Lumen Loop
An independent, always-current discovery layer for the Stellar ecosystem: news, research, projects, events, media, jobs and governance, published free and machine-readable.
| Category | Ecosystem Visibility |
| Website | https://lumenloop.com |
| Backend (private) | https://github.com/lumenloop/lumenloop-backend |
| Ecosystem DB | https://github.com/lumenloop/stellar-ecosystem-db |
| Agent Skills | https://github.com/lumenloop/lumenloop-skills |
| First Released | March 2024 |
| Intake | https://github.com/SCF-Public-Goods-Maintenance/scf-public-goods-maintenance.github.io/issues/136 |
| Budget Requested | $26,000 |
| Maintenance Reserve | $8,000 |
| Other | $18,000 |
Project Description
Lumen Loop is the discovery layer for the Stellar ecosystem: one always-current place to find every project, story, event, video, job and governance vote across the network.
A fleet of AI agents monitors 600+ social accounts, project blogs, RSS feeds, community calendars, YouTube, X Spaces, podcasts, DAO governance contracts and job boards, triages and summarises what it finds, and ties each item back to the project it concerns. The result publishes free as a website, a CC-BY-4.0 open project database, RSS, iCal and podcast feeds, a read-only MCP server and MIT agent skills. Ingested content is redistributed to X, Reddit and Discord, and a weekly newsletter is distilled from the same corpus.
Team & Experience
Lumen Loop is a solo-maintainer project.
Raphael Fortin, based in Canada.
- GitHub: https://github.com/rawritude
- Discord: ra.ph
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphael-fortin-305bb688/
Lumen Loop launched in March 2024 and has run continuously since, through two SCF Build Awards (rounds 26 and 35). I have volunteered as an SCF Pilot for several years, previously helped run the Stellar Hacks hackathon series, and was a contractor for the Stellar Development Foundation. I also maintain awesome-stellar-community-fund, a set of open SCF review and round-resolution skills distilled from Lumen Loop’s corpus.
Stewardship and access. Two others hold read access to the codebase: @tupui (community) and @kalepail (SDF). If I am no longer able to maintain Lumen Loop, both have my permission to take over and continue running the project. The ecosystem database is CC-BY-4.0 in a public repo and already forked, so the dataset survives independently of the service.
Retroactive Impact
Who uses it. Lumen Loop’s API and MCP server answered over 164,000 external requests in the last 90 days, most through Stellar Raven, which serves Lumen Loop data to its own users. Stellar Light and Stellar Build also build on the data; Stellar Build bundles the full ecosystem catalog into its developer installer. These dependencies run through the API and data rather than package imports, so they don’t appear in dependency-graph metrics. The Stellar Development Foundation uses Lumen Loop as an intelligence platform for marketing, and to track launches and events. In the last 30 days, AI assistants fetched Lumen Loop pages 5,812 times to answer people’s questions.
The record. 812 projects in the open database and 1,015 SCF submissions tracked. In the last 90 days the corpus added 282 articles, 111 videos and podcasts, 187 events and 35 original research pieces, each summarised and tied to its projects, filtering out roughly 7 in 8 candidate items to keep the record relevant.
Reach. The site drew 7,820 browser visits in the last 30 days, and 430 posts distributed 191 items to ecosystem channels in the last 90. Over the last year: 500,000 X impressions covering Stellar projects and dozens of interviews on X.
Publishing for others. Untangled, Rivool, xBull, Peridot, Arcane, BAF and Zenex have published content through Lumen Loop, as has OpenZeppelin, with that piece later picked up by SDF. Newly launched projects reach an ecosystem-wide audience they could not otherwise buy, free and on the same terms as anyone.
Full metrics, with sources and time windows: https://gist.github.com/rawritude/db1399943994798e7c36a2bed7d8239b
Past Deliverables
N/A
Proposed Impact
Open the platform up. Today almost everything routes through one person: projects wanting their information corrected, teams wanting coverage, events that are not on Luma. The next version of Lumen Loop changes that, letting projects maintain their own presence and letting anyone contribute to the record. The goal is a discovery layer the ecosystem participates in rather than one it reads.
Make the record more useful to decide with. Coverage alone does not tell you which projects are alive, which are maintained, or where funding has gone and what came of it. Health scoring, stated inclusion and content standards and independent funding reports turn a directory into something the ecosystem can reason with, and make the data as useful to agents and tools as it is to people.
