The Stellar Development Foundation recently revealed the introduction of smart contract functionality to the Stellar blockchain network, marking a substantial advancement for its ecosystem. On February 20th, the foundation announced that Stellar’s validators had successfully upgraded to Protocol 20, laying the groundwork for the Soroban smart contract platform’s incremental deployment. This development positions Stellar as a more dynamic player in the blockchain arena.
Introduction of Developer-Friendly Smart Contracts
Stellar’s smart contracts, built using Rust and WebAssembly (WASM), aim to enhance the developer experience with user-friendly tools. Soroban, Stellar’s smart contract platform launched on the test network in October 2022, boasts predictable fees and independently priced resources, ensuring scalability. The Stellar team anticipates that these smart contracts will foster new decentralized applications (DApps) and innovative protocols on the network.
Previously, the Stellar Development Foundation had to delay the smart contract mainnet upgrade due to a bug found in Stellar Core. The bug, identified in January, was deemed a low risk but carried potential implications for applications using the smart contract platform upon its introduction.
Efforts to Expand the Stellar Ecosystem
In an effort to stimulate development, the Stellar Development Foundation unveiled a $100 million fund in October 2022 for developers building on the Soroban platform. Despite this, the Web3 sector’s user engagement with Stellar remains subdued, and the ecosystem trails its competitors. The foundation, which has been collaborating with the Stellar community on smart contract capabilities for two years, observed no immediate price surge for Stellar’s native token XLM following the announcement, as per Tradingview data.
Currently, XLM’s market performance lags behind in the 2024 crypto market rally, trading well below its January 2018 peak. As of the latest data, XLM is down approximately 87% from its all-time high.