Stellar Weekly Roundup: Week of Oct 23, 2026

Ascend and M1X Global completed the first institutional repo transaction on Stellar, using USDM1, a sovereign bond secured by U.S. Treasuries, as collateral across 72 automated hourly rolls. SDF published Bell, Protocol 30, and the required SDK releases shipped ahead of the November 3 testnet vote. USDT0 passed $200 million in volume on Stellar in under 10 weeks.

Institutional Finance and Stablecoins

Ascend and M1X Global's repo transaction, announced October 23, ran entirely on Stellar smart contracts: 72 consecutive hourly financing rolls over three days, with automated collateral release on repayment.

Stellar's Q3 report recorded $25.1 billion in stablecoin volume, up 314% year over year, $4.1 billion in RWAs, and 3,922 monthly active developers. USDT0 reached $200 million in volume on Stellar in under 10 weeks, and Stellar added $75.5 million in stablecoin market cap in the seven days to October 20, second only to Arc. Zebec now runs payroll on Stellar for 20-plus enterprise accounts, with more than $5 million in payroll volume.

Through LI.FI, wallets and apps like Jumper can now route assets from any chain into Centrifuge's deJTRSY and deJAAA on Stellar in one step, and deJTRSY is among the first markets with limit orders on Spectra. A published video has U.S. Bank's digital assets lead explaining why the bank issued USBDC on Stellar in September 2026 rather than a permissioned chain.

SDF co-signed a joint SEC comment letter with Chainlink Labs, Hedera, Aptos Labs, Ava Labs, and the Cardano Foundation urging codification of the "digital commodity" classification in proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, with XLM among 16 assets in a supporting footnote tied to CFTC-regulated futures.

Bell, Protocol 30

SDF published the Bell announcement and an upgrade guide on October 20. Three changes ship together: muxed contract addresses (W strkey format) let a single contract serve multiple customers; ML-DSA post-quantum signature verification comes to Soroban; and millisecond ledger timing replaces second-resolution timestamps. Testnet vote: November 3. Mainnet vote: November 23. Existing contracts are unaffected.

The SDKs are out: JS SDK v17.3.0 and Go SDK v0.8.0, plus Rust, Horizon, RPC, and Galexie releases. Older SDKs may fail to decode Protocol 30 ledgers, so upgrading before the testnet vote is required. Community SDKs have tracking issues open.

A CAP-89 discussion opened for host functions for invoker-less authorization, prompted by a delegation security advisory in the OpenZeppelin contracts repo. A draft SEP for signed messages from contract accounts also opened, the C-address equivalent of SEP-53. The Stellar developer docs got a redesign and a new landing page.

Privacy Tooling

OpenZeppelin v0.8.0 ships confidential tokens implementing ERC-7984: a confidential layer for any SEP-41 token, with private balances and transfer amounts verified on-chain with ZK proofs. The release adds seven T-REX compliance modules and updated smart account key management, and the announcement says the contracts are audited and mainnet-ready. Upgrades from earlier versions involve breaking changes to smart account signers and total supply tracking.

Cyphras v0.5.0 brought experimental private XLM payments to mainnet: the recipient shares a private address, and the chain shows deposits and withdrawals, not who paid whom or how much. The Aha Company is building Nido, an open-source smart account wallet opened with Face ID or a fingerprint, with spending limits, scoped dApp permissions, and guardians. Pamphile Roy called it the first post-quantum wallet on Stellar; it runs on testnet.

DeFi and Wallets

Script3 handed remediation of the Comet BLND-USDC incident to Zenith Protocols on October 21, and the first round paid out on October 23: 25,214,717.71 BLND and 201,805.65 USDC recovered by white hats went to 510 recipients, proportional to positions just before the August 25 exploit. Accounts that could not receive the assets directly got claimable balances.

XOXNO's swap aggregator now routes Stellar swaps for the xPortal wallet's 2.5 million-plus users, covering Soroban assets. XOXNO Lending also went live on MCP on mainnet, so any agent can query it and get transactions ready to sign, with no API key. Vanna, an SCF #38 Build Award recipient ($145K), launches testnet next month with leveraged borrowing in a cross-margin account that deploys across Blend, Soroswap, and Aquarius. SODAX now lets users fund Peridot's Stellar markets from Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and other networks.

Stellar was spotted as a supported network in MetaMask on October 19, per a user report. LOBSTR 15.7.0 lets users add any compatible Soroban contract token by its C-address, and the token stays in the portfolio at a zero balance.

Builder Programs

Nineteen Philippine teams received $95,000 in Stellar Instawards; the first nine 30-day sprints shipped transaction safety tooling, an AI feedback marketplace, gaming infrastructure with smart contract escrow, and developer utilities. In Turkey, fifteen builders received $75,000, with SprintOS and Beaver402 already piloting on Stellar mainnet.

SCF's next Public Goods Award votes on Tansu mainnet, with Pilots claiming an NFT that holds their voting power and role. Tellus Cooperative and Stellar Passport's Find Your Way hackathon named its winners after drawing 292 builders and 120 submissions, with 5,000 USDC in prizes.