Proposed Deliverables
1. Release the next version of Lumen Loop this quarter
The release brings:
- Projects run their own presence. Teams claim their listing, keep it current, post jobs, and publish their own content on a Stellar-native publishing platform where the ecosystem context is already there, so what they write lands connected to the right projects, stories and events.
- Anyone can contribute. News, events not on Luma, corrections and links can be submitted directly, and submitters can track what happened to them.
- A knowledge base for every project. Durable, structured context held in Lumen Loop rather than behind permissioned third-party APIs, including historical material and unpublished data served to consumers like Raven and to any agent querying the corpus.
- Open access for tools and agents. Self-serve API keys, agent skills and usage visibility, without asking anyone.
- Curation that improves over time. Every editorial decision, by staff, contributors or agents, is recorded with its reasoning, so agents draw on past decisions and make better ones.
Value: projects represent themselves, anyone can contribute without going through one person, and the corpus becomes infrastructure other tools build on.
Measure: the new version is live on lumenloop.com, with projects able to claim and maintain their own listing and anyone able to submit content.
2. Publish project health scoring
A quantitative score for each project, derived from development activity, releases, content, social activity and on-chain signals, shown on project pages alongside the underlying metrics and served through the API and MCP.
Value: a consistent, transparent measure of which projects are active, available to anyone assessing ecosystem health.
Measure: health scores appear on project pages with their underlying metrics and are returned by the API and MCP.
3. Publish inclusion and content standards
The criteria for listing early-stage and alternatively-funded projects, such as InstAwards recipients, and for content that projects publish through Lumen Loop.
Value: the directory and the publishing platform run on clear, stated criteria.
Measure: standards published on lumenloop.com.
4. Sustain and deepen editorial coverage
The weekly newsletter continues throughout the quarter, and by quarter end carries Stellar network data: stablecoin, RWA and network statistics with accompanying graphics. Independent reporting covers the SCF and Public Goods rounds, drawing on the ecosystem database for recipient history, prior awards and outcomes.
Value: keeps the ecosystem current week to week, adds quantitative context to qualitative coverage, and leaves a durable record of where funding went and what came of it.
Measure: a newsletter every week of the quarter, one issue with stablecoin, RWA and network statistics and graphics, and both round reports published.
5. Curation and oversight
A funded contributor reviews agent suggestions, curation policies, ingested sources and new project entries; manages portal access and community contributions; and handles categorisation, summary review, publishing and distribution to ecosystem channels. Access is scoped and permissioned, and does not extend to the codebase.
Value: human review over an agent-run platform, and the capacity that makes open contribution workable.
Measure: curated changes to projects and content are counted and published continuously through Lumen Loop’s metrics endpoint, declared on the project page for the program to poll.
6. Maintain the platform throughout the quarter
- Ecosystem database updated as the ecosystem changes, committed publicly, with new projects and SCF award data added as they appear
- News, events, media and governance coverage published continuously
- Events calendar and iCal feed kept current
- Public feeds, API and MCP server available to everyone, free
Value: the standing service the ecosystem already depends on.
Measure: lumenloop.com/api/health is declared as the project’s health endpoint so the program observes availability directly; database committed as the ecosystem changes; calendar and feeds kept current.
Budget allocation
Maintenance Reserve
| Allocation | $/quarter |
|---|---|
| Contributor, 13 hrs/week from onboarding (9 weeks): curation and oversight (5) | 5,850 |
| Platform operation (6): hosting, ingestion, storage, backups, CDN, domains, calendar, AI and data APIs | 2,238 |
| Subtotal | 8,088 |
Other
| Allocation | $/quarter |
|---|---|
| Maintainer, 20 hrs/week: release and new capabilities (1 to 4) | 18,200 |
| Subtotal | 18,200 |
Total estimated cost: $26,288.
Running the platform costs under $750 a month, AI across thirteen agents included. The cost is people: shipping the release, and reviewing what agents and the ecosystem contribute.
The requested split rounds Maintenance Reserve from 8,088 to 8,000 USD and Other from 18,200 to 18,000 USD.
Requested figure rounded down to $26,000. The legacy host is retired after the transition, reducing platform cost from next quarter.
Metrics loaded from PG Atlas
Legal Acknowledgements
- As the project representative, I agree to the Legal Acknowledgements.