SCF #44 Round Recap

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) is an open-application awards program that draws on community input to support developers and startups building on Stellar. The SCF Build Award operates in 6-week rounds, including a two-step panel review process and community vote.

SCF #44 continues under SCF 7.0, a significant structural shift that introduced three distinct tracks: the Open Track for novel on-chain use cases (reviewed by the delegate panel and voted on by the community), the Integration Track for projects building on existing ecosystem tools (reviewed by the delegate panel only), and the RFP Track for targeted developer tooling needs (reviewed by the delegate panel only).

This was the largest SCF round ever with 175 submissions received across all three tracks. Thank you to all submitters and reviewers for your hard work on this record breaking round!

46 projects were awarded across all three tracks with a total of $4,571,689 worth of XLM. Click on the project name to view their successful submission! Please note that in order to view the SCF Dashboard, you need to be logged in. If you do not yet have an account, you can create one by signing up with Discord.

Build Award Recipients

Projects can request an SCF Build Award up to $150,000 worth of XLM*. The SCF Build Award is for projects which have significant (user) traction OR teams that are experienced in the Stellar ecosystem and have identified a validated need, both with a well thought out plan and architecture to be ready to build upon receiving the SCF Build Award. Learn more in the SCF Handbook.

Open Track

Novel on-chain use cases — reviewed by the delegate panel and voted on by the community via Neural Quorum Governance. 12 of 50 submissions were awarded.

• Lusty Finance — $82,500 worth of XLM* Lusty is a protocol on Stellar that enables options strategies such as covered calls and cash-secured puts on XLMa protocol on Stellar that enables options strategies such as covered calls and cash-secured puts on XLM.
• LumAgg — Stellar DEX Aggregator — $90,000 worth of XLM* LumAgg is a liquidity aggregator for Stellar’s Soroban DEX ecosystem that discovers prices across Soroswap, Aquarius, Phoenix, Sushi V3, Comet, and Stellar Classic DEX, then returns the best route — including split execution across multiple venues in a single atomic swap.
• VRF-Soroban — $50,000 worth of XLM* VRF-Soroban is a Verifiable Random Function for the Stellar network, providing cryptographically provable randomness to Soroban smart contracts.
• Lucent — $135,000 worth of XLM* Lucent is a Liquity v2-style CDP protocol on Stellar that lets users mint ☆USD, a decentralized overcollateralized stablecoin, using XLM and other supportedsupported assets as collateral.
• Octarine — $129,700 worth of XLM* Octarine is an RFQ-based liquidity layer for tokenized real-world assets, enabling faster and deeper secondary RWA markets on Stellar by letting liquidity providers compete to offer executable prices for tokenizedtokenized assets with redemption periods.
• Bluechip — $136,500 worth of XLM* Bluechip is an independent, stablecoin rating agency with one of one of the first publicly available, factor-based risk model (SMIDGE) for rating stablecoin safety.
• Ballast Re — $85,000 worth of XLM* Ballast Re is an RWA stablecoin vault backed by real-world reinsurance contracts, connecting stablecoin capital with US casualty specialty reinsurance treaties.an RWA stablecoin vault backed by real-world reinsurance contracts, connecting stablecoin capital with US casualty specialty reinsurance treaties..
• ROZO — One Tap to Pay — $98,000 worth of XLM* ROZO simplifies crypto-native payments to just 1 tap by providing an intent-based API that abstracts wallets, tokens, and chains behind hardware and agent integrations.
• Nouns Builder Protocol — $140,500 worth of XLM* Builder DAO develops and maintains the Nouns Builder Protocol, enabling usersusers to launch and operate on-chain DAOs with an auction-based funding and membership model and transparent governance via NFTs.
• Smart Treasury Account (STA) — $127,500 worth of XLM* The Smart Treasury Account (STA) is a programmable treasury wallet for Stellar that enables businesses, payment providers, DAOs, and onchain organizations to manage treasury operations through predefined onchain policies.
• SAFU Protocol — $30,000 worth of XLM* SAFU is a stake-backed protection protocol for crypto wallets that collateralizes a shared pool of XLM designed to designed to pay out drained wallets while stakers may may earn yield from the underlying AMM.
• Trustline — $133,600 worth of XLM* Trustline unlocks institutional onchain finance by adding institutional access controls, stronger security standards, and smart contract insurance functionality functionality to any protocol.

