SDF’s Horizon server experienced a brief DDOS attack on Wednesday. Friendly reminder to use your own Horizon server if you are running your own service and need reliability.

OrbitLens of StellarExpert published an infographic illustrating the growth of the network.

CAP-0014 proposes a change in transaction ordering to prevent transaction front-running.

CAP-0013 proposes core changes that would cause Stellar assets to behave more similarly to ERC-20 tokens, allowing an account to add any asset to another account as long as the sending account covers the increased base reserve for the receiving account. It also proposes updates to the AccountMerge operation that would allow non-lumen assets to be merged into the new account without having to manually remove each trustline (which would be renamed to balances). This is an alternative to SEP-0013

CAP-0011 introduces a time lock at the account level to help smart contract writers "sequence time based events easily and circumvent the need for periodic updates in time based protocols".

The Chairwoman of the IMF - Christine Lagarde - made a case for CBDCs at the Singapore Fintech Festival this week, and the IMF released a paper proposing a conceptual framework for assessing CBDC adoption.

“I believe we should consider the possibility to issue digital currency. There may be a role for the state to supply money to the digital economy.”

“This is not science fiction. Various central banks around the world are seriously considering these ideas, including Canada, China, Sweden, and Uruguay. They are embracing change and new thinking—as indeed is the IMF.”

IBM Blockchain’s new CTO Stanley Yong speaks with CNBC about CBDCs: “We are quite far along in the discussion about how central bank digital currencies can be used for wholesale purposes.”

MobileCoin contributed the "aCounter" optimization to an updated draft of the Stellar Consensus Protocol white paper.

CAP-0010 proposes a solution to scenarios where transactions get stuck because of a fee increase or insufficient fees.

CAP-0009 introduces new account flags that can prevent any transactions not signed by your account from modifying your account. This prevents accidental or malicious changes to your account when you are merging it or removing trustlines.

Paul Seldon of StellarGuard and Nikhil Saraf of Interstellar put forward a standardized approach for multisig accounts to coordinate signatures across wallets and signing services.

Stellarbeat has added a quorum monitor/explorer. “The quorum monitor gives more insight into the quorum set connections of the Stellar network, active nodes, failing validators, clusters. It also allows you to toggle nodes on/off and see the effects on the network.”

In CAP-0007, Jeremy Rubin introduces a new operation that creates an account with a known starting sequence number, or a "deterministic account". Right now, accounts are created with a random sequence number. This prevents the presigning of transactions for an account before it is created, something that may be important for a contract that "must create an account as a part of its settlement" (e.g. Starlight).

In SEP-0013, Jeremy Rubin proposes a way to send an asset to someone who does not have the necessary trustline and is not online at the time of the payment. This is an alternative to another potential proposal that allows the sender to add and pay for a trustline on the recipient's account and requires a core protocol change.

Wallet provider Blockchain.com is airdropping up to 500MM lumens (~$125MM) to their ~30MM users in partnership with SDF. After completing a KYC process, users can receive ~$25 worth of lumens. Lumens are the fourth asset to be added to the Blockchain wallet and the first asset to participate in Blockchain’s new airdrop program in what appears to be the largest airdrop ever.

McCaleb asked if the network should “push to get rid of inflation”. This has inspired passionate responses and below are summaries of some of the viewpoints and questions.

Keep the current inflation mechanism

• Inflation replenishes lumens lost over time as people lose their secret seeds.
• It provides a way to recycle transaction fees.
• It signals that lumens are not an investment and incentivizes use instead of holding.
• It draws in and retains retail investors who see it as a “dividend payment”.
• Many retail investors don’t see the current inflation mechanism as something that devalues each lumen.
• Changing this would result in backlash from retail investors.

Remove the current inflation mechanism

• Network performance will drag as more accounts are created.
• Inflation pools have negated the purpose of inflation. If everyone receives the same amount, people are not incentivized to use - they hodl instead. The theoretical value of each lumen goes down while the value of each person’s lumen balance stays the same.
• Without pools, the current mechanism makes the rich richer.

The prospect of removing the current inflation mechanism inspires several questions:

Should lumens be inflationary? If yes:

• Should the network give everyone inflation equally, or should it incentivize specific behaviors like validating ledgers or providing asset liquidity?
• Can the chosen mechanism be designed to reduce the chance of gaming the system?

If no:

• Should the network still recycle fees? If so, how? Using something similar to the current inflation mechanism?

Trezor support for lumens has been implemented. It is currently only available in a Trezor-hosted version of the Stellar Account Viewer and is not yet available in the Trezor Wallet app itself. Until other wallets and the Stellar Laboratory support Trezor, you cannot perform any other operations beyond sending lumens.

According to CoinGecko’s Q3 report, Stellar was the second most popular platform for token issuance in Q3. Ethereum was the obvious winner with 85% of Q3 ICOs.

OMFIF - an independent think tank for central banks - and IBM released a report surveying 21 central banks regarding CBDCs. They make a distinction between retail CBDCs, which would “provide all individuals with access to a digital version of central bank fiat money”, and wholesale CBDCs, which would be “limited to financial institutions for interbank settlements.” “No major central bank intends to implement a retail CBDC in the near term. However, the debate about wholesale CBDCs has moved on from questions of feasibility to practical considerations”. Wholesale CBDCs “are certain to be implemented in the future.” Note that this “certainty” is directed at CBDCs in general and not specifically at CBDCs on the Stellar network.

Interstellar released a demo implementation of Starlight (Lightning on Stellar) payment channels. The demo looks slick, and for now it is limited to the testnet, channels with two participants, and lumens.

The current offer operation allows users to submit sell offers (“I want to sell XLM at 0.24 USD or higher”). But users cannot describe a buy offer (“I want to buy XLM at 0.23 USD or lower”). This CAP would introduce a “‘ManageBuyOffer’ operation with functionality similar to the 'ManageOffer' operation except that the amount is specified in terms of the 'buying' asset instead of the 'selling' asset.” This approach is backwards compatible and will not require changing the order book or the type of data in the ledger.

Token, a company headed by Steve Kirsch - "a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur with multiple billion dollar exits", is working on Stellar-based stablecoins. They are initially offering USD, "but about an additional 30 currencies will be added before end 2018 [sic]."