Stellar Dev Digest: Issue #68
Stellar Meridian 2020 Recap and Protocol 15 goes live
Hey everyone! Welcome to another issue of the Stellar Dev Digest, a weekly recap of all things related to the development of the Stellar Network.
What is Stellar? Stellar is a platform that connects banks, payment systems, and people. Integrate to move money quickly, reliably, and at almost no cost.
Despite COVID-19 throwing a wrench into our original Meridian 2020 plans, we still managed to pull off an exciting week of virtual discussions, panels, and networking sessions.
ICYMI: Meridian 2020 took place from November 16–20 inside the virtual oasis of meridian.stellar.org — not quite Mexico City, but it did the trick! If you’re stressed about missing a session, the VODs are still available on the Meridian website. Just log in and start binging 😀
News & Posts of the Week
My personal non-Stellar highlights from last week:
- Global Connections to Solve Real World Challenges: Innovation by Sir Tim Berners Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web. This was a great talk by one of the most renowned innovators of the internet age. Sir Tim Berners Lee talked about his experience as an innovator and the unforeseen impacts innovation can have on business, government, and society as a whole.
- Global Connections to Solve Real World Challenges: Inclusion by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s First Elected Female President & Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. SDF’s own, Lisa Nestor, had an awesome conversation President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf about how empowering marginalized populations can change society, promote economic growth and development, and lead to sustainable progress.
My favorite Stellar-focused talks from last week:
- Protocol Upgrades: Fostering the Usability of the Stellar Network by Jon Jove, Senior Engineer at the Stellar Development Foundation. In this session, Jon got into the weeds covering the exciting advancements in store for Protocol 15 — which went live today!
- Stellar Community Town Hall with Denelle Dixon, Jed McCaleb, and Justin Rice from the SDF. This was an AMA-style conversation where Jed and Denelle answered some interesting questions from the community.
- Stellar Engineering Technical Roadmap by Alex Cordeiro, Engineering Manager at SDF. In this session, Alex covered how SDF’s engineering teams plan to support Stellar use cases, support SDF’s strategic pillars, and more.
Remember: You can watch all of these sessions for free on the Meridian website!
Application of the Week
This week I’m highlighting the finalists (and winners) of the Meridian 2020 Hackathon!
As part of this year’s Meridian, the Stellar Development Foundation sponsored a hackathon that challenged builders to showcase at least one of Stellar’s new features in their projects. We announced the finalists just before Meridian and they received feedback from SDF’s top brass in the video above.
Throughout the conference, participants voted on their favorite projects and as a result, we have the final placements:
- InTrip — Enabling Offline-Offline Payments for traveling anywhere in India for the masses. Completely cashless and contactless for the post COVID-19 Indian travel economy. Full submission here.
- Pagas — Pagas is an online platform that facilitates the sale of products by creators directly to consumers using Stellar. Full submission here.
- Waris — Waris aims to promote financial planning and management by making claimable funds self manageable, easy and safe. Full submission here.
- BlockBill — A decentralized blockchain expense management system for personal and business powered by the Stellar Network. Full submission here.
- Meza — Meza keeps your chama’s financial books in check. No more worrying about why your figures aren’t adding up. Full submission here.
Congratulations to all 5 of these projects! We hope you enjoyed Meridian and the hackathon as much as we did.
Releases and Updates
🥂 Protocol 15 is officially live on main net! I’ve been talking about it in this newsletter for several weeks now and it’s exciting to see it finally go live.
SDF’s Head of Ecosystem, Justin Rice, penned a blog post detailing what’s included in the new release and what to do if you’re encountering errors in your production environment. — Read it here.
You can also find Protocol 15’s full release notes here.
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Active Discussions
💬 This week I’m highlighting… all of Meridian! If you aren’t caught up, head over to the Meridian website and change that.
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Did I Miss Something?
If you found that something from this issue is missing or inaccurate reach out to me (kolten) on Keybase and I’ll make sure to fix it 👍