Integration Track

Projects building on existing ecosystem tools — reviewed by the delegate panel only. 26 of 95 submissions were awarded.

• Azza — $95,000 worth of XLM* Azza is a stablecoin-powered payments platform built on WhatsApp that enables users and businesses to move between stablecoins and local fiat, make cross-border and local payouts, and access practical financial tools across African markets.
• VERSO — Peru’s First Regulated Stellar Anchor — $110,000 worth of XLM* VERSO is a regulated stablecoin exchange operating in Peru since 2022 that will build the country’s first regulated Stellar Anchor, connecting the Stellar ecosystem with Peru’s banking infrastructure.
• Bexo Wallet — $90,000 worth of XLM* Bexo Wallet is a consumer stablecoin wallet built for Latin America, powering cross-border USDC transfers and QR merchant payments on Stellar rails.
• Basilic — Stablecoin Rails for LatAm — $100,000 worth of XLM* Basilic is a B2B payment infrastructure layer for Latin American businesses, operating as a routing layer between traditional banking rails and stablecoin settlement.
• Remi — $143,200 worth of XLM* Remi is building a remittance system that moves USDC across borders on Stellar with confidential transaction amounts and balances while preserving full regulatory visibility through auditor viewing keys and selective disclosure. Remi bridges traditional finance and digital assets while improving access to financial services in emerging markets.
• For Yield — $144,000 worth of XLM* For Yield reportsreports building one of the first French MiCA-regulated DeFi yield products on Stellar, routing regulated EU capital into Soroban DeFi protocols including Blend v2, Aquarius, and Soroswap via DeFindex.
• PathPulse AI — $95,200 worth of XLM* PathPulse AI is a road intelligence platform that turns everyday drivers into real-time, crowdsourced sensors using standard smartphone cameras and proprietary on-device AI, with Stellar as the payment and settlement layer for driver incentives and government-related payments.
• Tokeshare — $133,000 worth of XLM* Tokeshare is building its next-generation financial infrastructure on Stellar to enable programmable real-world asset issuance, transparent revenue distribution, and stablecoin-based settlement for operational businesses in emerging markets.
• Amulets — $110,000 worth of XLM* Amulets is a live stablecoin banking app for LatAm users, giving crypto users a simple dollar account to hold stablecoins, swap assets, spend globally with a Visa card, and accessaccess crypto rewards.
• Offer-Hub — $74,000 worth of XLM* Offer Hub is a decentralized freelancing platform that revolutionizes the freelance job market through blockchain technology, cryptocurrency payments, and smart contracts.
• Fuul — $105,000 worth of XLM* Fuul is anan incentives engine for the digital asset industry, powering rewards, affiliates, and loyalty programs across blockchains, DeFi, and fintech, with plans to deploy natively on Stellar via Soroban smart contracts.
• EscalaEscala — $70,000 worth of XLM* Escala is a B2B AI-driven Fintech-as-a-Service platform allowing NGOs and enterprises to embed pooledpooledfinancial products, abstracting blockchain complexity via Soroban-based escrows, tokens, and treasury contracts.
