The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has unveiled the implementation of smart contracts on the Stellar network, marking the dawn of what it heralds as “a new era” for its technological framework.

The introduction of Stellar smart contracts aims to streamline the developer experience, particularly for those utilizing the Rust and WebAssembly programming languages.

The groundbreaking smart contract platform Soroban was first released on the Stellar testnet in October 2022. It has features that make it easy to add more users, such as predictable fees and self-managed resource prices.

Stellar’s Smart Contract Rollout

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) declared on Feb. 20th that validators on the XLM network have successfully installed the “Protocol 20” patch. New smart contract features have been added for this update, and the Soroban smart contract platform has started slowly being used.

Stellar's Protocol 20 is officially live, bringing smart contracts to Stellar Mainnet!

We've laid the groundwork, hitting major milestones along the way; but this is just the beginning:

Phase for rock-solid stability
Phase for rigorous testing
Phase for… pic.twitter.com/Zq0FDYU6fd

— Stellar (@StellarOrg) February 20, 2024

Stellar emphasized that its smart contracts environment would make new decentralized applications (DApps) easier, facilitating the development of new protocols and other network applications.

Due to the finding of a bug in Stellar Core in January, the SDF had to delay the long-awaited upgrade of smart contracts to the mainnet. The Firm said the bug didn’t pose much of a threat, but possible effects on apps after the smart contract platform was deployed were mentioned.

The SDF started a $100 million support program in October 2022 to encourage the growth of Soroban’s smart contract platform.

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization tasked with advancing the XLM network’s growth, described its two-year approach to working with the XLM community to add smart contract features.

XLMUSD 1-Day Chart

However, the native XLM currency did not gain much traction. It has lost 1% in value in the last 24 hours and is trading around $0.116. Although XLM is still 87% lower than its all-time high of $0.875 in January 2018, it hasn’t been affected by the 2024 crypto market boom.