SCF 7.0 — Research
Strategy, tracks, past winners, deadlines, and docs. ← back
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days
Next deadline: SCF #44 — June 14, 2026
Submission window open now. Submit the Interest Form ASAP — eligibility review is rolling, you must be invited before the deadline.
Interest Form ↗
TL;DR
SCF 7.0 launched January 2026. The flagship is the Build Award: up to $150K in XLM for teams that ship a meaningful product on Stellar / Soroban in 3–6 months. Awards pay out in 4 milestone-tied tranches: 10% / 20% / 30% / 40%.
Cadence: rounds run every ~6 weeks. Rounds overlap — while one is in panel review, the next is accepting submissions. 504 projects funded across 44 rounds historically. Lifetime cap per project is $150K, with case-by-case extensions to $300K.
Apply via the Interest Form at communityfund.stellar.org. Reviewed on a rolling basis; eligible projects are invited into an open round.
Round status (current snapshot)
| Round |
Deadline |
Status |
| SCF #44 |
Jun 14, 2026 |
Open · target this |
| SCF #43 |
Apr 26, 2026 |
Panel review |
| SCF #42 |
Mar 15, 2026 |
Ended (winners announced) |
| SCF #41 |
Feb 8, 2026 |
Ended |
| SCF #40 |
Nov 9, 2025 |
Ended |
Source: communityfund.stellar.org/awards
The 3 Build tracks
Open novel
Novel financial protocols and primitives. No mandatory integration. Best fit for experienced teams with a clear thesis on what's missing in the ecosystem.
Integration leverage
Build by composing existing Stellar ecosystem components instead of re-inventing them. Faster path; reviewers like seeing reuse.
RFP requested
Developer tooling / infra / capabilities the Stellar ecosystem has explicitly asked for. Lowest "is this needed?" risk — already validated. Note: Q2 RFPs were pushed to SCF #44.
Application process
1. Interest Form — submit at communityfund.stellar.org. Include a referral code if you have one (vetted referrers from the Stellar community / SDF / partners get a strong signal boost).
2. Pre-screen — panel evaluates ecosystem value, eligibility, team capability. Rolling.
3. Invitation — eligible teams are invited to apply to an open Build round before its deadline.
4. Full submission — Build Award proposal with deliverables, budget, roadmap (see Requirements below).
5. Panel review — SDF employees + community reviewers evaluate. Integration / RFP teams may be asked for live calls.
6. Milestone payouts:
10%on award
20%at MVP
30%at testnet readiness
40%at mainnet launch with UX validation
What the application asks for
Per the Build Award docs, the submission must include:
- Detailed technical roadmap & milestone plan — what you'll ship and when. Each tranche needs a deliverable.
- Budget breakdown across tranches — engineering hours × rate per deliverable, not a round number.
- Current traction — on Stellar, on another chain, or offchain. Users / contracts / waitlist / partnerships.
- Team skills & experience — who's building it, why this team can ship it.
- Why Stellar / Soroban — explicit justification vs. alternatives. Reviewers reject chain-agnostic pitches.
- First deliverable as Proof of Intent — must contain real technical interaction with Soroban/Stellar (not docs, not "research"). This is scrutinized hardest.
Past winners — SCF #42 (March 2026)
Top 10 awarded projects from the most recently completed round. All were Build track. Use these as calibration for what wins.
Arcane — Private Compliant Layer$150.0K
Privacy and compliance infrastructure for Stellar transactions. Mainnet launch milestone. Won the cap — privacy + compliance is high-leverage infra.
Tezoro — Soroban Yield Aggregator$143.8K
Aggregates yield opportunities across Soroban DeFi protocols. Soroban-native, not a port.
Lumexo — Mobile App$140.0K
iOS + Android app for Stellar-based financial services. Distribution / consumer access.
AXIS DEX — Launch$136.0K
Decentralized exchange launching on Stellar. Critical DeFi infra slot.
The Signal — B2B Marketplace Payments$121.0K
Payment rails for B2B marketplace transactions on Stellar.
Tender — Merchant Payouts$120.0K
Payout infrastructure connecting real-world merchants to Stellar. Real fiat → crypto pipe.
ILIS — Institutional Capital Access$115.0K
Platform for institutions to access Stellar-based assets. Big-money on-ramp.
Bingtellar — Blink (Yield-bearing Payments)$112.8K
Combines payment settlement with yield generation. Two primitives in one product.
BIM Exchange — Swap, Bridge & Yield$107.7K
Multi-function DeFi: swaps, bridges, yields on Stellar.
Regulated BRL Settlement$96.0K
Brazilian real (BRL) settlement infrastructure for institutional payments. Specific fiat × specific region.
Earlier examples (SCF #34, April 2025)
Laina — Decentralized Loans$115.0K
Low-fee, trustless lending platform focused on simplicity and accessibility.
