Stellar’s RWA market cap (excluding stablecoins) surpassed $1 billion on Jan. 21, and increased 184% in 2025 from $301 million to $855 million. The increase was driven primarily by the issuance of new assets such as treasuries from Spiko and real estate from RedSwan, alongside the growth of Franklin Templeton’s U.S. Government Money Fund (BENJI) and Etherfuse’s government debt offerings.
On Jan. 22, the X-Ray privacy protocol upgrade went live on Stellar, laying the groundwork for zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography so developers can build privacy-preserving, regulatorily compliant applications on the network.
Stellar’s stablecoin market cap increased 53% year-over-year from $159 million to $244 million, driven by PayPal’s PYUSD launch on the network in September, and USDC’s 45% YoY increase in market cap to $223 million.
U.S. Bank is testing custom issuance of its own stablecoin on Stellar, underscoring the network’s institutional appeal due to its reliability (>99.99% uptime), affordability (settlement at <$0.01 USD), and built-in asset controls for regulatory compliance.
Stellar is realizing increased DeFi composability, thereby achieving greater capital efficiency and DeFi TVL, as more protocols are launched and issued assets are adopted on the network. This includes lending and borrowing protocol Templar, which will soon support freely transferable RWAs on Stellar.
Primer
The Stellar network (XLM) is a Layer-1 blockchain built for financial products and services. It offers builders smart contracts functionality and a protocol optimized for payments, with a design intended to keep fees low and to provide transaction speeds that can scale with increased adoption. Financial institutions and innovators worldwide issue assets and settle payments on the Stellar network, which has processed billions of operations with millions of accounts.
The network has been running for over a decade since its launch in 2014 and has operated via the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) since November 2015, after briefly running on a modified version of the Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm.
Development of the Stellar network and growth of the Stellar ecosystem are supported by the Stellar Development Foundation. A number of key features, products, and tools built on the network focus on everyday financial services use cases. A global network of Anchors, such as MoneyGram International, provides the on and off-ramps that connect Stellar to traditional financial rails, while the Stellar Disbursements Platform (SDP) is a turnkey solution for sending digital payments. Network features for assets include multi-signature accounts and authorization flags to control access, while the Stellar Asset Sandbox includes no-code tools for asset issuance and management. Additionally, Path Payments, powered by Stellar’s Decentralized Exchange (SDEX), enable a different asset to be sent than what is received by the recipient address. For a full primer on the Stellar Ecosystem, refer to Messari’s ecosystem overview report.
The Project Team Commentary section of this report was written by José Fernández da Ponte, President and Chief Growth Officer at Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), and reflects the views, opinions, and forward-looking statements of SDF only. This section is included to provide additional context on the project’s strategy, priorities, and outlook and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Messari, Inc.
Over the past year, Stellar has continued to prove that blockchain can deliver tangible impact for everyday financial services and people across the world. We’ve seen real-world assets and stablecoins gain meaningful traction, over 30% in developer growth over the last year - 3x faster than the industry average, and institutions are increasingly exploring what onchain finance can offer. The combination of these trends isn’t just a sign of growth, it’s an indication that the demand for onchain financial services is accelerating and broadening across the market.
Our focus has been on enabling builders and enterprises to create real-world applications that move beyond experimentation. New issuers and protocols are bringing innovative products to market, and liquidity infrastructure is ensuring that markets remain efficient and globally accessible. Each additional participant strengthens the ecosystem, reinforcing the Stellar network’s ability to handle financial activity at scale.
Institutional adoption continues to be a defining force. From global organizations to NGOs and government agencies - the Stellar network is being embedded into payment flows, treasury operations, and settlement systems. This year, we are focused on scaling these relationships, helping enterprises transition confidently from pilots to live deployments. The goal is simple: make it easy for institutions to trust, integrate, and rely on the Stellar network as part of their core operations.
We are also investing in the underlying infrastructure. Performance, reliability, and security remain priorities. Through improvements in throughput, latency, and end-to-end settlement efficiency, the network is positioned to support high-volume use cases like card payments, cross-border transfers, and programmable stablecoins. Privacy upgrades and zero-knowledge capabilities are opening new possibilities for applications that require confidentiality while remaining fully compliant - a critical foundation for the next wave of institutional adoption.
