👋 Lens Welcomes More Users Amid V2 Launch

MetaMask Snaps are new features and functionality, created by third-party developers, that MetaMask users worldwide can install directly to customize their wallet. With MetaMask Snaps, every wallet becomes a unique reflection of its owner's aspirations and preferences.

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Smart Contracts Now Live on Stellar Testnet

On Wednesday, September 20 at 1500 UTC, the Stellar Testnet successfully upgraded to Protocol 20, which introduces support for Soroban smart contracts. Developers worldwide can now access Soroban’s Turing-complete functionality to deploy and invoke DeFi protocols in a common, widely used sandbox environment.

The Stellar network has long been known for supporting connections to real-world financial infrastructure. With the Protocol 20 upgrade, the access those connections provide will combine with the innovation potential created by smart contracts to allow for something unique: cash to DeFi.

Many Stellar ecosystem projects are already poised to take advantage of the cash-to-DeFi opportunity. In a demo featured at Meridian, the annual Stellar conference, Beans, a user-friendly, consumer-facing Stellar network wallet, showed what it might look like to integrate with Blend, a Soroban-built lending protocol, to allow a user in Malawi to cash into a USDC balance via Moneygram and, in one click, deposit that balance into an interest-generating account. These types of interactions have the potential to open access to the next generation of financial infrastructure.

The Testnet upgrade is the last step before validators vote on a Mainnet upgrade, and if that vote goes through, the upgrade is immediate. The Stellar network will likely have smart contracts before the end of the year.