ChainCatcher news, according to Cryptonews, the Central Bank of Russia has invited the Republic of Tatarstan to assist in testing the smart contract functionality of the digital ruble. The Tatarstan Ministry of Finance has established a working group that will conduct conditional targeted funding expenditure experiments using the central bank's testing platform, with the tests expected to conclude in the third quarter of 2025.A month prior, the Central Bank of Russia had "indefinitely postponed" the nationwide rollout plan for the digital ruble originally scheduled for August this year, but this testing indicates that the digital ruble project is still progressing. Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina stated that the new launch date will be announced later.At the same time, the Moscow Metro also announced the expansion of its digital ruble pilot project, collaborating with the central bank and VTB Bank to test the functionality of recharging Troika smart cards using the digital ruble. These developments are similar to the pilot projects of China's digital yuan, but Russia has previously stated that one of the main functions of the digital ruble is to assist Russian enterprises in making cross-border payments with other countries that use digital fiat currencies.

ChainCatcher news, according to the official blog, Stellar announced plans to introduce smart contract functionality in its upgrade, which will be rolled out in phases in the first half of 2024.Validators on the Stellar network will vote on the upgrade on January 30. To ensure a high-quality experience for developers at launch, Stellar will evaluate experimental contract deployments and communicate with developers when the smart contract platform (referred to as Soroban) reaches user-available transaction processing levels per second.