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

In news this week, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) provided an important update to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's (FinCEN) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on “Requirements for Certain Transactions Involving Convertible Virtual Currency or Digital Assets”.  Specifically, FinCEN extended the initial comment period which allowed the SDF, and other blockchain advocates, to submit supplemental comments. 

The SDF states, "No matter how you slice it, the FinCEN NPRM seeks to apply a regulatory framework designed for a centralized, intermediary-based financial system. That’s not suited for blockchain. We look forward to the role we can play to help future regulation represent new thinking that accounts for what makes this technology unique and how it can help regulators and innovators achieve their shared goals."

SDF CEO Denelle Dixon makes an appearance on Coindesk to discuss the digital dollar projects on the Stellar network in Bermuda and Ukraine and why she’s excited about other crypto projects in Nigeria, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil.

Last, the SDF scheduled their Q1 2021 review for April 13th at 9:00 am PT.  Denelle and other SDF leaders will share the progress they've made in the start of 2021. They will cover growth metrics for the Stellar network and other strategic highlights and achievements from the Stellar Development Foundation over the first quarter.

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

In news this week, a Nasdaq article reports that Stellar lumens need an institutional audience to become top altcoin.  The report states that the Stellar blockchain can reduce or eliminate the complexity of the Nostro-Vostro process - when one bank has another bank's money on deposit.  The article further points out that there are more than $500 billion is transferred cross-border in personal remittances.

Crowdfund Insider released an article featuring Ada Vaughan from the Stellar Development Foundation.  The article explains how the Stellar network provides a modern alternative to moving money cross-border and, when paired with the USDC "stable coin," provides the perfect marriage of the world's leading digital US dollar with the world's most efficient network.  See also "The best of Both Worlds."

Stellar will be hosting a "hack the system" technical workshop on Friday March 26th where developers will learn how to start building on Stellar.

Last, the Global Blockchain Business Council hosted a members forum featuring Justin Rice and Lauren Thorbjornsen from the Stellar Development Foundation.  Justin and Lauren discuss how Stellar is a public blockchain built to further financial access and inclusion.  The presentation can be viewed here.

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

In news this week, Bloomberg adds price data for 6 new crypto assets - including Stellar XLM.

Mike Kennedy, former CEO and Co-Founder of Zelle, makes a guest appearance on the How Success Happens podcast where he talks about Inter/Stellar, a businesses using stellar to build the future of international payments.   He discusses his experience networking with Lightnet and others that use the Stellar Network.

Litemint makes an interesting tweet that highlights the differences between the fees of issuing a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) on Ethereum as compared to the Stellar network.

Lastly, Denelle Dixon, CEO and executive director of the Stellar Development Foundation, is quoted in a Cointelegraph article about women, decentralization and the world’s economic drive.  Her quote begins, "First, I want to start by saying that women’s impact on the global economy shouldn’t be news to anyone."

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

In news this week, The Stellar Development Foundation announced the release of Horizon 2.0.  This upgrade brings massive performance and architecture benefits that make running  Stellar infrastructure easier than ever.

Next, Thailand's largest bank, Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) announced that they have partnered with Lightnet, a fintech company that uses the Stellar blockchain, to open a new cross border remittance corridor from South Korea to Thailand.

Ultra Stellar announced the launch of a new tool to help swap USDC to Ethereum to Stellar.

Lastly, the Stellar Development Foundation blog highlights how Stellar USDC and FinClusive’s new stablecoin-focused banking partnership will enable businesses to access and leverage digital currency instantly while staying compliant.

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