Looking ahead, the pieces are in place for a meaningful acceleration in 2026. The convergence of growing enterprise engagement, expanding onchain assets, deeper liquidity, and enhanced DeFi composability sets the stage for compounding adoption.
Stellar was built for real-world finance, and our focus remains on delivering both speed and reliability. By increasing adoption, strengthening infrastructure, and expanding participation across the ecosystem, we’re enabling global finance to transform and operate more efficiently, securely, and at scale.
Ecosystem Analysis
Real World Assets
The RWA market cap on Stellar (excluding stablecoins) surpassed $1 billion on Jan. 21, and increased 183.8% in 2025 from $301.1 million to $854.6 million. The majority of this gain came from BENJI, which grew 101.9% YoY from $282.0 million to $569.3 million. Each BENJI token represents one share of Franklin Templeton’s onchain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX). The majority of the remainder of the growth came from the 19 newly issued RWAs in 2025. Standouts include:
Spiko: In November, Spikointegrated Stellar and closed 2025 with $130.6 million in EU T-Bills Money Market Fund (EUTBL) and $28.7 million in US T-Bills Money Market Fund (USTBL) issued on the network. Spiko also launched its Cash and Carry Dollar (SPKCC) and Cash and Carry Euro (eurSPKCC) on the network at the end of December.
RedSwan: In September, RedSwan Digital Real Estate announced that it had tokenized $100 million in commercial real estate on Stellar, comprising multifamily and hospitality properties. These include ownership interest in R&B Oak Park (RSRB), a 104-unit multifamily property in suburban Chicago, and Sedona Ranch (RSR), a 268-unit multifamily property in Odessa, Texas.
Etherfuse:Etherfuse issues “stablebonds,” where each stablebond is a tokenized fund of short-term government-issued treasury bonds from a given country or jurisdiction. These include Mexico (CETES), the European Union (EUROB), Brazil (TESOURO), the Republic of Korea (KTB), and the United States (USTRY). Additionally, Etherfuse offers MXNe, a peso-dominated stable value issued with Brale and backed by CETES. While the stablecoin market is currently dominated almost exclusively by U.S. dollar stablecoins, like USDC and USDT, Etherfuse aims to bring 100 sovereign currencies onchain as yield-bearing assets, acting as the “AWS of sovereign debt.” Existing use cases for these stablebonds include acting as yield-bearing stablecoins composable in DeFi and being tradable with one another for approximately 4 basis points (bps), an institutional-grade foreign exchange (FX) fee not accessible to retail users elsewhere.
Additionally, in December, State Street announced its upcoming tokenized private liquidity fund (SWEEP) will launch on Stellar later in 2026. For further details on Stellar’s RWA ecosystem, see Messari’s State of Stellar: Real-world Assets report.
DeFi Composability for RWAs
Composability in DeFi refers to the permissionless ability of assets, protocols, and their underlying smart contracts to seamlessly interact and integrate with each other. In doing so, collective capital efficiency and TVL of the DeFi ecosystem increase as assets are productive in nested strategies. For example, depositing tokens into a Stellar AMM generates LP tokens, which could then be used as collateral on an overcollateralized lending and borrowing protocol like Blend. Liquidity, capital efficiency, and TVL increase further as new protocols and assets are launched.
Stellar network is meant for real assets, used by real people, with real activity. DeFi composability for RWAs is essential for that. However, regulations currently prevent the vast majority of RWAs from being freely transferable and thus fully composable. Still, notable issuers of freely transferable RWAs on Stellar include Etherfuse (discussed above), and Centrifuge, which wraps existing tokenized securities like JTRSY (tokenized U.S. treasuries) into freely transferable tokens via its deRWA token standard. Further DeFi composability for existing and new RWAs is a priority for SDF in 2026, which has set a goal to sign 15 new enterprises in 2026, with at least five deployed on the network by year-end. Target organizations include Forbes Global 2000 companies, leading international NGOs and government agencies that can use the Stellar network to power payments, treasury management, settlement, and other financial workflows.
At the protocol level, a prime example of DeFi composability for RWAs is Templar, an interoperable, permissionless overcollateralized lending and borrowing protocol that launched on Stellar in November 2025. Currently, users on Stellar can deposit XLM to borrow USDC. The protocol is interoperable via NEAR’s multi-party computation (MPC) network, allowing users to supply an asset on one network to borrow an asset on another, for example, depositing native BTC to borrow U.S. dollar stablecoins on Ethereum. Support on Templar for many additional assets on Stellar is planned, including Franklin Templeton’s BENJI, PayPal’s PYUSD, Centrifuge’sdeRWAs, and solvBTC via Solv Protocol.
