Stellar Weekly Roundup: Week of Sep 11, 2026

Adapter (Protocol 28) activated on Stellar Mainnet on September 16, delivering faster consensus under load, atomic fleet contract upgrades, and a standardized contract data migration path. Chainspect recorded Stellar averaging 211+ TPS across 100 consecutive blocks the following day, a new sustained-throughput record that rose to 216+ TPS by September 18. U.S. Bank published results from its first public pilot on Stellar, settling a cross-border payment between North America and Europe using USBDC through the bank's full compliance stack.

Protocol Upgrade and Network Performance

The validator network activated Adapter at 17:00 UTC on September 16 after a successful mainnet vote. The upgrade delivers faster consensus even under heavy load, atomic upgrades for fleets of contracts, and a safer standard for migrating contract data. Existing deployed contracts require no code changes; developers rebuild against Stellar JS SDK v17.0.0. The full upgrade post covers the mechanics.

Chainspect data recorded 211+ TPS averaged across 100 consecutive blocks on September 17, measuring sustained throughput rather than a single-moment peak. The figure rose to 216+ TPS on September 18.

CAP-87 moved to Awaiting Decision and CAP-88 entered Final Comment Period. SEP-41 received an update permitting additional event topics. A new discussion in stellar/stellar-protocol proposes a formal JS SDK Release and Support Policy decoupling SDK major versions from protocol upgrade cycles.

Institutional Adoption

U.S. Bank disclosed its first public pilot on Stellar: a live cross-border payment between North America and Europe using USBDC, the bank's proprietary stablecoin. The pilot tested the full transaction lifecycle including minting, payment, redemption, freezing, and clawback, using Stellar's native protocol controls and the bank's core compliance infrastructure. American Banker covered the pilot; Stellar's summary is here.

Zebec's payroll infrastructure now runs AllUnity's regulated euro stablecoin EURAU on Stellar for employee benefits distribution. The deployment marks Europe's first onchain government-defined benefit program, automating tax-compliant perks that employers previously distributed manually. Stellar's on-chain RWA market crossed $4 billion in Q3 2026, growing four times faster than the broader tokenization sector per a Gami Labs analysis. The Upshift earnUSDC vault crossed $25 million TVL.

Developer Infrastructure

Pyth Network launched on Stellar mainnet, streaming 3,500+ live price feeds from exchanges, market makers, and banks across equities, commodities, FX, and fixed income. Developers can now query real-time asset pricing with on-chain verification against Stellar's tokenized asset ecosystem.

LI.FI went live on Stellar, connecting Stellar builders to liquidity across 60+ blockchains through a single integration. The protocol serves over 1,000 enterprises; Jumper is the first live Stellar interface.

OpenZeppelin deployed its RWA Wizard on Stellar testnet, generating audited contracts for regulated digital securities under the ERC-3643 (T-REX) standard, with investor eligibility checks, transfer restrictions, and administrative controls. S&P Global announced an agreement to acquire OpenZeppelin; all open-source contracts and tooling remain publicly maintained.

The September 17 Stellar Developers Meeting featured Nethermind cryptographer Antonio Arriba on the Stellar Private Payment System (SPP), a privacy pool built on Soroban with ZK verifiers for Noir and RISC-Zero. Arriba covered SPP's compliance model: pool operators configure association sets to whitelist or blocklist addresses without exposing individual transaction details.

Builder Ecosystem

The Stellar Journey to Mastery program concluded its 6-month inaugural run with a demo day on September 11. Running February through August 2026, the program drew 5,000 total applications and produced 2,250 unique builders from 32 countries across 7,882 submissions, using a seven-level belt system to drive on-mainnet shipping over the hackathon cycle.

StarMaker LATAM and BAF Network announced travel and accommodation grants for LATAM builders attending Meridian in Lisbon (applications open), with a hackathon the week prior.

Basilic published a post-mortem on its SCF #44 Build Award, describing the B2B hybrid settlement infrastructure that routes fiat and stablecoin rails for Latin American merchants. Its first mainnet on/off-ramp operation completed in under three weeks. The SCF 45 community vote closed this week; award decisions are pending.

Lightning Round

• SODAX whitelisted 13 Robinhood tokenized stocks (AAPL, GME, TSLA, and others) across Robinhood Chain, Sonic, Stellar, and Hedera. (source)
• Mercuryo and Tangem are waiving platform fees on USDC and XLM purchases on Stellar for four weeks. (source)
• S&P Global entered an agreement to acquire OpenZeppelin; open-source contracts remain publicly maintained. (source)
• XOXNO added RedStone for price feeds on its Stellar lending protocol, covering tokenized assets, government bonds, stablecoins, and crypto. (source)
• NuVante tested a stablecoin clearing prototype on Stellar inside the Bank of England's RTGS synchronization lab in August 2026. (source)
• A Trustline Onboarder discussion is active in stellar/stellar-protocol for third-party trustline onboarding for classic assets. (source)
• A guide covers integrating Reflector's JavaScript oracle client into Next.js applications, including bigint handling and freshness tracking. (source)

Upcoming Events

• Sep 18: Stellar Town Hall (Discord, 20:00 UTC)
• Sep 18: Funding-Readiness Workshop: Deck, Architecture, Roadmap for Instawards/SCF (StarMaker LATAM)
• Sep 18: Meetup La Paz: Primer Meetup Stellar Elite, Utopía Cowork, Bolivia
• Sep 19: Hackathon Stellar Odyssey Peru, UNI and PUCP campuses, Lima/Virtual
• Sep 19: Argentina Builder Challenge: Checkpoint Mendoza, Mendoza
• Sep 21: Weekly Brazilian Ambassador Meeting (Discord)
• Sep 22: Stellar Security Workshop: Simbolik (Runtime Verification)
• Sep 22: Stellar Barrio: Iteration to Greatness, Tellus Coop, Santiago, Chile
• Sep 23: Stellar Use Cases and Building with AI, University of Science and Technology, Costa Rica
• Sep 24: Stellar Academy: De idea a prototipo, iDEAUFRO, Temuco, Chile
• Sep 24: Stellar Developers Meeting

Ambassador Activity

Stellar Philippines posted 8 updates highlighting builders in the Monthly Builder Program. StarMaker LATAM launched the Argentina Builder Challenge across five city hubs, with top performers eligible for Instawards grants up to $5,000 for three months. Stellar Chile ran two Stellar Academy sessions through Tellus Cooperative and hosted its weekly Community Call. Stellar Brazil held the STABLECOINS and PAYMENTS panel in Rio de Janeiro. Stellar Turkey covered Anchor integration ahead of its Pro Hackathon. Stellar Indonesia posted four ecosystem news updates.

What to Watch

• SCF 45 awards: Community vote closed this week; award announcements expected shortly.
• Simbolik workshop (Sep 22): Runtime Verification will walk through the formally-grounded Soroban WebAssembly debugger in its first public session.
• Meridian travel deadline: StarMaker LATAM and BAF Network applications for funded Lisbon travel close before Meridian; deadline not yet published.
• SPP public testnet: Nethermind is running technical and compliance tracks in parallel on the Stellar Private Payment System; a public testnet is the next expected milestone.