DappRadar — Stellar Integration$95.0K
Integrating Stellar smart contracts into DappRadar's data + activity tracking. Distribution play.
Greep Pay$70.0K
Stablecoin POS letting merchants accept African currencies seamlessly. Region-specific fiat bridge.
Payrit$47.8K
Bridges banked / unbanked: payments from, within, and to both groups. Low-budget, narrow scope.
Sources: awards page · winners pulled from individual SCF #42 and SCF #34 round pages.
Patterns — what wins
From SCF #42's top 10 + earlier rounds, the dominant categories of awarded projects:
Payments & settlement 5+
DeFi (yield, AMM, lending) 4
Region- or fiat-specific (BRL, NGN, USDC for X) 3
Institutional / B2B 3
Privacy / compliance infra 1
Mobile / consumer app 1
Award sizes cluster $96K–$150K — most winners come close to the cap. Smaller asks ($45K–$70K) work for narrowly-scoped projects, but reviewers expect the budget to be defended line-by-line either way.
What recurs across the list:
- Practical financial use cases (payments, lending, settlement) over speculative.
- Real-world fiat anchors (USDC for Haiti, BRL settlement, African currencies).
- Either Soroban-native primitives or distribution plays (mobile app, DappRadar integration).
- Specific vertical/region beats generic "DeFi platform on Stellar."
- Mainnet launch and live users mentioned as success criteria.
What wins (strategy)
- Get a referral. The single biggest signal multiplier. Talk to people in Stellar Discord / partners / SDF and ask for their referrer code.
- Pick a vertical or region. "Payments for Vietnamese SMEs," "BRL settlement," "NGN POS" — winners are concrete. "DeFi on Stellar" is not.
- Show traction. Even small numbers — waitlist, prior users, on another chain. Reviewers want signal you can ship.
- Prove technical mastery. Process maps, technical specs, working code on GitHub, demo videos. Do Soroban Quest / Stellar Quest before submitting.
- Justify Stellar. Explain why Stellar/Soroban over alternatives. Cheap fees + native asset issuance + anchors are the typical thesis.
- Right-size the budget. Don't ask for the max by default — winners between $45K and $150K both exist. Defend it line-by-line: hours × rate × deliverables.
- Strong first deliverable. Must be a technical proof-of-intent that interacts directly with Soroban/Stellar. Reviewers scrutinize this hardest — it stands in for the whole submission.
- Be present in the community. SCF Discord, Stellar Developers Discord. Ask questions, get feedback before submitting.
Common rejection reasons
- Insufficient research — submission shows the team hasn't read how Soroban / Stellar work.
- No demonstrated team expertise or technical foundation.
- Vague ecosystem impact, no competitive differentiation.
- Unclear deliverables or unrealistic budgets ("ask for the max" with no breakdown).
- First milestone with no direct technical interaction with the blockchain.
- Generic "we'll build on whatever chain" thesis — no Stellar-specific reason.
- Skipping the Interest Form / referral step and going straight to the submission.
From rejection → ready to re-apply
The single most common rejection — confirmed by direct reviewer feedback in this project's history — is "concept and design stage with no prototype or active development." The Build Award is for teams ready to ship in 3–6 months, not teams still validating the idea.
Reviewer's verbatim line: "The Build Award is intended for projects with demonstrated traction, which this submission does not yet meet. The team is encouraged to build a minimum viable product and re-apply in a future round."
If you've been rejected for "no traction," the next round opens automatically every ~6 weeks — but you need to fix the underlying gap, not just resubmit. A re-application checklist:
- Ship the smallest possible MVP. Doesn't have to be production. One Soroban contract deployed to testnet + a minimal frontend that exercises it is enough to flip "concept" → "active development."
- Public GitHub repo with commits. Reviewers click through to it. Empty repo = same rejection.
- 3-minute demo video. Shows the contract being called from a UI. This is your Proof of Intent for the resubmission.
- Numbers, even small. 5 alpha testers · 50 waitlist signups · 200 Discord members · a hackathon win. Anything counts more than zero.
- Acknowledge the prior feedback. When you re-apply, briefly cite the previous round's feedback and say what changed. Reviewers respect teams that listen.
- Tighten the team narrative. "2-person team, X years building Y" beats abstract claims. If a teammate is light on credentials, add a third person or cut scope.
- Right-size the budget for the new scope. If MVP shrinks ambition, drop the ask. A clean $40K–$80K proposal that ships beats a $150K one that doesn't.
Realistic timeline to re-apply: 4–6 weeks of focused MVP work, then resubmit to the next open round. SCF #44 closes Jun 14, 2026; SCF #45 will open the same week and close ~end of July.
Docs (read these)
Resources & community