Token For Regulated Exchanges (T-REX)
In November 2025, a proposal was made to introduce Token for Regulated Exchanges (T-REX), to enable permissioned exchange for regulatorily compliant tokens. Requirements for these tokens include, but are not limited to, KYC and AML, identity verification, investor accreditation, freezing for regulatory enforcement, recovery mechanisms for lost or compromised wallets, and compliance hooks for regulatory reporting. Once released, T-REX will enable DeFi composability within a permissioned environment for regulatorily compliant tokens separate from the Stellar network’s permissionless DeFi ecosystem.
Stablecoins
In November 2025, U.S. Bank announced that it is testing the custom issuance of its own stablecoin on Stellar. Mike Villano, Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Asset Products at U.S. Bank, cited Stellar’s built-in clawback feature, which allows the issuer of an asset to reclaim it, as key, given the bank’s legal requirements for customer protections. In addition to this, the network’s other built-in asset controls, 99.99% uptime over a decade, billions in annual payment volume, and 3-5 second settlement at the cost of a U.S. cent provide the reliability and configurability required by regulated institutions.
In 2025, the stablecoin market cap on Stellar increased 53.1% year-over-year from $159.1 million to $243.6 million, driven by USDC’s 44.6% YoY increase to $223.2 million and PayPal’s PYUSD launch on the network in September 2025. The launch of PYUSD is particularly useful for those already familiar with and directly using PayPal’s existing financial infrastructure integrated with PYUSD, and marks a second major U.S. dollar stablecoin offered on the network, delivering near-immediate settlement and reduced friction for everyday transactions as well as access to PayFi solutions for small businesses.
In October 2025, Visa announced support for USDC, EURC, PYUSD, and USDG on Stellar. In November, digital payments provider Wirex, a principal member of Visa, announced support for stablecoin settlement using USDC and EURC on Stellar. Card payment settlement made via Wirex is now settled in stablecoins directly onchain with Visa without reliance on intermediary banks or legacy fiat systems. Instead, Wirex Pay, the company's onchain stablecoin infrastructure, enables real-time card and banking payments directly from self-custody wallets. Benefits include faster, near real-time settlement, lower fees, and 24/7 availability.
Beyond USDC and PYUSD, the market cap of the Australian digital dollar (AUDD) increased 44x in 2025 from $128,950 to $5.9 million, surpassing $1 billion in transaction volume. Other notable stablecoins on Stellar include Circle’s EURC, STASIS’s EURS, and GMO Trust’s ZUSD.
DeFi
DeFi TVL
DeFi total-value locked (TVL) on Stellar increased 284% in 2025 from $44.9 million to $172.6 million. The majority of growth came from overcollateralized lending and borrowing protocol Blend, which grew 7.8x YoY from $10.2 million to $79.9 million. APY on USDC deposited on Blend has ranged between 12-18% in recent months, a very attractive rate compared to established overcollateralized lending and borrowing protocols like Aave V3 and SparkLend, which have ranged between 2-7% APY.
Blend has two main lending and borrowing pools: Fixed Pool V2, where lending and borrowing parameters are immutable after deployment, and Yieldblox V2, which is managed by YBX DAO and allows parameters to be adjusted dynamically and can receive additional yield from BLND rewards, the project’s token. Tokens with notable liquidity on Blend include XLM, AQUA, stablecoins USDC, EURC, USDGLO, PYUSD, and Etherfuse stablebonds USTRY, CETES, and TESOURO.
Other notable protocols that had outstanding TVL growth in 2025 include the DEX Aquarius (+451% YoY to $36.3 million), overcollateralized XLM lending and stablecoin borrowing protocol FxDAO (+97% YoY to $11.6 million), and DEX Soroswap (+86.6% YoY to $4.8 million).
Other DeFi Updates
In October 2025, Stellar joined the Chainlink Scale Program to integrate Chainlink’s Data Feeds, Data Streams, and the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), expanding the network’s capacity to support RWAs in DeFi. Other notable updates include:
Rails Vault Storage on Stellar: On Feb. 3, Hybrid perpetual futures platform Railslaunched institutional-grade vaults that hold client collateral such as USDC on Stellar.
