Stellar Ambassador Program: September and October 2026

Welcome to the first Stellar Ambassador Program update! This first edition is a double feature: here's what chapters around the world did in September and October. Starting in November, we'll publish one update each month.

• Argentina: The top three teams of the Argentina Builder Challenge went from idea to approved Instaward in less than a month.
• Bolivia:
  • Stellar Elite picked 50 builders from more than 150 applicants and graduated 46, Stellar's first high-performance cohort in Bolivia.
  • Drinks on Chain, one of Stellar Elite's top teams, signed its first winery partnership with Bodega Daroca.
• Brazil:
  • Chapter referrals PigFi, Haven and BwB won $343.1K in SCF #45 Build Awards.
  • Five more projects were referred to SCF #46: UnblockPay, Nora Finance, Zimbo, Radox and Vindú.
• Colombia: Blockchain Builders 101 with Ruta N closed with 43 projects built on Stellar in five weeks.
• Costa Rica:
  • Pura Vida Ideathon brought together 56 participants who built 10 projects on Stellar.
  • With Lyfter Academy, the chapter's university route at Universidad Fidélitas (Oct 10 - 17) ended in a Demo Day where every team presented a prototype or MVP.
• Ghana: STELLARBOX took the top score at Stellar14 Demo Day, where 73 people watched teams present after a 14-day bootcamp.
• India: Chapter builders are working on Spield, a fixed growth protocol built natively on Stellar, and Stello Fi, a yield-bearing layer for XLM.
• Mexico:
  • The University Route reached 666 students at four universities in Puebla in three days.
  • The Stellar track at GOYA HACK, UNAM's engineering hackathon, went to AuraCafe, Cumple&Cobra and PaperPay.
  • Five of Mexico's 12 Blockchain Builders 101 projects presented at Demo Day on Oct 26: Authory, Tonali, Trustix, Pullcord and Do own.
• Nigeria: Tobin Protocol, Chekbit and FlezPay were invited to advance toward SCF Build Award applications.
• Peru:
  • Stellar Odyssey brought a national hackathon to all of Peru, won by Honorarios, which sets aside freelancers' taxes automatically.
  • 91 people registered for From Dev to Contributor with GrantFox, a workshop on contributing to open-source Stellar repos and getting rewarded for it.
  • All 21 registrants showed up for Web3 Sessions: Stellar at UTEC, a hands-on afternoon of technical challenges with prizes.
• Philippines: Stellar Philippines approved $95K in Instawards for 19 local projects.
• Türkiye:
  • 153 participants submitted 85 projects at the Stellar Pro Hackathon, the largest Stellar builder gathering in Türkiye so far, and 15 chapter projects received $75K in Instawards in October.
  • Instaward projects SprintOS AI Reviewer and Beaver402 are running on Mainnet with real USDC.
• Vietnam: Instaward project Fystack deployed its self-hosted, open-source MPC wallet on Stellar.

Argentina 🇦🇷

Argentina Builder Challenge · Buenos Aires, Salta, Corrientes and Mendoza · Sep 12 - 27

The challenge opened with kickoffs in Buenos Aires (64 people), Salta (33) and Corrientes (38), then grew past the country's borders: 44 builders in 20 teams, joined by builders from Costa Rica, Peru and Mexico. Office hours ran every day for two weeks, and Shaun from SDF walked teams through what SDF looks for in an Instaward application. It paid off: the top three teams had their Instawards approved by Oct 20.

NEA Tech · Corrientes · Oct 15 - 17

NEA Tech is a three-day conference with more than 2,800 people from the region's tech scene. The chapter ran its own Stellar session inside it, reached 180 people and came away with eight teams building on Stellar, most of them on problems in agriculture. Those teams logged 256 commits in four days. Dosel, Pucará and Órbita took first, second and third in the Stellar track, which awarded $1,000 in prizes, and new university activations in the region are already underway.

Bolivia 🇧🇴

Stellar Elite · Online, with meetups in Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and La Paz · Sep 2 - Oct 10

More than 150 people applied for 50 spots, and all 50 already had blockchain programming experience. Over six weeks of online classes built around school and work, 46 made it to graduation. The point was never only to train developers: this cohort will mentor, teach and judge the next ones.

Stellar Bolivia Ideathon · Oct 17 - 18

Two days, 204 registrants and 30 teams, all working on real problems in Bolivia. PrimerPaso gives students with no credit history their first loan, backed by their parents' USDC savings. Llamaywan is a five-minute lesson led by a llama that speaks Spanish, Aymara and Quechua. Both won their categories, along with Tilca Go! and BOBT.

Brazil 🇧🇷

Stellar Onchain Experience · Parnaíba, Piauí · Sep 19

Nearly all of Brazil's Web3 events happen in São Paulo and Rio. Parnaíba, a city of about 150,000 people, is a long way from both, and most developers there meet blockchain online if they meet it at all. So the chapter went to them. 71 developers, engineers and tech students, most from public universities and federal institutes, spent the day going from zero to deployed contracts, then formed teams in an ideathon and were pointed to Stellar's Brazil acceleration track to keep going.

Colombia 🇨🇴

Blockchain Builders 101 with Ruta N · Virtual · Sep 14 - Oct 16, Demo Day Oct 26

Five weeks, from an introduction to blockchain to a working MVP. 482 people in Colombia registered, 217 got in, and 43 projects were built on Stellar. The top 10 presented at Demo Day on Oct 26, and nobody won: the point was to show the work and get those teams ready for Código Cordillera, the chapter's hackathon in November.

Stellar Campus Barranquilla · Universidad de la Costa and Universidad del Norte · Sep 1 - 15

With QuillaBlocks, the chapter took students from learning what a blockchain is to taking a smart contract, changing it, compiling it and deploying it themselves. Each of them walked out as the admin of their own app on Stellar.

