VIA Labs Launches Cross-Chain Messaging Between Stellar and Ethereum

On October 28, 2026, VIA Labs announced the launch of bidirectional cross-chain messaging between the Soroban platform on Stellar and the Ethereum mainnet. The integration allows Soroban smart contracts to interact with Ethereum Virtual Machine contracts. The announcement was made at the Meridian conference in Lisbon.

Developers will be able to move supported tokens between networks, coordinate contract operations, and create applications with stablecoins or tokenized assets. VIA Labs deployed a reference token VIAT to demonstrate transfers and published the gateway and token contract addresses for both networks.

The reference implementation uses a burn and mint mechanism. The source contract burns an amount and creates a message with the recipient's address, amount, and memo. VIA validators sign the message, a relayer transmits instructions to the target gateway, which verifies the signatures and commands the issuance of the corresponding amount. The process maintains the total supply of VIAT and rejects duplicate messages. Transfers take approximately 1–3 minutes. Stellar uses 7 decimal places, Ethereum 18; the VIA client converts the values.

Network fees are charged for transfers: XLM in Stellar or gas in Ethereum. During the launch period, VIA waives the protocol fee on Stellar routes, and relayers cover the recipient-side expenses. Recipients in Stellar need an existing funded account: sending to an address that has never existed may result in token loss.

VG1 contracts have been audited by Hashlock. Messages must originate from contracts, not regular wallets. For testing, VIA issues 100 VIAT in the Stellar testnet and Ethereum Sepolia; quarterly Stellar testnet resets require address updates, mainnet addresses do not change.

The launch took place amid other Stellar initiatives: in September, the network introduced USDT0 liquidity via LayerZero with support from Kraken, Bitget, and Fireblocks. On October 28, Securitize announced plans to add Stellar as the 17th network for regulated assets, and DTCC discussed integration for tokenized securities with a launch in 2027.