NEARX × STELLAR DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION · SÃO PAULO · JUL 30 – AUG 6 2026
STELLAR SUMMIT SÃO PAULO 2026
What happens when an ecosystem stops meeting in fragments and starts working in the same place.
"Connection is infrastructure — and infrastructure can be engineered."
108+ = AT LEAST 108 BUILDERS DOCUMENTED ONSITE — A VERIFICATION FLOOR, NOT AN ESTIMATE · 86 STRICT-VERIFIED INTO PROJECT TEAMS
Every number on this page is backed by the full document — the 60-page source of truth.
01 / THE BIG REVEAL
The room was made of teams, not spectators.
The reconciliation documented at least 108 builders inside the 218 participants. 86 of them were independently verified into specific project teams — and most of those did not come alone.
FLOOR, NOT POPULATION: 108 = 86 STRICT TEAM-VERIFIED + 22 BADGE-DECLARED PRODUCT-TEAM BUILDERS · 15 PROBABLE IDENTITIES AND 18 PROBABLE PROJECT MATCHES EXCLUDED · TWO EVENT DAYS LACK BADGE LOGS AND 61 OF 218 APPEAR IN NO PERSON-LEVEL EXPORT — TRUE POPULATION PLAUSIBLY HIGHER
01B / SCALE
01B · SCALE
Planned for 100. Delivered for 218.
Demand exceeded the event's design by 2.2 times — and the acceptance filter left out almost a third of registrants.
THE SYSTEMS OVERLAP — THE BARS DO NOT ADD UP. 189 CHECK-INS VIA THE LUMA APP ARE A SUBSET, NEVER ADDITIVE.
02 / THE PROJECT FIELD
Forty-six projects shared the same ecosystem.
40 teams verified member-by-member, plus 6 verified through the closing showcase — grouped by the pipeline that brought them.
CIRCLE SIZE = VERIFIED MEMBERS ONSITE · POSITION IS ORGANIZATIONAL, NOT RELATIONAL · NO PROJECT-TO-PROJECT LINK IS IMPLIED
PIPELINE GROUPING APPLIES TO THE 40 MEMBER-VERIFIED TEAMS; THE 6 SHOWCASE-VERIFIED PROJECTS ARE NOT ASSIGNED TO PIPELINES WITHOUT EVIDENCE.
03 / THE EIGHT-DAY ARC
Enough time for repeated contact to become working relationships.
Onsite attendance recovered and climbed through week two — 101 → 109 → 114 — peaking on day 7 of an eight-day run.
D1 · Jul 30 — Opening and introductions · "Private Money on a Public Ledger" workshop
Introductions from builders, SDF and mentors · "Private Money on a Public Ledger" workshop — Wlad, Stellar (2pm) · Community Builders Tooling — Pollar, TUSST, Caatinga (3pm) · opening happy hour with live music.
D2 · Jul 31 — SDF sessions: GrantFox, Raven, Myosin, privacy
SDF sessions: GrantFox bounty platform · Raven demo (10am) · Myosin GTM workshop · privacy primitives — Maryam Mazraei, SDF (2pm).
D3 · Aug 1 — Open building · NearX & Stellar rooftop Sunset
Open building and coworking · NearX & Stellar Sunset on the rooftop, 4pm–8pm (126 on Luma). RHYTHM SHIFT
D4 · Aug 2 — Stellar Cup at Appito Arena
Football tournament, barbecue and samba, 10am–4pm (116 on Luma, off-site). RHYTHM SHIFT
D5 · Aug 3 — Etherfuse Day · AI Masterclass
Etherfuse Day — AJ, CTO & founder (two blocks) · AI Masterclass — Kaan, Stellar: stellar-build, Raven, Stellar skills (2pm).
D6 · Aug 4 — Privacy Day: OpenZeppelin
OpenZeppelin sessions on confidential tokens and smart-contract standards, morning and afternoon · open building.
