Stellar or XLM, one of the biggest XRP competitors, is about to get a major boost.
According to reports, the Stellar Development Foundation (also called the "SDF") has just added smart contract functionality to Stellar.
This new smart contract platform will be known as "Soroban", and is now live on the Stellar network after more than a year of testing and development.
Will this be what Stellar needs to enter a price explosion?
One of the hallmarks of blockchain networks today, is smart contract functionality.
In fact, this is the major factor that sparked worldwide interest in Ethereum from the onset and turned it into the multi-billion dollar network that it is today.
Smart contracts allow developers to build everything from social media platforms, NFT collections, marketplaces and even games on a network, bringing in droves of users, liquidity and boosting prices.
According to a new announcement, Stellar/XLM has joined this trend and is set to explode on several metrics.
This announcement from Stellar states that this new smart contract platform (Soroban) is set to support smart contracts that are simple, secure and Scalable.
Unlike Ethereum and other Ethereum-compatible networks which use Solidity as their smart contract programming language, Soroban will support the Rust and WebAssembly programming languages, which have exploded in popularity among developers, because of their performance and compatibility.
Stellar smart contracts also offer features such as predictable fees and independent resource pricing, which means that users only pay for what they use and do not have to worry about network congestion or price fluctuations.
Soroban is set to support smart contracts using a new protocol upgrade called Protocol 20, which was successfully implemented by the Stellar network validators this week, on 20, February 2024.
This Protocol 20 introduces new smart contract capabilities and starts the first stage of Soroban's rollout, after being deployed to the Stellar testnet in October 2022.
Soroban is set to be easier to use, in that it allows developers to create and launch smart contracts on the XLM network, either via a web interface or a command-line tool.
Moreover, Soroban also provides a library of several templates and examples, allowing developers to build and deploy quickly and efficiently.
This launch would have rolled out much sooner than this.
In January 2024, the SDF announced that it found a bug in Stellar Core, that may have affected the performance of any smart contracts deployed on Soroban.
However, this bug has been fixed so far, and the SDF has launched a $100 million funding initiative to provide grants and investments to projects using XLM smart contracts.
According to data from Coingecko, XLM is yet to react to this announcement, and currently trades at $0.1137, while nursing a 5% decline over the last day.
However, Sellar could be about to have better days very soon, according to charts provided by TradingView.
The chart below shows that the cryptocurrency is trading in a bullish pennant formation, and would have broken out (likely) to the upside either way.
The cryptocurrency is about to test the bottom of this formation somewhere around $0.11, before attempting another rally and breaking out from the upside.
Overall, assuming we don't see a break below $0.1, we can expect a 75% rally from the cryptocurrency after hitting $0.11, as it attempts to retest the $0.1972 high from July 2023.
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