Developers
A Peek at Meridian’s Dev Underground, the Hyper-Speed Stage
Author
Bri Wylde
Publishing date
It was Tuesday, October 15th, 2024 the first day of Meridian 2024 in London, U.K. The air was crisp as I tripped my way over the cobblestone streets en route to Church House, Westminster, the home of this year’s annual Stellar conference. Upon entering the building, I was immediately greeted by splashes of lilac, teal, and gold in an ornate room of oak paneling and high white ceilings, all of which were presided over by an imposing painting of Her Majesty the Queen.
After grabbing my badge and exploring the venue a bit, I happened upon the Dev Underground, a room tucked off the conference’s main entrance. This was home to a new stage at Meridian this year, where more than 80 Stellar Community Fund (SCF) winners would present their projects in a series of fast-paced four-minute pitch sessions over two days.
The Dev Underground gave builders on Stellar the opportunity to talk about their projects in a casual, supportive, and fun environment and network with other developers in the ecosystem. After spending most of Meridian nestled into a corner of the Dev Underground, I have to say that this stage was a smashing success and brought a collaborative and lively environment to the conference.
Dev Underground, The Vibes
We cannot talk about the Dev Underground without first giving much-deserved credit to the room’s charismatic and unflappable moderator, Gemma Dobbs, Project Manager on the Ecosystem Growth team at the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF). She put countless hours into organizing the event and hosted the pitch sessions with efficiency, flexibility, and an endearing, natural humor.
Now onto the vibes. The Dev Underground was small compared to the other stages at Meridian, with a capacity for around 27 audience members if you cramped a few to stand in the back. It had two large windows flanked by hunter-green velvet curtains that looked out onto the grass of Dean’s Yard. Instead of chairs, there were poufs, and instead of relying on traditional clapping for applause, there were pom-poms and bright yellow cowbells.
And, of course, there was exclusive swag. Ball caps stamped with “Community-Powered Funding” were stacked in alcoves outside the room, and upon my discovery of the Dev Underground, I found SDF’s own CTO, Nicolas Barry, helping to fold Meridian-branded Stellar Community Fund t-shirts. There were also one-of-a-kind sweatshirts to be won throughout the two days of pitches through a successful bingo game or one of the various interactive activities played during breaks.
Once the Dev Underground was set up and the welcoming speech on the main stage delivered, the project pitches began!
SCF Project Pitches, Day 1
The day started with a packed room, and every pouf occupied. Gemma introduced the Dev Underground, describing it as a “really fast, really intimate networking stage,” which very accurately depicted what was about to come as participants presented in rapid succession. Each of the 80+ projects had just a few minutes to engage the audience before being replaced with the next presenter. Gemma’s flawless pitch organization and unyielding time management kept the talks moving smoothly and at breakneck speed.
Day one kicked off with Amit Kaushik from Excellar, who approached the podium amidst much cowbell ringing and cheers. After presenting on his project’s yield-bearing stablecoin, Amit left the stage to more applause, making way for Jasper from Glo Dollar. Jasper’s presentation featured his physical Glo Dollar card, which he had used to pay for his hotel in London—pretty cool!
As the morning progressed, more projects took the stage, with some showcasing their existing cross-project collaborations, such as Soroswap’s integration with Freighter, OrbitCDP being built on top of Blend, and LINK’s partnership with Beans in Nigeria.
Blend, the 2024 i³ Award winner for innovation, shared insights from their experience with Stellar state expiration, demonstrated in a lighthearted demo featuring the Krusty Krab lending pool and KrabbyPatty tokens. Aquarius also shared exciting plans for Yield Bridge, a tool that will enable users to earn yield from EVM network assets on Stellar.
After a much-needed lunch break, the room quickly filled again with folks eager to see the pitch from the 2024 i³ Award winner in interoperability, Allbridge. Pavel Velykyi presented his team’s efforts to enable cross-chain transfers of Stellar USDC between Stellar and other supported networks. He emphasized how Allbridge is working to bring liquidity to Stellar and highlighted their active search for partnerships with other Stellar-based projects to help grow the ecosystem.