• ChimpDAO — $110,000 worth of XLM* ChimpDAO is building a hardware-secured physical wallet layer for Stellar, extending its NFC-authenticated infrastructure into a ChimpDAO card wallet paired with a mobile app.
• Chainless Stellar Integration — $125,090 worth of XLM* Chainless is a self-custody platform that lets users fund an account by bank transfer and, minutes later, hold digital assets in an account where only they control the keys.
• JUMPA — $89,700 worth of XLM* Jumpa is an automated payment platform designed to make cross-border transactions simple, fast, and accessible for users in emerging markets through chat-based interfaces and USSD.
• Choppaddi — $80,000 worth of XLM* Choppaddi is a technology-driven platform that delivers food, groceries, and local essentials, connecting customers, vendors, and delivery partners in a single digital marketplace with flexible payments in both local fiat and USDC.
• ElementPay — $89,999 worth of XLM* ElementPay is building stablecoin payment infrastructure for the Global South, connecting stablecoins to local financial rails for invoicing, collections, payouts, mobile money and bank settlement, and reconciliation.
• TroqPay: Sell with Pix. Receive in USD. — $60,000 worth of XLM* TroqPay helps Brazilian merchants sell locally, receive in USD and pay globally, bringing Stellar into the merchant flow as the digital-dollar balance layer with Privy for embedded wallet onboarding and DeFindex as an optional DeFi DeFi module.
• Paycashless — $78,000 worth of XLM* Paycashless is a payments and financial management platform for Nigerian SMEs that combines everything a business needs to accept money, send money, manage cash flow, and access working capital in a single merchant account.
• Muney App — $95,000 worth of XLM* Muney is B2B stablecoin payment infrastructure for emerging markets, helping fintechs, wallets, remittance companies, and businesses convert stablecoins like USDC into local value through merchant cash-out, local payouts, and B2B settlement.
• Scopuly — Stellar Wallet — $80,000 worth of XLM* Scopuly is a live non-custodial Stellar wallet and access layer available on iOS, Android, macOS, Telegram, and Web, helping users securely manage Stellar accounts and assets while keeping full control of their private keys.
• Prism — $124,600 worth of XLM* Prism is a multi-chain crypto financial hub designed to simplify how users access and interact with on-chain financial products, aggregating trading, payments, and yield opportunities in a single user experience.
• Sikadesk — $112,000 worth of XLM* Sikadesk is a stablecoin liquidity and modern OTC infrastructure platform built to enable high-volume access to stablecoins across Africa.
• Blink — $75,000 worth of XLM* Blink is a mobile app that allows businesses to receive crypto as a means of payment via Bluetooth and receive instant settlement in their local currency, while also allowing users to spend their crypto like cash.
• Etesia — $113,000 worth of XLM* Etesia is building Stellar-native tokenized vault infrastructure that applies risk-parity and portfolio-construction methodologies on-chain, drawing on established institutional approaches.
• Yolat — $110,000 worth of XLM* Yolat is building the settlement infrastructure for cross-border payments in and out of Africa, with stablecoins as the underlying rail and fiat as the experience customers actually touch.

