Stellar Weekly Roundup: Week of Oct 30, 2026

MetaMask made Stellar a default network on October 29, automatically attaching a Stellar address to every account worldwide, and Curve Finance deployed its StableSwap AMM on Stellar mainnet in its first native integration outside EVM chains. Both announcements landed at Meridian 2026 in Lisbon, where SDF also unveiled Project Thruput, an experimental execution model benchmarked at 7 million payments per second, and opened a discussion on redesigning XLM utility around onchain rewards. Spiko's SAFO fund crossed $2.38 billion to become the world's largest tokenized fund, Securitize announced plans to integrate its regulated tokenization platform with Stellar, and the network's total tokenized asset base approached $5 billion.

Institutional Momentum at Meridian 2026

MetaMask's integration makes it the first major self-custodial wallet to ship Stellar as a native default, deriving a Stellar address from each user's recovery phrase. Stellar processed $55.6 billion in annual payment volume in the period cited by the announcement. Curve Finance brings its audited StableSwap AMM to Soroban for low-slippage stablecoin trading; founder Michael Egorov cited institutional demand. FXSwap for higher-volatility pairs follows after audit.

Securitize, the tokenization platform behind products from Apollo, BlackRock, BNY, Hamilton Lane, KKR, and VanEck, announced it plans to integrate with Stellar. Janus Henderson Investors and Centrifuge launched JQQQ, the first blockchain-native fund tracking the Nasdaq-100 Index, issued on Stellar.

Spiko's SAFO reached $2.38 billion on October 23, surpassing BlackRock's BUIDL and Circle's USYC in seven months, with more than 10,000 investors and 31 consecutive weeks of growth. Stellar's tokenized asset base approached $5 billion by the close of Meridian, up from under $1 billion in January. SDF invested in Marketnode to expand institutional RWA distribution across Asia-Pacific, where Marketnode distributes products from Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and others. Taurus added Soroban smart contract support to its PROTECT and CAPITAL platforms, enabling banks to manage SEP-41 and Stellar Asset Contract-based tokenized assets.

Archax launched €GOVY, bringing its perpetual tokenized government bill product to the eurozone: maturing proceeds auto-roll without manual reinvestment, and the bills trade 24/7 as institutional working collateral. Archax and Pontoro launched the first Automated Liquidity Pool on Stellar, pairing liquid money market assets with private fund interests under rules-based pricing to give tokenized private markets a redemption layer. Arcane Finance and Predicate introduced the Enterprise Privacy Stack, combining confidential payments with transaction screening and controlled investigative access, so banks and asset issuers can keep balances and counterparties confidential while staying compliant.

Protocol and Developer Tooling

At Meridian, SDF CPO Tomer Weller introduced a concept for rewarding XLM held, transacted, and settled onchain, drawing from the network's existing fee pool. Framed as an early discussion rather than a finalized protocol change, it generated an active GitHub thread on locked XLM rewards.

SDF also introduced Project Thruput, an experimental execution model that parallelizes transactions even when they touch the same state. Early benchmarks lift validator capacity from 1.18 million to 7.02 million payments per second, and the code is live on FutureNet as open source; how Thruput relates to Stellar's main network is not yet determined.

CAP-90 opened for comment, proposing custom signature payloads for Soroban account contracts to enable new nonce policies and modular account delegation. Certora's Sunbeam Prover identified CVE-2026-32322 in Soroban SDK 25.0.0-25.2.x: a field arithmetic bug where equal cryptographic values compared as unequal, affecting zero-knowledge proof comparisons in contracts including privacy pools. A one-line formal verification rule caught it before production. Rise In reported that Stellar is the only major blockchain growing full-time developers in 2026, at 6% growth, while Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana declined 20-56%. Monthly active developers are up 253% since January. SDF's Raven tool at raven.stellar.org gives AI agents a single endpoint for Stellar's full documentation and ecosystem context.

Wallet and Payment Infrastructure

SDF's browser extension wallet Freighter was rebranded to Varial, gaining a Discover directory of Stellar apps, integrated swap routing, and in-wallet NFT management. Blend DeFi integration is on the roadmap. WalletConnect expanded its Stellar support and launched WalletConnect Pay in Bermuda through Penrose Partners, with Premier Tickets as the first merchant.