The pitches continued with the dulcet tones of cowbells echoing around the room between each presentation. Upon the final break of the day, Gemma announced the audience would be playing a new game titled Impromptu Pitches. Unfortunately, there were a few project presenters who couldn’t make it to Meridian at the last minute. They did, however, send over their pitch decks beforehand. So, during Impromptu Pitches, volunteers from the audience who had never seen the decks before stepped up to present others’ projects sight unseen, reminiscent of Plizzanet Earth, where Snoop Dogg, who evidently knows very little of the natural world, narrates nature videos.
All Impromptu Pitches were hilarious. However, Mariano Morales of Anclap was a highlight when he presented the deck for a project he had never seen or interacted with. Some standout quotes from Morales included insights like, “This tool makes it easy to start building on Soroban… I think,” and, “We’ve made all these technical things... more technical.” He wrapped up with the conclusion: “I wanted a sweatshirt, and my bingo card wasn’t giving.”
At the end of the day, the room was strewn with empty bottles, pom poms, various stickers, markers, cowbells, and half-completed bingo cards. After a quick tidying up, we abandoned the chaos and headed to the night’s festivities, which thankfully included a well-stocked happy hour.
SCF Project Pitches, Day 2
Day 2 of the SCF project pitches began bright and early with a Stellar community legend, Bastian taking the stage to present his project. Following him, Alejo—a Stellar builder since 2017 and former SDF contractor—took the mic to introduce his app, Skyhitz, which connects musical artists directly to their fans by cutting out the middlemen.
Project collaboration remained a theme on day two, highlighted in several pitches, including David Nandwa’s presentation on HoneyCoin. He shared the project’s many exciting advancements, including its accomplishment as the first application in Africa to integrate MoneyGram as an on/off ramp.
The day galloped on, with Gemma running the pitches like a well-oiled machine. Up to the plate before a short break was RampMeDaddy, an app enabling global crypto payments through Telegram. New to Stellar when they won third place in the Consensus hackathon in May 2024, the RampMeDaddy team has been on a roll ever since. They’ve completed the Stellar Kickstart and DraperU programs and are now a successful SCF-funded project.
During the break, Gemma managed to wrangle Chad Ostrowski and Willem Wyndham of Aha Labs fame into a special rendition of the Newlywed Game titled: “How Well Do You Know Your Co-Founder?” With Gemma as host, the game began with a simple question: 'What is your business partner’s go-to coffee order?' Willem confidently declared Chad’s favorite was Folger’s instant, only for Chad to respond, 'I’ve never ordered instant coffee in my life.' Things spiraled downhill from there, with the two missing nearly every question. The game wrapped with Willem claiming: “I think we’re getting divorced.”
Following lunch, Tommaso De Ponti (aka Tdep) from xyclooLabs presented Mercury to a packed and engaged audience and showcased his project’s new feature: Retroshades, a tool that allows anyone to create customized cloud indexers. Deeply invested in the Stellar network’s wellbeing, Tdep is one of the only community members who has written an accepted Core Advancement Proposal (CAP-0053).
Other notable pitches included John Rubisoff’s presentation on Reflector DAO, a decentralized system and data exchange protocol used by significant Stellar projects like xyclooLabs, Script3, Ultra Stellar, and StellarExpert. After John’s presentation, Script3 introduced Soroban Governor, a DAO smart contract framework designed for Stellar and utilized by YieldBlox for its Blend pool.
And with that, day two of the Dev Underground was complete, and it was time to proceed to the main stage for Meridian’s closing remarks!
Dev Underground, Final Thoughts
Before the conference, I had a general sense of the number of projects that had gone through SCF, but over the course of the two days at the Dev Underground, I was consistently blown away by the sheer volume of really cool things being built on Stellar and the talent and passion of each presenter. The room was alive with an animated energy and showcased the collaborative spirit of the Stellar community.
We truly appreciate all the presenters for talking about their projects and for continuing to build. Were you unable to attend Meridian, or did you miss some project pitches? No problem! You can view all pitches (and other stage presentations) on the SDF YouTube! Here is a link to the Dev Underground playlist. And join the conversation with other Stellar developers in the Stellar Dev Discord!