RFP Track (Developer Tooling)

Targeted developer tooling needs — reviewed by the delegate panel only. Every RFP Track submission responds to a specific open RFP published for the quarter, so the awards below are grouped by the RFP each project is building. 8 of 30 submissions were awarded across 5 RFPs.

RFP: Trustline onboarder
A standard, plus reference implementation, that lets exchanges, brokers, and wallets onboard users into Stellar assets without manual trustline setup.

• Authline — Stellar asset onboarding — $75,000 worth of XLM* Authline defines an ecosystem standard for authorizing trustlines on behalf of users via CAP-73, with an issuer-side Soroban admin contract, an open-source recipient-side landing page, and an SDK for wallets and exchanges.

RFP: Passkey UI
A documented set of passkey usage patterns for Stellar smart accounts, paired with a minimal, composable SDK and reference UI components for adoption into stellar-wallet-kit.

• Passkey UI — $95,000 worth of XLM* Passkey UI is the missing client-side layer for passkey-based authentication on Stellar smart accounts, delivering a maintained usage-pattern guide, cross-platform compatibility matrix, minimal composable SDK, and framework-agnostic reference UI components for create, sign, and recover flows.

RFP: Account Demolisher
A production-ready tool to cleanly close a Stellar account — unwinding positions, removing trustlines and data entries, converting balances to XLM, and merging the account — across both classic and Soroban DeFi.

• Account Demolisher — $120,000 worth of XLM* Account Demolisher is a production-grade, non-custodial tool that closes a Stellar account from any state in one guided session, across classic and Soroban DeFi, unwinding positions, converting balances to XLM, removing subentries, reducing signers, and merging to a wallet or exchange.
• LumenWipe — $120,000 worth of XLM* LumenWipe closes a Stellar account and recovers its locked XLM reserves, automatically handling signer normalization, data entry removal, DEX offer cancellation, LP withdrawal, DeFi position exits (Blend, Aquarius, Soroswap, Phoenix, FxDAO), asset conversion, trustline removal, and the final account merge.

RFP: Contract Source Verification Service
A source-code verification pipeline that proves a deployed Soroban Wasm was built from a specific, publicly inspectable source tree.

• Soroban Contract Source Verification Service — $33,600 worth of XLM* Soroban Contract Source Verification is a public, trustless contract source verification service that allows developers to submit source code, deterministically rebuild the corresponding Wasm artifacts, and verify the match against deployed contracts.

RFP: OZ accounts policy builder
An AI-assisted toolkit — MCP server plus agent skill — that turns an observed or simulated Stellar transaction into a minimal, least-privilege OpenZeppelin smart-account policy.

• Gateway.fm — $98,000 worth of XLM* Gateway.fm is building the RFP’s record-and-generate toolkit for OpenZeppelin Stellar smart accounts, allowing developers or agents to point at a completed transaction and auto-generate a tightly scoped, minimum-permission policy that permits exactly that operation and denies everything else.
• CredioLabs.AI — $125,000 worth of XLM* Credio Labs (by Untangled) is delivering the OZ Accounts Policy Builder — an MCP server and companion Claude skill that closes a critical gap in the OpenZeppelin Stellar Accounts framework by recording a Soroban transaction and synthesizing a minimal context rule and policy against OZ Accounts primitives.
• Policywright — $55,000 worth of XLM* Policywright is an AI-assisted toolkit — MCP server, Claude skill, and policy synthesizer — that turns a Stellar transaction a user performed or simulated into the least-privilege OpenZeppelin smart-account authorization permitting exactly that flow and nothing else.

A huge congratulations to these incredible projects! Your innovation reflects the best of what our ecosystem can achieve. We’re excited to support your work in a way that drives meaningful, lasting change.

Referral Insights

SCF #44 is the fourth round run end-to-end under the SCF Referral Program, which turns informal sourcing into a structured, attributable pipeline. This round, 28 of the 46 awarded projects came through referrals. As the program matures into SCF #45, the focus shifts from onboarding to alignment between referrer conviction and quality projects.

Round Insights & Voting Dynamics

Since October 2023, the Stellar Community Fund (SCF) has utilized Neural Quorum Governance (NQG), a reputation-based voting mechanism to signal community sentiment in Award Allocation in the Community Vote phase of SCF Build (Open Track). Voting results are non-determinative, and final allocation decisions are made by the quarterly delegates panel.

Round at a Glance

The result this round: 12 projects were awarded by the delegate panel, with the community vote covering 25 Open Track submissions and reviewed by 128 voters — the highest voter count in NQG history, surpassing the previous record of 106 set in SCF #42. 49 first-time voters joined this round alongside 79 returning participants, and the verified community grew to 659 members. See all public data here.

The Community Signal

With SCF 7.0 keeping the community vote scoped to Open Track, voters could again focus their attention on a manageable set of 25 submissions. For the fourth consecutive round, every project the delegate panel awarded was also a top-ranked project in the NQG community vote, extending the 100% alignment streak that began in SCF #41. Similar to the prior three rounds, every awarded project crossed 82% VP-weighted approval.