Etherfuse Korean Bond Launch: On Jan. 26, Etherfuse launched Korean government bonds (KTB) on Stellar.
Normal Launch: Normal, an onchain crypto-index investment platform launched on Stellar on Jan. 25, enabling users to swap XLM or stablecoins for tradable synthetic index tokens tracking diversified baskets like Top 100 Crypto.
Smart Contract-based Volume
SDF defines smart contract volume as any smart contract invocation that causes a token movement (payment, transfer, deposit, lend, etc.). Average daily smart contract volume rose 18% QoQ from $11.2 million to $13.2 million in Q4 2025. Soroswap and Aquarius are the top DEXs by volume, followed by Phoenix, while Blend is the leading overcollateralized lending and borrowing protocol. Smart contracts on Stellar averaged $9.4 million (+42% QoQ) in daily USDC volume in Q4 2025, followed by $2.8 million in XLM (-14% QoQ), $215,000 in AQUA (-65.2% QoQ), $179,100 in SolvBTC, $108,500 in EUTBL, and $84,960 in EURC.
Stellar Decentralized Exchange (SDEX) and Native AMMs
From its inception, Stellar has had a built-in decentralized exchange called the Stellar DEX or SDEX that uses order books for matching buy and sell orders. In November 2021, network validators upgraded Stellar to Protocol 18, which introduced Automated Market Makers (AMMs) built in at the protocol level. The SDEX’s order books and native AMMs power Path Payments, which enable sending a different asset than that received by the recipient. In tandem, Path Payments and Anchors (the network of fiat on/off ramps on Stellar) enable blockchain-based remittances, allowing a user in one country to send a given fiat currency, which is ultimately received as a different fiat currency.
Average daily volume (USD) for SDEX declined 45.8% QoQ from $15.8 million to $8.6 million, while average daily volume for native AMMs declined 48.4% QoQ from $1.8 million to $905,400. About half of this decline in volume (USD) can be attributed to the 44.1% QoQ decline in the price of XLM, as roughly half of volume on both the SDEX and native AMMs is XLM. The remaining decline is due to decreased volume, particularly in stablecoins.
Other Ecosystem Usage Metrics
Beyond TVL and volume, monthly active addresses, monthly transaction count, and monthly gas used are viable metrics for further evaluating the usage of smart contract-deployed applications on Stellar.
Blend led all protocols in Q4 2025, averaging 21,580 monthly active addresses (+61% QoQ), followed by Aquarius with 8,080 (-10% QoQ), play-to-save virtual cat adoption game Token Tails with 5,160 (-21% QoQ), and decentralized MPC wallet provider HOT Protocol with 3,420 (+107% QoQ).
Aquarius led all protocols in Q4 2025, averaging 267,460 monthly transactions (-3% QoQ), followed by Token Tails with 132,320 (-8% QoQ), Blend with 8,830 (+83% QoQ), and Soroswap with 27,510 (-4% QoQ).
In January, SDF introduced SCF version 7.0, with three application tracks for ecosystem development grants. The Integration Track is for teams integrating existing Stellar ecosystem products, while the Open Track is for teams building financial protocols, and the RFP Track is for developer tooling infrastructure or ecosystem capabilities explicitly requested by a panel of SCF Pilot delegates. Since Q2 2019, there have been 41 rounds, with applications for SCF #42 due March 15, 2026. Instawards up to $15,000 per project are also available to support early experimentation.
Separately, in January, SCF Growth Hack Cohort 1 went live to support Stellar Mainnet-launched companies on go-to-market and product-market fit through user acquisition campaigns.
SCF #40 completed in December 2025 and has paid $972,300 to date across 24 recipients, with a total of $2.2 million awarded. Other SDF grants and funding programs include a bug bounty program, a matching fund whereby SDF matches investments up to $500,000 for Pre-seed to Series B companies interested in building on the Stellar network, academic research grants, and marketing grants for projects built on Stellar.
Stellar House CDMX: April 21-22. Stellar House is hosted by SDF and brings together builders, innovators, developers, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders in blockchain, fintech, DeFi, payments, and digital assets to collaborate and share ideas.
A full list of community events can be found here.
