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USDC has gone live on the Stellar network. At launch, Stellar USDC is immediately available on Stellar's decentralized exchange, accessible to any Stellar account through integrated wallets (Lobstr, Solar, StellarPort, StellarX, and StellarTerm), and tradeable across Stellar's ecosystem of more than 9,000 assets including stablecoins like NGNT, BRLT, ARST, EURT, TZS and ZAR.

Some of the nodes used to validate transactions on the Stellar Lumens blockchain went offline on April 6, reportedly leading exchanges to halt withdrawals as certain transactions failed even as others got through. However, Stellar issued a statement that "the Stellar network is still online, and transactions are continuing to be processed." Later that day they reported that all validators were back online. and the root cause of the incident was being investigated.

The price of Stellar Lumens (XLM) shot up 60% 24 hours following an announcement by the project's developers that a new version of the Stellar public network protocol had been implemented by validators. Initially forked from Ripple Labs protocol by Jed McCaleb and launched in July 2014, Stellar seeks to lessen the cost of cross-border payments using blockchain. The project is particularly focused on serving unbanked or underbanked regions of the world where access to traditional financial services is either nonexistent or prohibitively costly.

The Stellar Signer Card uses multisignature technology to maximize the security of digital assets issued on the Stellar network. It connects to smartphones with near-field communication (NFC) technology which provides an instant connection. In the LOBSTR Vault app the user chooses any transaction and holds the card under the smartphone. A signed transaction will then be sent to the Stellar network automatically.

Germany's Bankhaus von der Heydt (BVDH) has issued a Euro stablecoin (EURB) on the Stellar network with the collaboration of Bitbond, a German tokenisation and digital asset custody technology provider. With the go-live on Stellar, Bitbond also integrates the stable coin into the securitization platform developed for BVDH, including the automatic mining and burning of tokens. The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) has already provided their approval for Bitbond to issue tokenized bonds on Stellar.

Coinbase has announced that it is giving away 1 billion Stellar Lumens (XLM) (about $106m) to users that are willing to study the Stellar protocol.

Flare Networks has announced that it will integrate Stellar Lumens (XLM) with its smart contract platform, thereby offering compatibility with the Ethereum blockchain. Users will be able to create XLM-backed tokens and use those tokens with Ethereum-based DeFi projects. While Stellar already supports native smart contracts, its own contracts are not compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Flare Networks has previously announced integration with XRP (XRP), Litecoin (LTC), and Dogecoin (DOGE).

he Stellar project released the 13th version of its core protocol on June 13th. Network validators will vote on whether to upgrade the network on June 18th. Like XRP, Stellar does not use Proof-of-work or Proof-of-Stake but uses its own unique approach to solve the Byzantine generals problem called the Federated Byzantine Agreement. The protocol changes focus on three key Core Advancement Protocols, Fee bumps, Fine-grained control of asset authorization, and First-class multiplexed accounts.

Latin American stablecoin issuer Anclap is expanding its Stellar-based stablecoin network by launching a new stablecoin in Peru. Pegged to the Peruvian sol (PEN), the new stablecoin is designed to enable instant transactions across Anclap's network, including conversions in other fiat currencies as well as any other digital asset. Called the "digital sol," the stablecoin is said to be 100% backed by local fiat currency and is available on the Stellar network to be integrated into any platform, and exchangeable against several foreign currencies, including Argentine peso, Brazilian real, US dollars and the euro.

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has recently become a minority investor in MoneyGram International (MGI) during its go-private transaction with Madison Dearborn Partners (MDP). https://stellar.org/blog/sdfs-investment-in-moneygram-international

MoneyGram launched its stablecoin-powered payment channel, giving users the ability to send USD Coin (USDC) payments worldwide that can be withdrawn as cash by recipients. The service is being rolled out across several key remittance markets, including Canada, the United States, Kenya and the Philippines. Global cash-out functionality will be available by the end of June. To encourage adoption, the USDC transfer service will carry zero fees for the first 12 months. The new transfer service was built on the Stellar (XLM) blockchain and allows Stellar wallet users to send USDC to recipients around the world.

The Stellar Development Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of the Stellar blockchain network announced a $5m investment in Abra, a leading cryptocurrency wallet and exchange application, as part of an overall strategic partnership between the two organizations.

"Stellar is an open-source, decentralized blockchain network that was designed with asset issuance in mind. It offers the interoperability and flexibility of a permissionless ledger while possessing built-in capabilities to ensure security, certainty, and control - as with a centralized or permissioned ledger. That combination makes it particularly well-suited for issuance of CBDCs. "

Ukrainian commercial bank TASCOMBANK, and Bitt, the firm behind the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and Central Bank of Nigeria central bank digital currency pilots, have launched a pilot project to issue an electronic hryvnia on Stellar. The pilot will test the digital currency on the use cases of programmable payroll for public employees at Diia, an IT solutions enterprise, as well as for peer-to-peer payments and merchant payments. The project is being implemented under the supervision of the National Bank of Ukraine and with the support of the Ministry of Digital Transformation.

Stellar CEO Denelle Dixon has said that her company is still working with Bitt on Tascombank's digital hryvnia  project despite the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The last significant update on the project was published in December 2021, when it was stated that they would utilize Stellar to pilot a digital version of the Ukrainian hryvnia. To be clear, this is not a central bank digital currency (CBDC) project. The only connection with the National Bank of Ukraine is that is being conducted under the supervision of the central bank.

Payments giant Western Union (WU) is partnering with Stellar (XLM) collaborator Thunes to enable WU clients to transfer funds directly to mobile wallets globally.

The choice of Stellar is a bit surprising given that IBM has been working with the Linux Foundation on Hyperledger Fabric for years. But Hyperledger Fabric is permissioned, private distributed-ledger technology. IBM wanted something more open that any organization could join if it met certain criteria. In World Wire, IBM has created kind of a virtual private network within Stellar. Organizations can register assets and become part of the network, but IBM carefully vets each participant and validator. By contrast, Ripple says it does not know who runs the validator nodes on its distributed ledger. It's really about knowing the validators, but without creating this walled garden that you have to have special permission to join.

Stellar, whose lumens token is currently the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, went down entirely for around 110 minutes on May 15.

Messaging app Signal, which now has around 40 million users, is exploring the addition of payments into the app. Significant engineering resources have reportedly been devoted to integrating privacy-focused Stellar blockchain-based payment system MobileCoin into Signal. Adding credence to this story is that Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike serves as a technical adviser to MobileCoin, although he played it down, saying that the company had only done some "design explorations" around the idea.

The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the Stellar Development Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation, within which they will work on the development of a strategy for virtual assets in Ukraine. The focus of the partnership will be on development of virtual asset markets, implementing stablecoin and regulation, and developing the Central Bank in Ukraine's digital currency (e-hryvnia).