D7 · Aug 5 — AI workshop · Regulation · attendance peak
Hands-on AI workshop — Kaan (3pm) · "The State of Crypto Regulation in Brazil" — Matheus Puppe (4pm) · attendance peak: 114.
D8 · Aug 6 — Closing: 19-project showcase
Closing sessions: 19-project showcase (two blocks) · closing celebration · Stellar House SP (separate SDF activation, same day).
03B · TECHNICAL CONTENT
Seventeen hours of technical content.
Six tracks, from privacy primitives to regulation — each with its speaker and the reason it mattered to the people building in the room.
Privacy
"Private Money on a Public Ledger" — Wlad, Stellar · Privacy primitives — Maryam Mazraei, SDF · Privacy Day with OpenZeppelinConfidential tokens were live on testnet with audits running: builders got the standard, the roadmap and the authors in the same room.
Payments, anchors & ramps
Etherfuse Day — AJ, CTO & founderReal-world yield and ramp infrastructure for emerging markets, directly adjacent to the Pix/Drex context most of the audience builds in.
AI & developer tooling
Raven demo · AI Masterclass and hands-on workshop — Kaan, StellarRaven exposes Stellar's docs plus 920+ projects and 2,300+ graded repositories to AI agents — a direct productivity lever for every team in the room.
Ecosystem & GTM
GrantFox platform session · Myosin GTM workshopHow to fund, position and grow a Stellar project — the non-code half of shipping.
Regulation
"The State of Crypto Regulation in Brazil" — Matheus PuppeLegal context for the largest market represented in the group.
Community tooling
Pollar, TUSST, CaatingaBuilders teaching builders: the group's own projects as curriculum.
50+ SUBMISSIONS · 4 LANES · OPERATED BY GRANTFOX · 50+ REFERS TO SUBMISSIONS, NOT WINNERS.
04 / THE CONNECTION ENGINE
Networking was not left to chance.
Three layers of designed interaction ran simultaneously, all week — until conversations became collaborations.
Formal
- Talks 17 h
- Workshops —
- Bounties 50+
- Showcase 19
Semi-structured
- Coworking daily
- Meals 2,500+
- Sticker album 40+ completed
- Telegram —
Informal
- Games 7
- Happy hours all 8 days
- Football Stellar Cup
- Sunset 1
ECOSYSTEM OUTCOMES — SURVEY · N = 46
05 / THE STICKER SYSTEM
A collectible became an interaction protocol.
The album bound event information to scarcity, exchange and daily return. Starting a conversation required no courage — only a duplicate sticker. 40+ albums were fully completed.
INFORMATION
Venue, safety, Wi-Fi, agenda — the album was the manual.
SCARCITY
Packs differed; duplicates were designed in.
EXCHANGE
Completing a page required another person.
PARTICIPATION
Stickers tied to days, activities, people.
DAILY RETURN
Hidden packs and day-linked stickers reset the hunt.
COMPLETION
40+ albums fully completed.
REWARD
Premium kit + VIP access for finishers.
"Change the context. Change the conversation."
Stellar Cup at Appito Arena (116 Luma "Went") and the rooftop Sunset (126) re-sorted who talked to whom — event-only metrics, never added to onsite counts. Happy hour ran on every one of the eight days.
06 / THE EXECUTION FLOOR
They did not come to watch. They came to build.
The coworking floor ran at capacity from day one — through bounty deadlines, live testnet deploys and 17 hours of technical content.
07 / OUTCOMES
Movement happened inside the eight-day window.
Not applause — state changes, documented during the Summit itself, each carrying its evidence class.
PigFi, Stellar 37º alumni, launched to mainnet for Android and iOS with Pix integration during the event — and presented at the showcase as an already-launched product.
"The high point was launching our product PigFi on mainnet for Android and iOS with Pix integration — during the Stellar Summit."
PARTICIPANT-REPORTED · SURVEY N=46One participant reported being hired by another team before the first weekend.
"I was hired on the second day of the summit."
