"Stellar is one of the candidates that central bankers are considering." - Ella Qiang TRANSCRIPTS "Announcing something very interesting soon" Jed McCaleb spoke today in Tel Aviv about the future of blockchain. He hinted that there will be a big announcement soon, expanded smart contracts on Stellar vs Ethereum, spoke about the differences between Stellar and Ripple, and referenced the alignment in thinking between Stellar and IBM about open source software. Link TRANSCRIPTS Lightning Network, SDEX UI, & Central Bank Anchors Ella Qiang - Director of Partnerships at Stellar - expanded on Stellar's 2018 plans and progress at a meetup with GOPAX and Mobius. She comments on why Stellar is integrating with the Lightning Network, where the SDEX UI team is based and what it could look like, central bank anchors, and the estimated number of new tokens to be issued on Stellar in the first half of this year. Link COMMUNITY We Will Tip You on Twitter The developer behind the Stellar Reddit Tipping Bot expanded the bot to Twitter, and we’d like to jumpstart use of it. Follow us on Twitter (and get Stellar-related updates curated for you in your Twitter feed!), tweet that @lumenauts is tipping the next 50 accounts to follow them, and we will tip you! @lumenauts Tutorial PROJECTS OAuth for Stellar Drew Wilson, founder of payments processor Plasso, is developing an OAuth service to “approve/send payments [without] giving up your secret key.” According to Drew, SDF has been in communication via email with him about the service. Plasso will be the first to use it, and Plasso will not charge a fee outside of the standard Stellar transaction fee. Link TRANSCRIPTS Anchoring Fiat Tether Analogy & Central Bank Anchor Credibility At another meetup, SDF’s Ella Qiang compared anchoring fiat to a better version of Tether, said that central bank anchors would have a higher level of trust compared to banks anchoring fiat, and said that SDF hasn't done a good job of marketing the Stellar DEX capability in the past. Link DOCS Stellar Smart Contracts - New Official Docs Stellar released an official walkthrough of Stellar Smart Contracts, laying out how to “formalize and secure relationships” in the Stellar network. They offer detailed explanations of how to create an escrow account and how to set up a crowdfunding campaign as examples of Stellar Smart Contracts. Link ETHEREUM EXODUS “Blockchain for Aviation” Project Testing Stellar Aeron - an on-chain pilot log solution - started testing Stellar in January in response to the growing costs of Ethereum transactions. They are still exploring alternatives and are releasing their mobile app built on Ethereum at first with a possible move to Stellar later. Link 1 Link 2 SBC SUBMISSION “Gravator” for Stellar Addresses SBC submission Blocklook allows you to link an avatar to your Stellar federation address and provides an API that developers can use to call a user’s avatar and display it in-app. Link SBC SUBMISSION New Multi-Sig Web Wallet with 2FA New web wallet StellarGuard expands on Lumen Vault’s multi-sig feature with two factor authentication. StellarGuard will only add their signature to your transactions after you confirm via email or authenticator app. Link SCAMS Twitter Scams Continue There are several active Twitter scams attempting to spoof SDF by running fake giveaways. Please report these to Twitter to make the Stellar community more friendly to newcomers. Link WALLETS Our Favorite Web Wallet MyStellar.Tools offers an easier alternative to the Stellar Laboratory on a clean, simple UI. Please keep in mind that by entering your secret key on a web wallet, you are exposing yourself to the risk of a BlackWallet-type attack. To increase security, MyStellar.Tools offers a Ledger sign-in option and an option to just "sign-in" with your public key then sign transactions offline. Link SBC SUBMISSION Ecommerce Payments Powered by Stellar We are "merch-exhausted" - there are endless merch posts on the subreddit. So when we saw a merch shop, we admittedly weren't that excited. But then the creator explained that the Stellar Shop isn't so much about the merch as it is about creating a Stellar payment gateway. Link SBC SUBMISSION Gumroad-esque Service on Stellar Galactic Market is building a simple, link-based ecommerce solution on Stellar. Similar to Gumroad, you can upload your product details, Galactic Market will generate a product page, and you can send your customers to that newly generated page to receive payment over Stellar. Link Hope you have a Stellar week. Reply back with ideas for what you want to see in this newsletter.



- yodayoungling