The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has announced the successful implementation of smart contracts on the Stellar network, marking a significant milestone aimed at revolutionizing the technological platform. This achievement, detailed in an official blog post, highlights the completion of the "Protocol 20" upgrade by Stellar (XLM) network validators, enabling the activation of smart contracts and initiating the gradual release of Soroban, their smart contract platform.
The introduction of smart contracts on Stellar aims to enhance the developer experience, particularly for those utilizing Rust and WebAssembly (WASM) programming languages. This move is expected to provide a more user-friendly environment for developers, facilitating innovation and practical use cases in the real world.
Soroban, the smart contract platform implemented in Stellar's testnet in October 2022, incorporates scalability features such as predictable fees and prices for external resources. This new smart contract ecosystem is poised to empower the creation of decentralized applications (dApps), allowing developers to build innovative protocols and apps on the Stellar network.
It's worth noting that the implementation of smart contracts on the mainnet was delayed in January due to a bug found in Stellar Core. Despite assurances from the SDF regarding minimal risk, they opted to address and resolve the bug before launching the platform to ensure the stability and security of applications built on it.
To incentivize developers to adopt the Soroban smart contract platform, the SDF initiated a $100 million funding initiative in October 2022. Over the past two years, the Stellar Development Foundation, in collaboration with the Stellar community, has worked on developing smart contract functionality.
However, despite these recent developments, the native token of Stellar, XLM, has not experienced a significant price increase. In fact, over the last 24 hours, it has decreased by 1% and currently sits at $0.116. XLM has struggled to keep pace with the crypto market rally in the early weeks of 2024, remaining 87% below its all-time high of $0.875 reached in January 2018.
This less-than-enthusiastic performance of XLM has led several investors to shift their focus to projects promising quicker returns, such as the meme coin Sponge V2. Sponge V2 aims to build on the success of its predecessor, Sponge V1, by offering more utility and rewards while maintaining the core elements of a meme coin.
Investors can stake their V1 tokens in the smart contract to receive V2 tokens. Nearly 10 million V1 tokens have already been staked and transferred to obtain the equivalent in V2 over the past month. Additionally, investors can earn block rewards in SPONGEV2 tokens, with a variable APY established for four years, currently around 189%.
Once V1 tokens are staked, they cannot be sold or withdrawn but only converted into Sponge V2. The recent migration to the Polygon network will offer cheaper and faster transactions and mitigate the impact of the ERC-20 smart contract hack.
Furthermore, the Sponge V2 team is developing a Play-to-Earn (P2E) game to add new utility to the token. Players can earn $SPONGEV2 tokens by participating in various races and climbing the leaderboard. Sponge Racer offers both a free and a paid version, allowing users to play for fun or use Sponge V2 tokens to purchase in-game credits for additional earnings.
This upcoming P2E game is likely to be a key factor in the token's growth, adding significant utility to the project.