Stellar Development Foundation Q1 2020 in Review

The first quarter of 2020 started off in most respects with business as usual. But before long, we’d evolved to a world with overwhelmed systems, industries in crisis, and millions of us sheltered in our homes. In light of the pandemic, the need for global cooperation and connection has never been more necessary. Our work at the Stellar Development Foundation to use the Stellar blockchain to create equitable access to the global financial system and to connect the world’s financial infrastructure is more important than ever.

To show the work we’ve been doing in pursuit of that mission since the year began, we released our first quarterly report, providing an overview of our achievements, growth, and performance in Q1 of 2020.

Amid global uncertainty, we’ve set a strong foundation for growth in the year ahead. We made headway on all three of our strategic growth pillars: ensuring the robustness and usability of Stellar, being the blockchain people know and trust, and fostering sustainable Stellar use-cases. Some of the highlights from Q1 include:

• the first major release of Horizon, Stellar’s HTTP API server, which packaged together previous improvements with a new ingestion system that makes Horizon nimbler, more developer-friendly, more efficient, and less dependent on Stellar-Core;
• SDF joining the Blockchain Association and the Chamber of Digital Commerce to increase our voice in the discussion about the risks and rewards of blockchain to inform laws and policies based on facts;
• New marketing efforts like an updated website with key new features, like a project directory and a live-tracking mandate page, a new community podcast series, and a webinar with network partner, Cowrie Integrated Systems, on the cross-border payment services they are providing in and out of Nigeria;
• and SDF’s first investment from the enterprise fund in DSTOQ, a Liechtenstein-based FinTech company, who is helping make investing accessible and affordable for people in emerging markets, through a borderless digital interface for security tokens.
  

Download the report to read more about these highlights and other strategic achievements from Q1. You can also watch our first quarter-in-review webinar, where some of SDF’s leaders — CEO and Executive Director, Denelle Dixon, co-founder and Chief Architect, Jed McCaleb, and Chief Marketing Officer, Jordan Edelstein — presented the report.

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