Stellar discussions by the Public Node community Public Node

JoeShon "Joe" Monroe from A Stellar World Podcast brings Public Node's Weekly Wrap-Up of Stellar-related news.

Coindesk teamed up with the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) to host a live webinar to discuss what to expect on the path to mainstream adoption and regulatory clarity. 

A SDF blog announces that the fintech company Stably makes financial transactions cheaper, faster, and more transparent with USDC.

The eight winners of the Stellar Community Seed Fund were announced this week.  The eight projects will share a pool of 5 million lumens (XLM). 

Last, Cryptonews reports that 1xBit integrates Stellar into their online gabling platform.  The website provides its users with over 100 games, 5,000 slots, and multiple sports, e-sports, and betting opportunities.
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JoeShon "Joe" Monroe from A Stellar World Podcast brings Public Node's Weekly Wrap-Up of Stellar-related news.

Denelle Dixon, CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation, is interviewed by Sue Rocco from Women to Watch Media.  Dixon says, "As the Mom of five boys, some days I feel really old, and other days I feel young." 

Dixon also posted a blog post that highlighted her two years with Stellar.  In the blog she says, "As I reflect on the last two years, I see a common thread of building resilience as we grow. And this resilience might be our most valuable quality moving forward. With each milestone and advancement, SDF and the Stellar network are expanding."

Tala, a leading digital financial services provider in emerging markets, announced today a new partnership with Visa (NYSE:V) to help underbanked populations participate in the crypto economy. Together with additional partners Circle and the Stellar Development Foundation, Tala will explore opportunities to make it easier for underbanked consumers to convert, store, and use crypto currencies, beginning with USDC, the stablecoin governed by the Centre Consortium.

Last, Denelle Dixon highlights the benefits of using Stellar in an article titled The Stellar Network: Powering an Open Network for Borderless Financial Infrastructure  on Gemini's Cryptopedia.  


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Daniel from Public Node interviews Steve Walker - the CEO and Co-Founder of Task.io.  After a quick introduction, Steve explains how Task leverages the Stellar.org blockchain technology to help further the missions of nonprofit organizations. 

Steve explains how Task uses the open and inclusive Stellar blockchain network to provide token rewards and to bring greater transparency of nonprofit activities to donors.  Steve provides two examples of how smart contracts can be utilized in the nonprofit space - one example of how token issuance can be used to transparently track activities and the other an example of how it can be used to bring donors together to fund a particular goal.  The ultimate goal being to develop a model that makes it impossible for a donor to say no. 

The discussion then moves deeper into smart contracts on Stellar, the development of Turing Signing Servers (TSS), and why Task ultimately selected Stellar over other blockchains.  Steve highlights the serendipity that Stellar has brought to Task, particularly in the areas of Stellar's first asset anchors. 

Steve makes a quick mention of its Blackbaud partnership and how cryptocurrency in general can initially be a little frightening for well-established organizations. Lastly, Steve explains some of the other areas where Task can be used outside its primary nonprofit organization focus.
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JoeShon "Joe" Monroe from A Stellar World Podcast brings Public Node's Weekly Wrap-Up of Stellar-related news.

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) provided updates on its response to Financial Action Task Force's  (FATF) draft guidance.

The SDF announced the Stellar Community Seed Fund finalists.  Through a series of blogs, the SDF will showcase the finalists and their accomplishments, motivations, and future plans.  The first two showcase projects are Litemint, OptionBlox, and YieldBlox.

BitGo - a company providing institutional digital asset custody, trading, and finance - announced that it now supports Stellar USDC.  "As the first custodian to support Stellar USDC, BitGo has opened the door for future partners and exchanges to offer USDC support as well, empowering more businesses to adopt and leverage this renowned stablecoin on an efficient and low cost network."

Lastly, ETFstream reports that 21Shares expands its roster of crypto Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) to Cardano (ADA) and Stellar (XLM).
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JoeShon "Joe" Monroe from A Stellar World Podcast brings Public Node's Weekly Wrap-Up of Stellar-related news.

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) released its Q1 2021 review.  A few of the highlights include launching USDC on the Stellar network, Enterprise Fund investments in Wyre, Cowrie Integrated Systems, and DSTOQ.   Release of Horizon 2.0 was also a notable achievement. 

The Stellar Core Protocol 16 upgrade was also implemented this week.  This upgrade fixed the issues that caused some of the Stellar validators as well as the SDF's Horizon endpoints to go offline. 

On Thursday, Denelle Dixon, CEO of SDF, joined a Paris Fintech Forum to discuss how digital assets are going mainstream.  Lastly, Craig McGregor, CEO and Co-Founder of DSTOQ, discusses the case study on DSTOQ and how it uses tokenization and digital asset issuance on Stellar to make investing accessible to anyone with a mobile phone.
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JoeShon "Joe" Monroe from A Stellar World Podcast brings Public Node's Weekly Wrap-Up of Stellar-related news.

This week started hard with news of issues on the Stellar network.  Several exchanges paused transfers on the network during the network event.   The network stayed up, but several Stellar service providers were impacted that use SDF Horizon endpoints to interact with the ledger.  See Decentralized to the Core and Bitfinex Pauses XLM Withdrawals.   

Following this event, the SDF announced the schedule April 10th upgrade to Stellar Core version 16 aimed at resolving the outstanding issues of the event and get everyone back online. 

Newsbtc reports on Uganda's approval to use the Stellar blockchain to power a futuristic city ("Akon City") and awarded American singer Akon one square mile to carry out the project.  The city is scheduled to be completed in 2036 and cost up to $6 billion.
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