PARTICIPANT-REPORTEDThe closing showcase put 19 projects in front of the full cohort, SDF members and accredited press.
DEMONSTRATED · ORGANIZER-CONFIRMEDReferrals from Maz and Jeremy (SDF); a Telegram group was formed with an SDF member during the event.
"We got referrals from Maz and Jeremy to apply to the SCF."
PARTICIPANT-REPORTEDVaquita, a remote-first team distributed across the region, used the Summit as its first full physical assembly in months.
"Getting back together with my whole team and launching Vaquita!"
PARTICIPANT-REPORTEDNew partnerships, enterprise validation conversations and main-stage pitches were reported across the cohort.
PARTICIPANT-REPORTEDGridLedger (Brazil) validated Stellar as the ideal infrastructure for real, scalable financial solutions focused on institutional adoption.
PARTICIPANT-REPORTEDWritz Protocol (PULSO winner, Colombia/Costa Rica) received in-person feedback from SDF members.
PARTICIPANT-REPORTED08 / EXPOSURE VS POPULATION
19 on stage. 46 projects in the ecosystem.
The showcase was the visible closing layer of a much larger project population — 27 more projects worked the same floor all week without a stage slot.
09 / EXPERIENCE PROOF
The experience scored as strongly as the outcomes felt.
Post-event survey, recomputed from the raw export: 50 submissions, deduplicated to N = 46 unique respondents.
45 OF 46 RESPONDENTS RATED RETURN INTENT 9–10 · ZERO DETRACTORS
Full scorecard — nine dimensions · 0–10 · N = 46
Return intent distribution
MEDIANS OF 10 ACROSS ALL NINE DIMENSIONS · STANDARD DEVIATION 0.42–0.98 · TRILINGUAL INSTRUMENT (PT/EN/ES), FIELDED AUG 4–11, 2026 · THE SINGLE SCORE-7 RESPONSE CARRIED A FINANCIAL CAVEAT, NOT AN EXPERIENTIAL ONE.
09B · VOICES
What participants said.
In their own words — in Portuguese, Spanish and English, as they answered. Editorial content appears in English; the chip marks the language of the original response.
"Contacts that were not yet consolidated evolve faster and more decisively with the kind of contact the Summit makes possible."
PT Survey respondent, Brazil
"It felt like a meetup every single day for eight days. Hard to pull off — and they pulled it off."
EN Survey respondent, Chile
"Getting by in several languages... speaking however I could, mixing English, Spanish and Portuguese, I made amazing friends from Argentina."
PT Survey respondent, Brazil
"At a happy hour or a barbecue the barrier drops: the difference between who is on stage and who is in the audience disappears, and the conversation becomes something that continues afterwards."
PT Infrastructure founder, Brazil
"Playing football with the community as if we had been teammates all our lives was incredible."
ES Survey respondent, LATAM
"The best of the Summit was the contrast between being able to focus in one room and moving to a game room moments later."
ES Survey respondent
"The connections I made are still active after the event... that's the only metric that matters. Connection that survives the badge."
PT Infrastructure founder, Brazil — first to complete the album
"Tom Weller saying: stop building more protocols, connect — build solutions to real problems."
PT Survey respondent, Brazil
What participants valued most · N = 46, multi-coding
10 · ECOSYSTEM IMPACT
Nine links. Seven demonstrated.
From first contact to ecosystem outcome — each link carrying its own evidence class, without inflating what has not yet been measured.
