This past year, we merged 128 pull requests (over 600 scalability/security commits) to the Stellar Core repository. Our Stellar Consensus Protocol has now had two years of field-testing, and this year we added smart-contract functionality to allow creative applications like crowdfunding, escrow, and dividends.
Beyond Core: we merged many of our other Go repositories into our monorepo. Please check it out if you’re interested in Stellar Horizon, our Bridge Server, our Compliance Protocol, or Federation.
ICO support: in response to increasing ICO usage for Stellar, we released Bifrost, a tool that allows Stellar token-issuers to accept ETH or BTC from contributors and automatically assign them accounts with their new tokens.
Developer Ecosystem: we added, through the Stellar Build Challenge), lumen support on the Ledger Nano S, meaning we have hardware wallet support for the first time. This is one of many independent Stellar-focused projects completed this year, and the personal favorite of many here at the office. We reward third-party development on our platform via the Build Challenge; if you have the talent and the drive, submit something.
Stepping back a bit, it’s obvious that our entire sector will soon have to live up to its own hype. Some of the most popular technologies, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, will have to solve their scalability issues. Newer ideas will have to make it from their clean, white papers into the messy (and decidedly gray) real world. The good people of Dentacoin will have to show real progress in the fight against the tyranny of centralized orthodontia. Don’t tread on me, or my teeth! And of course the artist inside us yearns to see which platform will finally push the tasteful arrangement of polygons to its aesthetic limit.
There are a lot of questions marks out there. On the other hand . . . Stellar’s code has been in live production for years. Our founder is one of the most accomplished distributed systems engineers on Earth. We already exceed the performance benchmarks other platforms aspire to. Our platform is in the best possible place for real-world use, right now. Which, of course, is why people are actually using it . . .