Low transaction costs and instantaneous transaction speed for cross border transfers and high security makes Stellar a success story.  All forms of money can be created, sent and traded as digital representations on the network.

Challenge #5 is live for Stellar Quest with 12,500 XLM in prize pool.  Participating in this event is a great way to understand the technology which powers the Stellar to win some prizes along the way.

The SDF Q3 report is already published. They have expressed that 2020 did not turn out to be better like everyone expected it to be; however, they have stated that they have lived up to their promise.  The SDF are in a very strong and strategic position.

Stellar is now officially the blockchain for the USDC (USD Coin).  Of note, USDC is the leading compliant and regulated digital dollar Stable Coin.  Stellar is expected to make USDC available in Q1 2021.

The Stellar Engineering Team are continually preparing important technical upgrades for Stellar API – Stellar Core and Horizon.  The next protocol upgrade is expected to bring in two new features which is set to make things easier for Stellar to connect to the world’s financial infrastructure.  The upgrade will be voted on by validators in Q4 2020.

In this regard, Sydney Ifergan, the crypto expert tweeted:  “Stellar Lumens (XLM) have a goal of being truly borderless by making all the financial systems to work together. Micropayments are the most important and useful in all they offer.”

The business development team of SDF, reportedly have supported Clickpesa, Flutterwave, and Cowrie – who are all Stellar Anchors in a way to improve the foundation for future corridors.

Stellar Lumens (XLM) Testnet and Sandbox Environment

The Layer1 team have discussed with Justin Rice, Head of Ecosystem SDF to discuss the future of cross-border payments and stablecoin regulations across the world.

Sam Conner and the co-founder of COINQVEST, Stefan, discussed about COINQVEST how it works, what they are offering and how it leverages Stellar Blockchain to further provide for cryptocurrency payment processing.

We already know that SDF are skipping protocol 14 implementation. On November 23, 2020 at 1600 UTC, there will be a vote for a network upgrade. The bugs were fixed, solution deployed, on October 20, 2020 to launch as Protocol 15.  This step was considered to be important to ensure that all validators are running the updated version of the Stellar Core.

Long before a change is suggested, the protocol is put to Testnet and it is tested in the sandbox environment and they give lot of time to correct potential problems to ensure bugs do not go live in a production environment.