DeFi, payments, tokenization, Soroban, governance, and project launches — curated daily from publications, project blogs, and community channels across the Stellar blockchain ecosystem.
Stellar Development Foundation announces new Market Development leadership across six regions: Latin America, Brazil, Europe, Africa, Middle East, and APAC. The team will focus on converting Stellar's existing footprint into institutional adoption through region-specific knowledge and on-the-ground presence.
Figure Technology Solutions launched YLDS, an SEC-registered, USD-pegged stablecoin with yield on Stellar. The product combines stablecoin liquidity with money market returns for regulated fintechs and neobanks, marking the first yield-bearing dollar product on the network.
Normal Finance launches a non-custodial Stellar wallet with fiat on/off-ramps via Coinbase, Stripe, and MoneyGram, plus a coming high-yield savings account (7%+ APY) powered by DeFindex and Blend Capital. Backed by Stellar Development Foundation and Tim Draper at $4M valuation.
Arcane Finance is building a compliance-ready privacy layer on Stellar that enables private payments, payroll, and institutional transactions while maintaining auditability and regulatory controls through selective disclosure and pre-transaction compliance checks.
Guide comparing payment platforms for Latin American freelancers receiving international payments in 2026, highlighting Meru as a Stellar-based solution designed for the region with low fees, real US bank accounts, and DeFi savings features.
Wirex and Ultra Stellar launched native Stellar payment infrastructure built on Soroban, enabling stablecoin bank accounts, global card issuance, payouts, and yield directly on-chain for millions of users.
Stellar has selected Zebec to deploy real-time streaming payroll natively on its network, marking Zebec's first deployment outside Solana. The integration enables businesses to pay employees and contractors in USDC by the second, with access to 450,000+ MoneyGram locations for cash pickup globally.
CME Group announced plans to launch regulated futures contracts for Cardano, Chainlink, and Stellar Lumens on February 9, pending regulatory approval. The expansion includes both standard and micro contract sizes, offering institutional and retail clients new tools for price risk management and market exposure.
COCA's 2025 review highlights its transformation from a crypto wallet to a stablecoin banking ecosystem with massive growth in users, card volume, and $COCA token value. Key achievements include Stellar integrations for USDC/EURC, a Series A with Stellar Development Foundation, and product launches like COCA 2.0 and rewards. The company outlines ambitious 2026 plans including Apple Pay, non-custodial accounts, and global expansion.
Denelle Dixon interviews Ben Milne, founder and CEO of Brale, about building regulated stablecoin infrastructure. Brale enables companies to issue and operate fiat-backed stablecoins without building their own banking, compliance, or blockchain stack, dramatically lowering barriers to entry from ~$100M to near-zero.
At Stellar House Miami, a panel featuring leaders from Boundless and Wormhole discussed how privacy and openness can coexist and reinforce each other in blockchain. The conversation highlighted a privacy-centered tech stack combining Stellar for settlement, Boundless for computation, and Wormhole for interoperability to serve institutional finance.
COCA's November 2025 monthly update highlights strong growth with 85% sustained active card user expansion, 45% increase in new card orders, and 22% rise in transaction volume. Key achievements include a Stellar Foundation feature spotlight, shortlisting for BeInCrypto Awards, launch on Aurora (NEAR), and vibrant community campaigns. Product updates enhanced transparency, multi-chain deposits, and global language support.
Faraday, Range's unified platform, streamlines stablecoin routing, risk management, compliance, and analytics compared to multi-vendor stacks like 0x, LI.FI, TRM Labs, and Dune. It offers a single API supporting chains including Stellar, reducing integration overhead and improving efficiency for fintechs like AcmePay. The article details advantages across routing, risk, data, and maintenance dimensions.
U.S. Bank is testing stablecoin issuance on Stellar, choosing the network for its compliance features including asset-freeze controls, trust lines, and ability to handle 1,000+ transactions per second. The pilot signals banks are moving toward tokenized settlement infrastructure.
U.S. Bank, the fifth-largest U.S. commercial bank, has begun testing custom stablecoin issuance on Stellar with PwC and the Stellar Development Foundation. The pilot explores how Stellar's asset freezing and transaction reversal capabilities can meet regulatory and compliance requirements for mainstream bank adoption.
Stellar Meridian 2025 in Rio showcased the evolution of Stellar's blockchain into production-grade infrastructure for payments, identity, RWAs, and stablecoins. Key sessions highlighted open systems, regulatory progress, privacy innovations, and real-world applications from partners like MoneyGram, Nubank, and Ondo Finance. LATAM and Africa emerged as blueprints for financial inclusion and efficient money movement.
This article explores how Franklin Templeton leveraged Stellar's open infrastructure to launch the first registered money market fund on a blockchain in 2021, demonstrating the "permissionless premium"—the ability to experiment, learn, and build without approval. The piece illustrates how open systems enable unexpected innovations, like Securrency's clawback feature that became critical for regulatory compliance, and create unpredictable adoption pathways that centralized platforms cannot.
Wirex, a Visa principal member, has launched dual-stablecoin settlement using USDC and EURC on Stellar, enabling real-time card payment settlement directly on-chain without intermediary banks.
Stellar's Q3 2025 showed strong ecosystem growth with 1B+ operations processed, $562M RWA market cap, and 71% DeFi TVL growth. Major institutional partnerships including Visa, PayPal, and MoneyGram expanded adoption, while developer activity surged 37% YoY and smart contract invocations hit 1M daily.
Visa is expanding stablecoin support to four new stablecoins on four unique blockchains, enabling banks to mint and burn them via its tokenized asset platform. The company already supports USDC, EURC, PYUSD, and USDG on Ethereum, Solana, Stellar, and Avalanche. This move highlights Visa's growing focus on stablecoins for cross-border payments, with stablecoin-linked card spending up fourfold year-over-year.
Spiko details their custom blockchain infrastructure for handling indexing, real-time queries, and transaction relaying across multiple networks including Stellar. They moved away from off-the-shelf solutions like The Graph due to reliability issues, building a robust system using RPC servers. This architecture improves efficiency, reduces bugs, and speeds up expansion to new chains.
Stronghold's SHx utility token launched on Kraken exchange, marking its first U.S. listing. The token powers payments, settlements, and governance on Stellar, with new multi-chain capabilities via the SHx Bridge connecting Stellar and Ethereum through Axelar.
Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon warns that blockchain risks repeating history by becoming controlled by corporate monopolies rather than remaining open infrastructure. She argues for permissionless networks like Stellar over closed private blockchains that concentrate power and extract value.
Wirex, a UK-based digital payments platform, partnered with Crossmint to upgrade from EOAs to smart wallets for global scalability. This enables programmable governance, multichain support including Stellar, and flexible custody models. The shift reduces vendor lock-in and accelerates product launches across retail and institutional offerings.
DCM launched the Transparent Network (TPN), a blockchain-based instant payment system built on Stellar, to modernize Ukraine's financial infrastructure. TPN enables banks to process payments in under five seconds with 70% reduction in acquiring costs for merchants and 60% reduction in transaction costs for institutions.