Costa Rica 🇨🇷

Stellar learning series at ULACIT · San José · Sep 16 - 23

Three sessions with ULACIT Start Up Supernovas and 95 registrations, on one path: Stellar fundamentals, then building with AI, then turning an idea into an app. The series closed on Oct 7 with an ideathon where participants built a new idea or worked Stellar into a project they already had.

Cripto Cantina and Pura Vida Ideathon · Barrio Escalante · Oct 16 - 28

Costa Rica built its own path for builders. With AsoBlockchain Costa Rica, the chapter started Cripto Cantina, a run of workshops and meetups in Barrio Escalante. Two sessions later, the community was ready for Pura Vida Ideathon, where 56 participants built 10 projects, from rental deposit management to an app for organizing football games with friends. Meteorito won the Scale Track. BitGate won the Genesis Track by letting people swap Bitcoin for USDC with no bridge, no custodian and no wrapped BTC, using a smart contract on Stellar and the Writz light client.

Ghana 🇬🇭

Future of Payments on Stellar · Universal Merchant Bank HQ, Accra · Sep 25

More than 120 developers, entrepreneurs and fintech builders came to a bank's headquarters to talk about payments. At Universal Merchant Bank in Accra, sessions covered digital asset payments, on/off-ramps, APIs and Stellar Smart Contracts, and brought the Stellar community closer to Ghana's fintech and business world.

Stellar14 Demo Day · Accra · Oct 17

Fourteen days, Oct 5 - 17, with teams of three to five developers building with Stellar Smart Contracts, supported from their first pull request to a working product. At Demo Day, 73 people watched teams present what they built and their plans for the next 30 days. STELLARBOX took the top score, and all three judges picked it as a top-two candidate.

Mexico 🇲🇽

University Route · Zacatlán, Puebla · Sep 7 - 9

Three days, four universities: BUAP Zacatlán, ITSSNP, UniPuebla and UGM. With CriptoUNAM, UNLOCK and Team1, the chapter reached 666 students, 447 of them at BUAP Zacatlán alone. For many it was their first contact with blockchain, and it came from ambassadors who build on Stellar themselves.

Stellar Builder Sessions Bootcamp · TESH, Huixquilucan · Oct 5, 7 and 9

130 students at TESH took their first steps in blockchain over three sessions: the basics, then code, then Stellar's tools to prepare their first deliverable. It's a good example of the chapter taking Stellar straight into the classroom.

Nigeria 🇳🇬

Building with Stellar: Products, People & Possibilities · University of Benin · Sep 12

At the University of Benin's Opolo Innovation Hub, students, developers, designers and founders looked at Stellar products already in use for payments, cross-border transfers, stablecoins and asset issuance, and at how they could build the same into their own apps.

Stellar Meetup Asaba · Café One, Asaba · Oct 24

The chapter took Stellar to Café One in Asaba, growing its community in Delta State. Developers, founders, students and the blockchain-curious learned how Stellar makes financial services faster, more accessible and more affordable, and where they could start building.

Peru 🇵🇪

Stellar Odyssey · Lima and online · Sep 19 - 26

One week, the whole country, one goal: working MVPs on Stellar. Stellar Odyssey kicked off at UNI and ended with live pitches at PUCP, with a virtual track so builders outside Lima could compete on equal terms. Six teams won prizes from a $1,000 pool. Honorarios took first with a smart contract on Stellar that automatically sets aside part of each payment from abroad for a freelancer's taxes. Check out all the winners.

Peru Tech Week · Lima · Oct 16

When Lima gets together to talk tech, Stellar is part of the conversation. At Peru Tech Week the chapter ran two sessions in one day: Blockchain es Clave at UPC San Isidro, where Alejandra Catacora gave a talk for Stellar (21 attendees), and Café Blockchain in Miraflores, a no-prerequisites workshop that took 20 people from wallet setup to a working smart contract on Stellar.

Philippines 🇵🇭

Stellar PH Builder Demo Showcase · Oct 8

At the end of their 30-day sprints, the first nine Instaward teams demoed working software live. More than 30 people watched, including the next cohort, who got to see what they'll be building toward.

Türkiye 🇹🇷

Stellar Week and Stellar Pro Hackathon · Istanbul · Sep 17 - 20

The largest Stellar builder gathering in Türkiye so far. After three online onboarding cohorts, Rise In and Stellar brought the strongest teams to a two-day residency in Istanbul, then ran a weekend hackathon: 153 participants, 85 projects, and 72 of them connected to a Stellar anchor to move between Turkish lira and USDC. Pacta, Koul and Mono took the Scale Track; Pera Wallet, Plink, StellarCard and Payper took the Genesis Track. The week closed with finalists meeting institutions including İş Bankası, TEB and ING Hubs to talk about pilots.

Vietnam 🇻🇳

Mid-Autumn Festival campaign on Boundless · Aug 31 - Sep 26

For the Mid-Autumn Festival, 10 projects from Vietnam's Stellar ecosystem, including Veil, Fystack and Cell Protocol, took the holiday onchain with social tasks and content challenges on Boundless. More than 680 people joined, with 291 submissions and 100+ pieces of content. Boundless, itself an SCF-funded project, also ran an AMA on its own SCF journey. AMA

• Find your chapter. Chapters by region: Latin America, Africa, Asia Pacific and Europe and Middle East.
• Join a weekly meeting. Chapters hold weekly meetings on the Stellar Dev Discord, open to anyone. Times and upcoming events are on Events and Meetings.
• Become an ambassador. Fill out the Stellar Ambassador Intake form.
• Get funded. Builders working with their chapter can apply for Instawards. Applications are judged on their merits, so being in a chapter doesn't guarantee funding.