1 · Concentration Demonstrated
218 participants · 108+ documented builders · 46 projects · 10+ countries · 2.2× the planned scale
2 · Proximity Demonstrated
8 days · 8am–10pm · ~30 environments · 2,500+ meals on site
3 · Interaction Demonstrated
Album (40+ completed), Cup (116), Sunset (126), daily happy hours
4 · Connection Demonstrated
Connections 9.56/10 · 13 highlight mentions · reports of persistence after the event
5 · Trust and collaboration Evidenced
Teams formed during the event · cross-project benchmarking · groups with SDF members
6 · Building Demonstrated
25 multi-member teams onsite · 50+ bounty submissions · continuous coworking
7 · Exposure Demonstrated
19-project showcase · 6 accredited press outlets · main-stage pitches
8 · Opportunity Evidenced
Hire on day 2 · job offers · SCF referrals · partnerships
9 · Ecosystem outcome Early evidence
PigFi mainnet launch with Pix · Vaquita launch · SCF pipeline initiated
The first seven links are demonstrated with operational or multi-source evidence; the last two rest on participant reports — credible and specific, but single-source. The chain held as far as an eight-day instrument can carry it. What converts "early evidence" into "demonstrated" is time plus measurement.
What this report deliberately does NOT claim: network-level growth, on-chain adoption, revenue or user metrics. That would require longitudinal data this instrument does not provide — and asserting it here would cheapen what the evidence actually supports.
THE COMPLETE RECORD:
The Full Document
The complete document — the source of truth behind every number on this page. 60 pages with the full source and claims register, the evidence appendix and the builder attendance audit.
- Executive summary & methodology
- Builder-attendance audit
- Full map of projects and pipelines
- Eight-day arc — daily data
- Evidence and source appendix
COMPANION VOLUMES: Evidence Appendix · Source & Claims Register · KPI Master · Visual Asset Index · Executive Board Summary.
Prepared by NearX for the Stellar Development Foundation · São Paulo · August 2026
SOURCE OF TRUTH STELLAR SUMMIT
SÃO PAULO 2026 NEARX × STELLAR DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION
60 PAGES
11 · LEARNINGS
Refinements to a model that works.
With logistics at 9.52/10 and zero detractors on return intent, these are refinements to a model that works — the demand signals point toward expansion, not repair.
Meeting infrastructure
Bookable rooms, phone booths, quiet zones.
Agenda visibility and app completeness
Earlier publication, fewer mid-day changes.
Accommodation distance
Daily transit between hotel and venue taxed exactly the informal hours the event was designed to make the most of.
Dietary variety
The lowest score in the entire survey (a 4, from a vegetarian respondent; no vegan option was available).
Bounty submission design
Evaluation criteria published before lanes open, a visible Q&A channel.
Structured matchmaking
Braindates or curated introductions, amplifying what the informal design already does well.
Reward pacing
The album's VIP prize was won too late to be used.
Next steps — priority recommendations
Instrument the aftermath — structured 30/60/90-day tracking on this cohort.
Fix meeting infrastructure and agenda communication — the two "must address" findings, before any other product change.
Annualize the Summit and announce the next edition while return intent is at 9.87.
Productize the connection playbook — album, Cup, Sunset, happy hour — as a reusable kit for other ecosystem events.
"The next edition is not a question of whether. It is a question of how much more the model can carry."
12 / THE GALLERY
Eight days, frame by frame.
A sample from the summit archive — talks, builders at work and the floor in between. Click any photo to enlarge, or open the full album on Drive.
SUMMIT ARCHIVE · 8 DAY FOLDERS + WORKSHOPS · PHOTOS AND DAILY RECAP FILMS
An event can host people. An ecosystem gives them reasons to keep working together.
Networking was not left to chance. It was engineered into the experience.
NearX
Venue, experience, hospitality, operationStellar Development Foundation
Content, partner sessions, Stellar House SPGrantFox
Etherfuse · OpenZeppelin · Nethermind · Rivool · Myosin
IN Arquitetura · K2 Audiovisual · Oggi · Appito Arena
Scenography, audiovisual, venueEXAME · Cointelegraph · CoinMarketCap · TechCripto · Web3 News · CNBC | Times Brasil
100+ GB of photography · 200+ GB of video · 917 edited photos · 6 recaps + 1 final film · 7 full-length recorded talks
13 / THE FINAL FILM
Eight days, in motion.
The official closing film — the same one that opens this report.