The separation between awarded and non-awarded projects was the widest we’ve seen: the lowest-scoring awarded project (ROZO Pay, +424) sat roughly 60 NQG points above the highest non-awarded project (Software Licensing Infrastructure, +364), which itself sat 245 points above the next candidate. That gap gave the panel a clear, undisputed community shortlist to work from.

Decentralization Measure

The top 5 voters held just 12.1% of total NQG voting power — a new low, down from 12.5% in SCF #43 and a long way from 43.6% in SCF #37. The top 10 share also compressed further, from 23.4% to 22.3%. At the same time the Gini coefficient rose to 0.38 (from 0.32) and the Theil index to 0.24 (from 0.17). The two directions aren’t in conflict: the top of the distribution is broader than ever, but the middle stretched this round as 49 new voters entered at low VP while long-tenured voters gained ground from the Voting History and Vote Quality neurons compounding.

Due to changes implemented this round on neuron weights (see details below), the total voting power across all voters grew from 408 to 589 — a 44% expansion of the pie, largely absorbed by the tail rather than the top.

Quorum Delegation

NQG allows voters to delegate their vote to a quorum of trusted community members rather than voting directly on every submission. Each voter selects a panel of delegates (min. 7); if enough delegates participate and a supermajority agrees (>66.7%), the delegation resolves to Yes or No.

In SCF #44, delegation became more dominant than ever: 80% of all vote-slots were delegated — a record high — with 72% of voters relying entirely on delegation and another 14% using a mix of direct voting and delegation. Only 14% of voters cast direct votes on every submission. This is by design: as the community grows, delegation lets more people participate meaningfully even when they lack the time or context to evaluate every project.

The system performed flawlessly again this round. All 2,550 delegated vote-slots resolved successfully — a 100% resolution rate for the fourth consecutive round, with zero abstains in the final tally. 16 active delegates served a voter base of 128, with each voter selecting an average of ~8 delegates for their quorum. The delegate pool contracted slightly (from 17 to 16 active), but each delegate now carries a larger share of the delegated vote-slots (~160 per delegate on average, up from ~95 in #43) — a natural consequence of the wider voter base.

Neuron Performance

NQG computes each voter’s influence through four “neurons” — modular reputation inputs that reflect different dimensions of a voter’s standing in the ecosystem (see exact parameters in the SCF Handbook).

Key update to Voting History- and Trust Neuron Weight:
To follow on the algorithmic change completed in SCF #43 preventing unbounded linear sum of tranche-status bonuses of the Vote Quality Neuron, similar adjustments in weights of other neurons were addressed this round to balance relative per-neuron weight. The Voting History- and Trust Neuron logistic curves were re-scaled from 0.0–1.0 to 0.0–3.0 to increase their presence closer to original values, as their weight was almost negligible in previous rounds. While Reputation and Vote Quality are still leading neurons as part of all voter’s average, the Trust Graph neuron increased by 3.6% and the Voting History neuron by 6.5%.

Analysis to understand the ‘ideal ratio’ of the neuron weights for optimal performance on Community Vote is challenging given the number of variables that influence it. From a design perspective, the desire is to balance the Neuron contributions to a certain extent and prevent extremities, so each plays a role in one’s voting power.

New Neuron Setup with separate Trust Loss neuron
In addition, a fix was made to the Trust loss function inside of the Trust neuron. This ‘safeguard’ function should normally cause a loss in voting power when a significant number of people remove someone from their trusted list of users, but we noticed it was also accidentally triggered when a lot of people who trusted someone didn’t vote. This didn’t have a significant impact on the end result, but wasn’t how the system is supposed to work.

The new setup in #44 fixes this problem by adding a separate Trust Loss neuron, which is only triggered when several users with each a significant amount of voting power removes someone from their trusted list of users. The severity of an individual’s voting weight loss follows a logistic curve and accelerates after a certain threshold of users and their total voting weight. See details on how this neuron works in the SCF Handbook.

