Stellar Network Introduces Smart Contracts

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has introduced smart contracts on the Stellar network, aiming to revolutionize its tech stack.

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has announced the implementation of smart contracts on the Stellar network. According to the SDF, this would help to usher in “a new era” for its respective technology stack.

Stellar network validators successfully implemented the “Protocol 20” upgrade, which enabled additional smart contract capabilities and initiated the progressive distribution of the SDF’s smart contract platform, which is known as Soroban.

On February 20, the SDF released a statement revealing this information. Developers who work with the Rust and WebAssembly programming languages will have the opportunity to benefit from a more intuitive and user-friendly experience with Stellar smart contracts.

Soroban, the smart contract platform initially released to the Stellar testnet in October 2022, utilizes characteristics designed to facilitate scalability. These features include independent resource pricing and predictable costs.

Stellar stated that its smart contract ecosystem would make it possible to create new decentralized applications (DApps), enabling developers to develop novel protocols and other applications running on the network.  

In January, after discovering a flaw in Stellar Core, the SDF initially chose to delay the long-anticipated mainnet update for smart contracts.  At the time, the company stated that while the flaw posed “little risk,”. it could potentially impact applications once the smart contract platform became accessible to the public.

To encourage developers to build on the Soroban smart contract platform, the SDF sponsored a fundraising program in October 2022 that was worth 100 million dollars.

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), which is a nonprofit organization that is responsible for the development of the Stellar network, stated in a written statement that it had been working with the Stellar community to build smart contract capability over the past two years.

According to statistics, the native Stellar token of the network has not gained traction because of the news. It has experienced a decline of 1% over the last 24 hours and is currently trading at $0.116.

In 2024, the cryptocurrency market surged, leaving XLM behind as it remains 87% below its all-time high of $0.875, reached in January 2018.