# Stellar Development Foundation

> The Stellar Development Foundation is a San Francisco nonprofit that builds and supports Stellar, an open-source, layer-1 blockchain designed for moving money. Founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim, SDF maintains the network's code, funds the developers and companies building on it, and works with regulators - all in service of cheap, fast, cross-border payments and access to the financial system for people banks tend to skip.

- **Founded:** 2014
- **Headquarters:** San Francisco, United States
- **Founders:** Jed McCaleb (Co-founder), Joyce Kim (Co-founder)
- **Team size:** Approximately 310 employees
- **Products:** Stellar Network, Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), Soroban, Lumens (XLM), Grants and Funding Programs
- **Notable:** Grew the Stellar network past 11 million accounts, adding over 3 million in a single quarter (Q1 2025), Enabled Franklin Templeton to launch the first U.S.-registered fund on a public blockchain, Facilitated over $4.2B in USDC remittance volume through the MoneyGram partnership

## Products & services

- **Stellar Network** — An open-source, decentralized layer-1 blockchain built for payments and asset issuance, supporting cross-currency settlement and sub-5-second finality at very low cost.
- **Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP)** — A federated Byzantine agreement consensus model designed by David Mazieres that reaches agreement without mining or proof-of-work, using a reconfigurable trust model.
- **Soroban** — Stellar's smart contract platform, written in Rust and executed in WebAssembly, purpose-built for financial applications with predictable fees. Went live on mainnet with Protocol 20 in 2024.
- **Lumens (XLM)** — The native asset of the Stellar network, used to pay transaction fees and act as a bridge currency in path payments.
- **Grants and Funding Programs** — Grants, investments, and awards - including the Stellar Community Fund, a $30M Matching Fund, and a $100M Soroban adoption fund - directed to builders and companies developing on Stellar.
- **Developer Tools & SDKs** — Rust SDK, JavaScript SDK, Soroban CLI, Horizon API, and the developer hub that let teams build wallets, anchors, and on/off-ramps on Stellar.

## Achievements

- Grew the Stellar network past 11 million accounts, adding over 3 million in a single quarter (Q1 2025)
- Enabled Franklin Templeton to launch the first U.S.-registered fund on a public blockchain
- Facilitated over $4.2B in USDC remittance volume through the MoneyGram partnership
- Launched Soroban smart contracts on mainnet via the Protocol 20 upgrade in 2024
- Attracted PayPal's PYUSD, Circle's USDC, and EURC as native stablecoins
- Committed $130M+ across grants and funds to grow the developer ecosystem

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — MoneyGram and SDF announced a multi-year extension of their partnership, expanding stablecoin-powered remittances into El Salvador and additional Latin American markets.
- **2025-12** — SDF published its 2025 Year in Review, highlighting record account growth and scaling of tokenized real-world assets on the network.
- **2025-09** — MoneyGram made stablecoins the backbone of its next-generation app, launching in Colombia with Stellar, Crossmint, and Circle's USDC.
- **2024-02** — Soroban smart contracts went live on Stellar mainnet with the Protocol 20 upgrade.

## Links

- Website: https://stellar.org
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/stellar-development-foundation
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/StellarOrg
- GitHub: https://github.com/stellar
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/StellarDevelopmentFoundation
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stellarorg/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/stellar-development-foundation
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-12