The Stellar Community Fund Evolves to Bring more Projects to Mainnet

The Stellar Community Fund is making a return, with a focus on the Stellar network’s new smart contract capabilities thanks to the Soroban smart contract upgrade.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) is an open application awards program for bootstrapping development teams within the ecosystem. This is the sixth iteration of the SCF, focusing on “rapid iteration and funding for qualified projects, prioritizing viable solutions with potential for real-world impact” in order to incubate and accelerate ecosystem growth.

As opposed to traditional foundation-based grants, the SCF places emphasis on community-driven selection for the projects and awards.

The phased rollout process began after the official launch in September, 2024. Phase one in October kicked off the new program, focusing on collaborations with other ecosystem accelerator groups, phase three will initiate new pilots on the SCF growth track, and finally phase four will see the pilot programs implemented into the ecosystem with full product launches.

Throughout the campaign the SCF is introducing four new focal points:

1. Integrating the Kickstart bootcamp;

2. SCF Build Awards, with a potential of up to $150,000 in grant funding awarded in XLM;

3. Post-development attention from accelerators such as DraperU, which assists in resource acquisition and development for scalability on Stellar; and

4. Delegate panels for project categories to focus expert attention, mentorship and extensive feedback.

The SCF hosted and presented its Demo Day on January 29, 2025 which included presentations from previously incubated startups within the Stellar ecosystem such as Balanced Network, Utoken, and SoroSwap. SCF will regularly host Demo Days to showcase projects to potential investors and kick off go-to-market strategy.