Stellar Global Radio with Sam: Exploring the Stellar Blockchain and Beyond

Soroban, the developer preview of the new SmartContract platform is NOW LIVE! It’s a unique opportunity for developers to influence the new platform in it's infancy! Stellar Development Foundation's VP of Tech Strategy Tomer Weller swings by to give us a quick breakdown on the new platform, the origin of the name Sorobon, what you can do and where you can get plugged in as you begin to explore potential use cases for smart contracts within your own projects.  More on Soroban: "....With this preview, developers can write and test contracts on their local machine without depending on a running network. It focuses on contract development, rather than complete dApp development. This means that, for example, you can write and test a liquidity pool contract, but not (yet) a full liquidity pool app that indexes and consumes trade data. You can now write contracts with initial versions of the Soroban environment, SDK, and CLI. There are also some early Docs and Examples to help get you started. In the next few iterations, we will be introducing an events system, indexing service, better gas metering, a Stellar Core integration, and much more. This is the first time in the history of the SDF in which we are releasing such an early preview. We’re doing it because we believe that we’re building something special with Soroban, and true to our open-source roots, we believe it’s important to share the development process. We want Stellar ecosystem developers and smart contract developers from other ecosystems to have a chance to make a meaningful impact together. Put another way, we want your feedback! Test it out, see what you can do, and let us know what you think. But don’t forget this is a preview. Expect your code to break, realize that updates will shift things, and understand that the release version of Soroban may be a significantly changed product. Follow Sam on Twitter Visit Stellar Global

Sam and Fred Kyung-Jin Rezeau, CEO of the NFT Marketplace Litemint, sit for an open Twitter Space discussion with world-renowned and Topps Licensed Artist Blake Jamieson. We touch on his roots, how he got started as a professional artist and get insight into the mindset it takes to make it in this business as a professional artist. About Blake: During a trip to Las Vegas in 2017, while dropping off a portrait to Rick Harrison (Pawn Stars), Blake met former NFL player and current NFL manager Jarred Fayson. Jarred encouraged Blake to paint for professional athletes, introducing Blake to a few of his clients (CJ Anderson, Jahleel Addae, Corey Liuget). Blake has since leveraged those relationships to become the premier portrait artist for NFL athletes, and is quickly making a name for himself in other professional sports. In 2020 Blake started working with Topps, redesigning 20 iconic baseball cards alongside 19 other artists for Project 2020. Since then he has launched a solo set, Topps 1951 by Blake Jamieson, and is currently working on Project70. Blake's art is in the collections of Howie Mandel, Gary Vaynerchuk, Rick Harrison, and over 250 professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, MLS, MLB, NHL, and PLL. His art has also been purchased for international private collections, including in Spain, Canada, Dubai, Australia, and Switzerland. Visit Litemint.com Follow Litemint Follow Sam on Twitter Visit Blake's Site Blake's Official Fugly NFT Page Visit Stellar Global

Sam sits down with Litemint's very first artist to mint an NFT on their marketplace, Arina Fonina. She joins in from the Volkhov River in the city of Veliky Novgorod to give us some background on herself, the inspiration behind her work and why she choose Litemint as the first home for her creations.  LITEMINT™ is a tech company that breaks barriers and creates innovative products to connect creators, collectors, crypto enthusiasts and gamers to unique experiences. Minting an NFT on Stellar costs about 3 XLM (0.33 USD) and transferring the NFT on Stellar costs 0.00001 XLM (0.0000011 USD). Litemint doesn't charge a commission for selling on their platform.  Visit Arina's Store on Litemint Visit Litemint

Sam is LIVE with Mobie Network CEO Brandon Burgason who is using Stellar to redefine the world of payments and rewards.  Mobie plans to redefine the way that users spend, send, shop, earn and give. Incentivizing users with cash back at retailers and other rewards for participating in the ecosystem.    Brandon Burgason is a for-purpose serial entrepreneur focused on creating technology and businesses that help people and solves problems. He founded MobieLabs, a venture studio that builds mainstream products utilizing blockchain technology that is focused on mass adoption through easy-to-use applications.  Their flagship product Mobie App, is a global payments and rewards platform that allows for cryptocurrencies or cash to be used for everyday transactions, powering instant payments globally for individuals and businesses.   His mission is to make money and crypto simple and accessible for all people. Brandon’s lifelong passion has been building sustainable, ethical, and transparent organizations that fuel social good.  He lives by the mantra, “do good things with good people”   follow Sam @samconnerone  follow Brandon @0xfounder Visit Mobie Network https://mobienetwork.com