Voter participation across neurons
In SCF #44, 128 voters participated across three community tiers: roughly 69% Pathfinders, 5% Navigators, and 26% Pilots. The Pathfinder population grew sharply from #43 (59 to 88) and Navigator and Pilot count held steady. The radar chart above shows how each tier’s voting power breaks down across the four neurons:

• Reputation — Base power from the verified tier and other community roles. Still the largest contributor, but its share fell round-over-round: ~66% of a Pathfinder’s power (down from 78% in #43), ~63% for Navigators (from 80%), and ~47% for Pilots (from 62%). The drop is not a change in the formula: Reputation’s absolute contribution grew from 281 to 329 — but the other neurons grew faster, so its relative share compressed.
• Trust Graph — Derived from peer trust relationships via PageRank. This is the neuron we flagged in the #43 write-up: after collapsing to ~2% of round-wide VP in #43, it recovered to ~5% in #44 (absolute contribution 7.5 to 31). Pilot share climbed from 3% back up to 9.5% — closer to its historical range.
• Vote Quality — A retroactive bonus or penalty based on whether the projects you voted for actually shipped on mainnet. Now in its sixth active round and its second under the logistic bound introduced in #43, the range held (max 4.44, essentially unchanged from #43’s 4.40) while the mean rose from 0.97 to 1.24 as more historical votes were resolved. No negative scores this round — the penalty tail, which fired for one voter in #43, went dormant.
• Voting History — A participation consistency score. This was the biggest mover of the round: round-wide contribution more than doubled (12.0% of VP, up from 5.5%), tier averages roughly tripled, and the neuron’s effective ceiling rose from ~1.0 to ~3.0. It remains the sharpest tier differentiator: Pilots now average 1.71 versus 0.13 for Pathfinders — a ~13× gap, wider than #43’s ~12× ratio at a lower absolute scale.
• Trust Loss — A safeguard neuron only triggered when several users with a significant amount of voting weight remove someone from their trusted list of users in case of malicious or otherwise unwanted behavior. The neuron has not been activated this round.

Pilots average 9.5 total voting power, roughly 3.5× that of Pathfinders (2.7), not because the system arbitrarily favors them, but because they’ve accumulated trust, voted consistently, and backed projects that shipped. With Voting History now weighted more heavily in Layer 1, the ‘reward for showing up’ is more visible in the total voting power.

Looking Ahead

SCF #44 sets three new highs: the largest voter cohort in NQG history (128), the strongest delegation share ever (80% of vote-slots), and the widest score separation between awarded and non-awarded projects since the mechanism began. It also marks the fourth consecutive round of both 100% panel-NQG alignment and 100% delegation resolution, all at over 82% approval rate — a stability streak that now spans a full year of tallies.

For SCF #45, we may want to recover the Trust Graph neuron’s weight even more. Contribution to the Trust Graph neuron rebounded from 1.8% to 5.3% this round; it’s still well below its #40 baseline of ~17%. Part of the reason to not increase its weight in this round significantly is that the current user experience of ‘manually adding someone to your trusted list of users’ isn’t optimal and requires a refresh — a planned update to be made prior to the next round.

For a full deep dive into NQG’s evolution, see the Two Years of Neural Quorum Governance retrospective (coming soon). To learn more about how NQG works and how to participate, visit the SCF Handbook. If you’re interested in participating in the community vote and helping to shape the future of the Stellar ecosystem, become verified today and participate in the discussion on the Stellar Dev Discord!

*The USD valuation of the Award in XLM is calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on the day of payment as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker XLMUSD_RR) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR).

** Project descriptions are based on information provided by award recipients or publicly available sources. SDF/SCF makes no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy, completeness, or compliance of any project description. Inclusion in this recap does not constitute an endorsement, recommendation, or investment advice by SDF or SCF with respect to any project, token, protocol, or digital asset. Readers should conduct independent due diligence.

SCF #44 Round Recap was originally published in Stellar Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.