Stellar Ecosystem
News

CertiK explores two critical vulnerabilities in Soroban contract state storage: storing long-term data in Temporary storage risks irreversible loss when entries expire; relying on TTL expiry alone for nonce validation enables signature replay attacks. The article walks through vulnerable code patterns and secure alternatives using Persistent and Instance storage.

The CLARITY Act moving toward passage (now at 75% probability) would establish federal licensing for payment stablecoins, unlocking autonomous agents transacting at machine speed. Three competing architectures - x402 on Base, Soroban on Stellar, and Solana platforms - are racing to capture trillions of micro-transactions between machines.

Stellar Protocol 26, called Yardstick, went live on mainnet May 6, 2026. The upgrade introduces Quorum Freeze for governed incident response, checked arithmetic to prevent crashes on overflow, precise TTL control for state management, and improved cryptographic operations for zero-knowledge proofs.

Trustless Work is an Escrow-as-a-Service platform for stablecoins that lets developers integrate secure, non-custodial, milestone-based escrow payments without building smart contracts from scratch. The guide covers product fundamentals, use cases, developer tools, and a recommended builder journey.

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.

OpenZeppelin Stellar Contracts v0.7.0 released with governance voting support, ZkEmail DKIM registry, smart accounts rework, and reorganized RWA module with compliance guidelines and examples.

Stellar Protocol 25 (X-Ray) introduced BN254 elliptic curve and Poseidon hash function support, enabling zero-knowledge proofs as a first-class feature on Soroban. The article demonstrates a practical Sudoku game example using Noir circuits and Ultrahonk verification on Stellar smart contracts.

A technical deep-dive into Zero-Knowledge Proofs as a solution for blockchain scalability and privacy, featuring Noir DSL for circuit design and Soroban integration on Stellar. The author demonstrates production-ready ZK implementation through Cosmic Coder, a game that validates player progress on-chain using cryptographic proofs.

Untangled Loop enables delta-neutral vault strategies on Stellar by combining lending (Blend) and spot trading (Aquarius) to capture basis spreads between staking rewards and borrowing costs, with empirical analysis showing maximum vault capacity of ~500,000 XLM and execution limits of 50,000/day based on liquidity constraints.

x402, a protocol enabling autonomous AI agents to make micropayments without API keys or subscriptions, is now live on Stellar. The protocol uses HTTP 402 status codes to facilitate instant stablecoin payments, with Stellar chosen as the settlement layer due to its speed, low fees, and reliability.

A comprehensive technical exploration of privacy-preserving trading mechanisms on Stellar, comparing zero-knowledge proofs, multi-party computation, fully homomorphic encryption, and trusted execution environments. The authors built working prototypes using MPC and TEE approaches, with TEEs emerging as the most practical solution for production systems.

Hoops Finance released a major authentication update enabling passkey-controlled smart accounts on Soroban, allowing users to authorize DeFi operations via biometric authentication without seed phrases or browser extensions. The founder detailed months of foundational work building the custom authentication layer, demonstrating a complete DeFi lifecycle from account creation through multi-protocol atomic deposits and withdrawals.

Normal Finance completed a comprehensive security audit with Halborn, emphasizing that security must be a foundational design principle rather than a launch checkbox. The protocol prioritized clarity and modularity from inception to manage the elevated risks of index protocols handling pooled capital.

A technical guide demonstrating how to integrate Noir zero-knowledge circuits with Stellar's Soroban smart contracts using UltraHonk proofs and bb.js for proof generation.

The Stellar Development Foundation hosted a successful AMA on r/CryptoCurrency on January 28, reaching ~30k views and fielding 127 comments. The discussion covered Protocol 25 upgrades, ZK primitives, smart contracts, RWAs (which crossed $1B), payments infrastructure, and ecosystem growth.

Stellar's Protocol X-Ray upgrade (January 2026) introduces zero-knowledge proof verification capabilities enabling developers to build privacy-preserving applications while maintaining ledger transparency. The article demonstrates how association sets and view keys allow private transactions within compliance frameworks, combining financial privacy with regulatory oversight.

A developer guide comparing three zero-knowledge proof frameworks for the zkGaming on Stellar hackathon: Circom (traditional constraint-based circuits), Noir (Rust-like circuit language), and RISC Zero (full program execution in a zkVM). Each approach offers different trade-offs in expressiveness, developer experience, and on-chain verification complexity.

Spiko launched tokenized funds on Stellar in October 2025, detailing how they adapted their infrastructure to Soroban's unique constraints: TTL-based storage, sequence number limitations, and RPC data retention. They implemented channel accounts and fee bump transactions to achieve high throughput while maintaining clean authorization.

The Stellar Development Foundation introduced Meridian Pay, a production-ready smart wallet built on Stellar Mainnet that launched at Meridian 2025 in Rio de Janeiro. The wallet uses passkey-based authentication, eliminating seed phrases and passwords while enabling seamless onchain transactions with zero user-facing fees.

A comprehensive guide to issuing assets on the Stellar network, covering both classic asset issuance through a four-step process and advanced smart contract-based tokenization using Soroban. The article explains how Stellar's design enables efficient, low-cost asset tokenization with global accessibility.

Soundness Labs and Mysten Labs have developed PQ-Chain, a backward-compatible upgrade for EdDSA-based blockchains like Stellar, Solana, Sui, and Aptos that adds quantum resistance without hard forks or address changes. It leverages the existing quantum-secure seed in EdDSA keypairs, proven via PQ-NIZK proofs at the transaction and account levels. This opt-in approach provides immediate protection during the transition to native post-quantum signatures.