Airtm and BVNK partnered to enable wallet-native payments across the Global South on Stellar, connecting Airtm's last-mile network with BVNK's stablecoin infrastructure, now under Mastercard, with rollout beginning Q4 2026. Movantis integrated Stellar as a digital settlement rail for cross-border payments, starting with USDC flows from the US to El Salvador; the provider handles $60 billion in annual volume across more than 90,000 payout locations.

Lightning Round

• Stellar Passport won the 2026 Stellar i³ Award for Impact (100,000 XLM) for its passkey-secured wallet that creates onchain identities via a single QR scan, no seed phrase required. Article
• HackMeridian 2026 wrapped in Lisbon on October 26; Drips Wave 11 ($100K USDC pool, launches November 18) and GrantFox (8,000+ builders, $200K+ distributed across 900+ projects) offer post-hackathon funding paths. Broadcast
• CV Labs Accelerator Demo Day at Meridian featured Kutana ($2M raise, 700+ African SME users), KREVIT ($150M in FX hedging flows, 100% monthly growth), and Sorted (1M+ downloads, non-custodial feature phone wallet). Broadcast
• VIA cross-chain messaging went live on Stellar mainnet: Soroban contracts can now exchange messages with EVM contracts to move stablecoins, RWAs, and contract calls across chains. Docs
• Stellar Expert announced a new unified API: one endpoint for network data, optimized for developers and AI agents. Announcement
• Noether DEX presented at Meridian: a Soroban-native perpetual futures exchange with 13 testnet markets and mainnet contracts deployed pending audit. noether.exchange
• Anchor CCTP SDK launched tooling to simplify CCTP integration for Stellar anchor developers, supported by the Instawards program. anchorcctp.dev
• Etherfuse Principal Token separates government bonds into fixed 1.00 tokens and accruing yield; Tala and Airtm are integrating across Mexico, Brazil, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, and Colombia. etherfuse.com
• SDF CEO Denelle Dixon covered U.S. Bank's USBDC pilot, Franklin Templeton's five-year partnership, and the Genius Act regulatory environment on the Deep Dive Podcast. YouTube
• Stellar is on the DTCC's 2027 integration roadmap alongside Circle's Arc blockchain, per reporting by Thinking Crypto. YouTube
• SCF Build Award applications close November 8, with up to $150K in XLM available for builders. Tellus

Upcoming Events

• October 30: Tu idea toma forma: propuesta de valor y app en blockchain, Bogotá, Colombia
• October 30: Stellar Town Hall, Discord
• October 31: Stellar GameJam: Code, Fight & Deploy, online
• October 31: Stellar Meet Up Asaba, Asaba, Nigeria
• November 2: Multichain Day | Devcon Mumbai 2026, Mumbai, India
• November 5: Stellar Academy: Conecta tu app a Stellar, Temuco, Chile
• November 5: Stellar Developers Meeting, Discord
• November 6: Stellar Town Hall, Discord
• November 9: Riserva London: Digital Assets under pressure, Fireside with Fieldfisher, London, UK
• November 12: Stellar Academy: Soroban en práctica, Temuco, Chile

Ambassador Activity

Starmaker LATAM ran Cripto Cantina sessions in Costa Rica, an After Office in Lima, and university campus visits across Mexico and Argentina. Stellar Brazil held a 48-person ambassador meeting and showcased projects including TroqPay, Zimbo, and PigFi heading into Meridian. Stellar Philippines reached 19 projects approved for $95,000 in Instawards grants, with nine completing their first 30-day sprints. Stellar Türkiye brought six ambassadors to HackMeridian, including Noether DEX founder Yahya Emir Soyer, who presented on the Meridian main stage. Stellar Chile ran Coffee Break sessions and Stellar Academy workshops in Temuco and co-organized a Global Mixer side event in Lisbon.

What to Watch

• Protocol 30 (Bell) testnet activates November 3 ahead of a November 23 mainnet target, bringing quantum-safe signatures and improved smart account infrastructure.
• SCF Build Award applications close November 8.
• Drips Wave 11 launches November 18 ($100K USDC pool); project maintainers can onboard repos by November 7.
• Curve FXSwap for higher-volatility and FX pairs is pending audit before mainnet deployment on Stellar.