CEO Mary Kucek and COO Lissette Logan visit the studio to share the announcement of their NFT for Impact project. This is not your run-of-the-mill NFT Collection. No, this is far greater with a larger impact. The Hidden Faces of Domestic Violence collection is symbolic of those who must hide in plain sight for their safety.   What you get  90% Tax Deduction Receipt Beautiful digital Sir Cheesely art and thank you membership letter What we are fighting for:   Nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States.   1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, use of victim services, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, etc.   72% of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner and 94% of the victims of these murder-suicides are female.   Unintended pregnancy is 3.3x higher for women who experience both sexual and physical abuse. Unfortunately, a growing trend is trying to impregnate those trying to free themselves from their abuser. This way the abuser remains in control.   Over 45% of female rape victims were raped by an intimate partner.   90% of the funds for the NFT sale goes directly to the OvaryIt Foundation, the remaining 10% goes to the amazing Sir Cheesely (artist) and Blue Marble Platform. All proceeds that the Foundation receives goes directly to helping survivors get period products, pregnancy tests, and health services.   OvaryIt is a telehealth platform that was created for women by women. We believe that all women should have access to affordable and high-quality contraceptive options. Through the use of telehealth, we can now bring those options directly to the comfort of our patient's homes. Because each woman is unique and has a distinctive lifestyle and different goals, there can be no one-size-fits-all solution to birth control. Our proprietary technology works not only to ensure patient safety, but to assist physicians in finding patient's their contraceptive match, be it hormonal or non-hormonal.  This ensures better patient compliance and contraceptive efficacy.     Follow Sam at @samconnerone Learn more about OvaryIt

Let's face it! Despite all the hype and billions pouring in and out of the blockchain industry, we have yet to see a breakthrough in real-world adoption. Today we bring on Brian Barnier of Value Bridge Advisors and Think.Design.Cyber to discuss the industry and learn from his insights key areas that every blockchain organization should focus on to be successful:   1: Identifying your value proposition   2: Understanding the "Used Car Lot Problem  3: Product Management   4:Understaning your team and more...   About Brian Barnier  Member of Investopedia's Financial Review Board Head of Analytics at ValueBridge Advisors and Guest Professor at the Colin Powell School at City University of NY Previously taught finance and operations at the University of Detroit Mercy and economics at Western Michigan University. Author of The Operational Risk Handbook and contributor to Risk & Performance: A Guide for Government Decision-Makers and Risk Management in Finance Experience Brian Barnier, Director/Head of Analytics, ValueBridge Advisors (U.S.)/Burnt Oak Capital (UK), focuses on growing companies and investment funds. His analytical edge in risk management comes from systems analysis and advanced data visualization. His impact flows from his expertise in strategy, data analysis, and technology.  He is co-founder and editor of economic and market site Fed Dashboard & Fundamentals, where he applies decision science analysis to bust market and economic myths.  He serves on advisory boards for Blue Sky Capital, Disaster Technologies, Origo Financial, Orion Worldwide, and Boardwise. Guest professor at Colin Powell School @ City University of NY teaching a graduate seminar in data analytics for decision-making.  Appreciating businesses through institutional investor eyes, he served as co-chair of the risk committee of the USD26T assets London-based ICGN institutional investor organization, where he catalyzed the “investment chain of implementation” analysis. He has been interviewed and writes widely, including from the floor of the NYSE, NASDAQ MarketSite, The Street, NY1, WSJ, CNBC, and Bloomberg Brief.  Previously, he led innovation initiatives for IBM, Lucent (now Nokia), and Ameritech (now AT&T)—across which he led teams to 9 patents and launched a pioneering fintech product. He taught finance and operations at the University of Detroit Mercy and economics at Western Michigan University. He has guest lectured in Russia and Mexico.

Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) Community Manager John aka @spintax2 joins the show! What initiatives is the SDF involved with to engage the community, how can we protect ourselves from scams, and we explore the current round of the Stellar Community Fund, an open-application grant program that allows developers, startups, and full-fledged companies that build on Stellar to receive support and funding based on input from the Stellar community.