Lightning Round

• SCF #46: Full submissions are due November 8 for up to $150K XLM in non-dilutive funding; new RFPs come after Meridian with a later deadline. Application guide
• Normal Finance names Niko Gorjan CTO: Led three product phases including a DeFi savings account on Stellar via Blend Capital. Substack
• Gaian: Live in six countries with $200K-plus processed; users pay local QR codes in USDC while merchants receive local currency. Rise In
• Chainlink oracle guide: Data Feeds (push, nine assets, 24-hour heartbeat) versus Data Streams (pull, for latency-sensitive apps like perpetuals). stellar.org
• PaltaLabs DeFi dashboard: Open Dune dashboard tracking eight Stellar DeFi protocols weekly since February 2024. Dune
• StellarBin DLMM: Concentrated liquidity market-maker on Stellar focused on LP value. app.stellarbin.xyz
• Fystack custody infra: MPC-based custody and wallet infrastructure for fintechs, including an open-source MPC wallet for Stellar. Rise In Builder Spotlight
• LoliPay: Non-custodial IDR-to-USDC swaps on Soroban with P2P settlement via local rails. lolipay.app
• Lumexo on Android: The Stellar wallet launched its Android app. X
• RV Security Office Hours concluded: Five-week program, 30-plus teams with 1:1 Soroban security researcher time, 50-plus developers at fuzzing workshops. X

Upcoming Events

• October 23-26 - PURA VIDA IDEATHON, Costa Rica
• October 25-26 - HackMeridian 2026, ONE16, Lisbon
• October 26 - Padel Warm-Up: Meridian, Lisbon
• October 26 - Global Mixer, Lisbon
• October 27 - The Meridian Cup / Made to Move, Kartódromo do Montijo
• October 27 - Meridian Cruise, Tagus River, Lisbon
• October 27 - Marketers in the Arena: Lisbon Edition, Casa Capitão, Lisbon
• October 27 - Tokenize This Lisbon, Lisboa
• October 27 - Made to Move with Olympians, Meridian side event
• October 27 - Workshop: Usos empresariales de stablecoins, Ciudad de México
• October 27 - Riserva Lisbon: Stablecoins over wine, Lisboa
• October 27 - DeFi x RWA: Cocktail Hour, Lisboa
• October 27-28 - Blendy's Booze Brokerage w/ Zenex, Lisboa
• October 28-29 - Meridian 2026, Convento do Beato, Lisbon
• October 28 - Coffee Break #4: Construye, conecta y crece en Stellar, Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco, Chile
• October 28 - Meridian: 5K, City Sights and Pastéis, Lisbon
• October 28-29 - Stellar Coworking, Casa Capitão, Lisbon
• October 28 - Noah X Stellar, Lisbon
• October 28 - VIP Dinner with Stellar, Boys Club, and WalletConnect, Lisboa
• October 28-29 - Zenex Liquidation Lagoon w/ YBC, Lisboa
• October 29 - Cripto Cantina: Stellar Session #3, San José, Costa Rica
• October 29 - RedStone x Credora Lisbon Run, Lisboa
• October 29 - Stellar x CV Labs Accelerator: Demo Day, Lisbon
• October 29 - Capital Markets, Onchain with Stellar, New York
• October 29 - Meridian Afters, Rūmu, Lisbon
• October 30 - A Normal Beach Day at Cabo da Roca and Praia da Ursa, Portugal
• October 30 - Stellar Town Hall, Discord
• October 31 - Stellar Meet Up Asaba, Asaba, Nigeria
• November 2 - Multichain Day at Devcon Mumbai, Mumbai
• November 5 - Stellar Academy: Conecta tu app a Stellar, Temuco, Chile

Ambassador Activity

Indonesia's chapter spotlighted four Instawards-funded tools: Evergreen (Soroban TTL monitor), Skyhook CCTP (programmable USDC delivery), Wasit (x402 flow verifier), and SorobanGuard (SEP-41 compliance checker). StarMaker LATAM ran Cripto Cantina sessions in San José, a demo day at Universidad Fidélitas, and ideathons at three Morelos universities, with top UTEZ teams continuing into Blockchain Builders 101 Mexico. In Bolivia, 17 Stellar Elite teams finished the program's first edition with a product registered on Stellar. BAF and the Colombia chapter ran a second Ruta JaveBlockchain session at Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, students in Barranquilla left 11 projects at Stellar Campus, and Discover Stellar in Lima drew 50-plus attendees. Stellar Brazil profiled Caio Mattos, Pedro Pelicioni, and Wlad Mendes, hosted a building workshop in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, and drew 48 participants to its ambassador meeting. Chile held two Stellar Academy sessions at Universidad de La Frontera and a Road to Meridian event in Santiago. Stellar Türkiye's October meeting drew 47 participants.

What to Watch

• Bell testnet vote, November 3: Validators cast the first ballot on Protocol 30. Community SDK tracking issues show which libraries are ready ahead of the November 23 mainnet vote.
• Meridian 2026, October 28-29: Blend's state-of-the-protocol update said V3 details would come at the conference.
• Comet remediation: The first round distributed white-hat-recovered funds. Zenith Protocols is posting updates on any further rounds.
• Aquarius xSolvBTC vote: ICE holders decide by October 25, 23:59 UTC whether Solv's xSolvBTC joins the Asset Registry for AQUA emissions.
• SCF #46, November 8: Full submissions are due; new RFPs follow Meridian with a later deadline.