- Soroban, Stellar’s smart contract platform, is fully operational, allowing for advanced dApps and financial services over the network.
- SDF’s $100 million investment in Soroban initiatives represents a significant step toward accessible financial services using blockchain technology.
The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has revealed the smart contract platform Soroban, which is now live on Stellar’s mainnet. So, this development will enable developers and innovators worldwide to create, distribute, and interact with decentralized applications (dapps).
SDF has committed a $100 million fund to stimulate Soroban development, with a focus on initiatives that make use of Stellar’s smart contract features. This investment will make financial services more widely available, supporting over 160 enterprises and nurturing an ecosystem.
Expanding Stellar Financial Inclusion
The implementation of smart contracts on Stellar will enable equitable access to the global financial system. Stellar has emerged as the leader in cryptocurrency payments, having managed over $1.3 billion in transactions in the fourth quarter of 2023 alone.
Its infrastructure has supported major organizations such as the UNHCR and MoneyGram International, as previously reported by ETHNews. Soroban expands Stellar’s capabilities, allowing for a broader range of innovative financial goods and services on its network.
In fact, 190 projects from around the world joined Soroban’s ecosystem during the two-year testing period, which ended in January 2024, to explore diverse applications ranging from lending and insurance to auditing.
Stellar’s platform has attracted substantial initiatives from both established businesses (Axelar, Allbridge, and Band Protocol) and startups (Soroswap.Finance and Blend). For a deeper dive into these developments, you can check this Youtube video.
The Competitive Advantage of Soroban
Finally, as the crypto sector demands more accessible financial services, Soroban provides a fast, affordable, and secure alternative to traditional platforms. Soroban lowers smart contract fees by optimizing transactions and saving computational resources, as ETHNews had earlier detailed.
Not only that, its extensive architecture, which includes pre-integrated contracts and hosting capabilities, simplifies the dapp creation and deployment process, making it an enticing platform.
At the time of writing, the price of the Stellar native token, XLM, had risen 1.59% in the last 24 hours, fell to $0.1245. But, this represents a decrease of 18.89% over the past 7 days.