Updates to Stellar Protocol (CAPs) and Ecosystem (SEPs)

Core Advancement Proposals (CAP) and Stellar Ecosystem Proposals (SEP) are a formal way of documenting proposed standards to improve various aspects of the Stellar Network. These function similar to EIPs and BIPs from the Ethereum and Bitcoin communities respectively. CAPs and SEPs represent the culmination of many discussions that often take place on the Stellar Developer Google Group.

This week, a whole new SEP (SEP-0025: New account deposit) was added to the fold by msfeldstein. Some background: right now, there’s a bit of a chicken/egg problem that makes it hard to use fiat anchors as onramps. Before you can hold a fiat token, you first need to fund a Stellar account with enough XLM to cover the network minimum balance + a trustline to that token. That means you have to find a way to acquire XLM before using an anchor as an onramp. Sure, we can help you figure out how to do that, but wouldn’t it be easier if you could just deposit USD with an anchor and have a wallet full of USD tokens, no muss, no fuss?

SEP-0025 attempts to make that dream a reality by specifying a method for anchors and other businesses to allow users to accept assets even if those users don’t have Stellar accounts (and by extension enough XLM to cover minimum balance and trustline requirements).

Sound interesting? Have something to say about how new account funding can or should work on Stellar? Join the discussion on Github. That’s where we hash things out.

Also this week: SEP-0007 got updated to include a mechanism for URIs to request replacement of any pre-specified field in a transaction, such as the source account — add support for mutable URI requests.

SEP-0024 continues to see improvements with 1 PR merged this week — Add fee_minimum, clarify fees.

Additionally, a conversation has started about a backwards-compatible migration path from SEP-0006 to SEP-0024 — catch up here.