning projects include Stellar x402 for HTTP micro-payments, Reset DeFi yield aggregator, and Sublayer subscription manager. Globally, over 300 projects and 1,300 builders are driving Stellar ecosystem growth.