As Davos 2022 kicks off Sam sits down with author, mentor and guru; writer and storyteller; champion of a just society and an economy that serves us all; Satya Das. Working with colleagues at the Center of Excellence on Human-centered Digital Economy, he developed a new way to approach our planetary crises. They call it their 6-D vision: Disarmament, Development, and Dignity, as a framework leading to Decarbonization, Decentralization, and Digitalization. The Digital Economist looks at the potential of this approach in meeting the climate challenge, and argue that a 6-D lens enables a more robust and global understanding of humankind’s mutual challenge in meeting the climate crisis.   The Digital Economist’s 6-D lens offers a means to align the similar, and often overlapping, goals of climate activists, The Paris Agreement, The Glasgow Climate Pact, and the business and investment communities as well as the climate pathways under the 2019 Marrakesh Partnership, which were updated in 2021 to further strengthen just transition, gender-responsiveness, resilience and circular economy. This alignment would ideally lead to coordinated implementation of inclusive climate resilience, particularly among the most vulnerable. It also offers the means to bolster the implementation of commitments under the overlapping vectors of these covenants, joining efforts to put the pledges into action.   Their key recommendations: Adopt the 6-D approach to enhance the implementation of the Glasgow Climate Pact Use the mechanisms presented by The Digital Economist — the global carbon levy, the 6-D lens and fiscal measures to swerve from militarism to development — to meet and exceed the adaptation and mitigation funding evoked in the Paris Agreement and reinforced in the Glasgow Climate Pact Learn more about Satya and The Digital Economist

Stellar Global takes you to Paris and behind the scenes of the Hackathon hosted by The Stellar Development Foundation and Ledger, the smartest way to secure, buy, exchange and grow your crypto assets. The Paris Hackathon challenge was to build a powerful and secure blockchain-powered app during the 20-hour Stellar x Ledger Community Hackathon! The Stellar Development Foundation and Ledger SAS collaborated to provide developers with an in-person opportunity to build solutions on both technologies. Devs poured in, in-person and online, to combine the power of the accessible Stellar network with the secure Ledger hardware wallet. PRIZES First place: €1000 worth of XLM (awarded to SmartRent) Second place: €600 worth of XLM (awarded to StarZap) Third place: €400 worth of XLM (awarded Carbon Emission Killer)

Sam meets with Diego Yanez (CEO of AlfredPay) and Daniel Laplana (COO of Shokworks) to explore how they connected to set up a fintech business that would facilitate seamless and affordable remittances back-and-forth between the US, DR, and Haiti, all powered by the Stellar network.  Additionally, we are introduced to Danny Rodriguez, CEO of Blue Missions, and learn how together with a planned commitment of shared profit from AlfredPay, they plan to continue their mission of improving public health in the Dominican Republic by providing families with clean water and sanitary environments.   What is Alfred Pay?   Alfred Pay first came about when Diego Yanez met with his eventual co-founder, Marino Marrero, in the Dominican Republic. Despite the pandemic, the DR still boasted a strong remittance market – the third-largest in LATAM. Haiti’s economy had not fared so well, and many Haitians immigrated to the DR, causing them to send money back to their home country in high volumes. Wanting to leverage the DR’s robust remittance infrastructure ($10.4 billion in 2021), Diego and Marino decided to set up a fintech business that would facilitate seamless and affordable remittances back-and-forth between the US, DR, and Haiti, all powered by the Stellar network.  Alfred Pay plans to operate as both an anchor and as a consumer product on Stellar. As an anchor on the Stellar network, Alfred will set up payment corridors between the US, DR, and Haiti.  For the US specifically, Alfred has partnered with Wyre to build a fiat-to-crypto onramp that permits users to access USDC on Stellar. Alfred will then build a crypto-to-fiat off-ramp into the Dominican Republic and Haiti so that users will be able to exchange USDC for local fiat currencies.  These on/off ramps will then plug into Alfred Pay’s consumer product: a wallet app that will let users send and receive remittances quickly and easily from their phones. With the wallet app, senders may choose to send money either to another Alfred wallet or directly to the recipient’s bank account; users will also be able to locate their nearest ATM to withdraw funds from their Alfred wallet.