Meridian 2019-2025: Every Stellar Conference and What Launched

Meridian timeline

Year	City	Dates	Headline
2019	Mexico City	4-5 Nov	First SDF conference; cross-border payments in the Americas
2020	Online	16-20 Nov	Second edition, virtual
2021	Online	2021	"Build Locally, Impact Globally"
2022	Rome	11-13 Oct	Soroban on Futurenet; $100M adoption fund
2023	Madrid	Late Sep	MoneyGram wallet plan, EURC live, Certora partnership
2024	London	15-17 Oct	Dev Underground stage for 80+ SCF winners
2025	Rio de Janeiro	17-18 Sep	PYUSD live, Meridian Pay, Ondo USDY, Centrifuge deRWA
2026	Lisbon	28-29 Oct	Upcoming

2019: Mexico City

The first Meridian ran on 4-5 November 2019 at Proyecto Público Prim in Mexico City. SDF pitched it as a working event for the Stellar community, with breakout sessions and workshops instead of keynotes, and said there would be no sponsors and no paid speaking positions.

The focus was financial inclusion and cross-border payments in the Americas: Stellar's original use case, years before smart contracts arrived. The choice of Mexico City reflected the US-Mexico remittance corridor that later became central to MoneyGram's and others' Stellar products.

2020 and 2021: online

The pandemic moved the second and third editions online. Meridian 2020 ran virtually on 16-20 November 2020; Meridian 2021 was also virtual, under the theme "Build Locally, Impact Globally".

The 2021 agenda covered ecosystem milestones, automated market makers (AMMs came to Stellar's base layer that year), the Enterprise Fund and the Stellar Community Fund, closing with a fireside between Jed McCaleb and Denelle Dixon. See the Stellar DEX and the Stellar Community Fund.

2022: Rome and the arrival of Soroban

Meridian 2022 ran in Rome on 11-13 October under the theme "The Urgency of Doing". Its most important moment was technical: SDF said Soroban, its new smart-contract platform, was live on Futurenet, and announced a $100M adoption fund to get developers building on it.

The first incentive programme from that fund was the Sorobanathon. Soroban reached mainnet with Protocol 20 in early 2024 and is what every DeFi protocol on Stellar now runs on. 2022 was also the year MoneyGram launched its cash-to-USDC service on Stellar, which SDF's year-end review listed among its 2022 highlights. Read Soroban smart contracts and MoneyGram ramps.

2023: Madrid

Meridian 2023 was held in Madrid at the end of September with the theme "Unlocking Human Potential". SDF's recap lists a run of payments and wallet announcements, and its quarterly report says more than 40 Soroban projects were demoed while Soroban was still on testnet.

• MoneyGram announced plans for a non-custodial wallet on Stellar using USDC.
• Circle's EURC went live on Stellar; see EURC explained.
• Certora began a long-term partnership with SDF on formal verification of Soroban contracts.
• Copper added custody for XLM and USDC on Stellar, and IDT launched its elroy wallet for US-Latin America corridors.
• Zodia Custody became the first third-party host of the Stellar Disbursement Platform.

2024: London

Meridian 2024 ran on 15-17 October at Church House, Westminster, in London: the sixth edition. Its most visible addition was the Dev Underground, a stage where more than 80 Stellar Community Fund winners pitched their projects in four-minute slots over two days.

By then Soroban had been on mainnet for most of the year, and the agenda reflected a shift from building the platform to showing what ran on it. Lending (Blend) and AMMs (Aquarius, Soroswap) were live. We did not find an official list of 2024 product launches, so we do not list any here.

2025: Rio de Janeiro

Meridian 2025 took place on 17-18 September 2025 at the Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro. SDF counted more than 1,200 attendees on day one, and its recap lists the longest run of announcements of any edition so far, mostly about tokenized assets and payments.

• PayPal's PYUSD went live on Stellar on 18 September 2025. See PYUSD on Stellar.
• Ondo launched USDY, its yield-bearing Treasury note, on Stellar. See USDY on Stellar.
• Centrifuge announced deRWA on Stellar, starting with deJTRSY and deJAAA, with Aquarius, Soroswap, Blend and DeFindex as day-one partners.
• Meridian Pay, a passkey smart wallet built by SDF and Cheesecake Labs, ran as the conference's own payment tool. See passkey smart wallets.
• Mercado Bitcoin said it would issue $200M of tokenized fixed income and equity on Stellar.
• MoneyGram's CEO announced a next-generation app built on Stellar.
• Circle said its CCTP V2 cross-chain transfer protocol was coming to Stellar.
• Pantera Capital and Onigiri Capital announced funding for Stellar builders.
• The Stellar i³ hackathon winners, 100,000 XLM each, were Decaf, Etherfuse and DeFindex.

How the format has changed

The event itself has grown and changed shape along with the network:

• From workshops to stages. 2019 was built around breakout sessions with no sponsors. By 2025 SDF ran several stages, a hackathon beforehand and sponsored side events, and counted more than 1,200 people on day one.
• A stage for small builders. London's Dev Underground in 2024 gave Stellar Community Fund winners four-minute pitch slots. The 2026 agenda keeps that idea with seven SCF pitch blocks spread across both days.
• A hackathon in front. HackMeridian, run before the main conference, sent its top six teams to the main stage in Rio. It returns in Lisbon; see HackMeridian 2026.
• The conference as a product demo. Since 2025 the event has run on its own Stellar wallet, Meridian Pay, so attendees use the network to buy merchandise and unlock activities.

What changed on the network between editions

Each Meridian is easier to read against what the network looked like at the time:

Edition	State of Stellar
2019	Payments network with a built-in order-book DEX; no smart contracts
2021	Franklin Templeton's money fund live on Stellar (April); AMMs added to the base layer
2022	Soroban on Futurenet; MoneyGram cash ramps launched
2023	Soroban on testnet; EURC launched
2024	Soroban on mainnet since early 2024; lending and AMMs live
2025	PYUSD, USDY and Centrifuge funds arrive on Stellar
2026	Seven protocol upgrades in a year; DTCC and U.S. Bank work on Stellar; DeFi TVL $236.1M on DefiLlama (24 Oct)

For the protocol side, see Stellar protocol upgrades 2025-2026 and how Stellar consensus works.

The pattern across seven years

• Payments first, then contracts, then assets. 2019-2021 were about payments and corridors, 2022-2024 about Soroban and developers, 2025 about tokenized assets and institutions.
• Announcements cluster around partners. The biggest Meridian news has usually come from companies, MoneyGram, Circle, PayPal, Ondo, rather than from SDF alone.
• DeFi grows in the background. DeFi protocols have rarely headlined, but each recent edition has had them as launch partners for new assets.

For what Stellar looks like going into Lisbon, see the Stellar ecosystem map and institutions building on Stellar.