Payments Analysis
As a more than decade-old network built for payments, Stellar has realized a robust payments ecosystem across its supported wallets, applications, and custom payment solutions, like the Stellar Disbursement Platform (SDP). This includes PayFi, short for Payment Financing, which makes essential financial use cases, such as credit, trade finance, and remittances, more accessible, secure, and efficient by leveraging blockchain technology and stablecoins. For a full primer on the payments ecosystem on Stellar, refer to the payments section of Messari’s Stellar Ecosystem Overview.
Transfer Volume
In Q4 2025, Stellar network had an average transaction fee of $0.00061, underscoring the network’s affordability for payments. SDF counts $1 of payment volume when one wallet address sends $1 worth of value to another wallet address, while $2 of payment volume is counted when $1 of value is sent via a Path Payment with multiple hops (i.e., USDC --> XLM --> USDC). Messari counts this activity as transfer volume.
Average daily transfer volume (USD) on Stellar declined 18.9% QoQ from $188.6 million to $152.9 million. However, average daily USDC transfer volume rose 11.2% QoQ to $59.8 million, a 33.4% increase YoY from $44.8 million in Q4 2024. Moreover, average daily transfer volume of other stablecoins increased 45.9% QoQ from $3.5 million to $5.2 million, a 300x YoY rise from $17,500 in Q4 2024. Additionally, average daily RWA transfer volume (excluding non-yield-bearing stablecoins) rose 31.8% QoQ to $1.3 million, up dramatically as RWAs have continued to proliferate on Stellar.
On Stellar, the vast majority of transfer volume is in USDC or XLM. In Q4, average daily XLM transfer volume declined 59.1% QoQ to $85.4 million, while average daily USDC transfer volume increased 11.2% QoQ to $59.8 million. SDF attributes the decline to both lower XLM price and reduced microtransactions (~0.0000001 XLM) from bot addresses like GDW…XRP. Beyond USDC, stablecoins and RWAs with notable transfer volume on Stellar include Australian Digital Dollar (AUDD), Circle’s tokenized version of the EURO (EURC), and BENJI, each token of which represents one share of Franklin Templeton’s onchain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX).
Stablecoin Addresses
Average daily stablecoin addresses on Stellar increased 7% QoQ from 74,900 to 80,470. Addresses that sent and received stablecoins on the same day increased 8% QoQ from 28,820 to 31,090, while addresses that only sent increased 9% from 23,060 to 25,710 and addresses that only received increased 5.3% from 22,480 to 23,680. This metric counts G-addresses, which are standard Stellar account addresses, while C-addresses are used for smart contracts. These are the two primary address types on the network.
Stablecoin Transfers by Size
In Q4 2025, 36.5% of stablecoin transfer volume on Stellar was transfers of below $100,000, specifically, 13.5% between $1,000 and $10,000, 11.2% between $10,000 and $100,000, 9.4% between $100 and $1,000, and 0.2% between $0 and $10. Notably, there was outsized volume in the $1,000 to $10,000 payment band, as it had more volume than the $10,000 to $100,000 band.
49.4% of stablecoin transactions in Q4 2025 were between $0 and $10, followed by 31.6% between $10 and $100, 15.7% between $100 and $1,000, 3.1% between $1,000 and $10,000, and 0.2% between $10,000 and $100,000. Notably, average daily stablecoin transactions between $0 to $10 declined 7.6% QoQ from 68,010 to 62,820, while those between $10 to $100 increased 6.9% QoQ from 37,650 to 40,230, showing increased transaction activity at a higher payment size.
Payments Milestones
There were a number of payment milestones on Stellar in Q4. Arguably the most notable was the Marshall Islands’ onchain universal basic income disbursement in December 2025 using a tokenized bond (USDM1) on Stellar. This was the first onchain disbursement of universal basic income by a national government. The initiative is part of the ENRA program and replaces physical cash deliveries with digital transfers to citizens across dispersed islands.
Other notable recent payment catalysts on Stellar include:
Hana:Hanapartnered with MoneyGram in November to bring USDC on Stellar to Southeast Asia.
The Stellar Disbursements Platform (SDP) is a turnkey solution for sending digital payments to many individuals for purposes such as humanitarian aid, global payroll, government transfers, and enterprise remittances. SDP implementations have reduced costs by double-digit percentages for disbursers, many of whom previously relied on significantly more expensive legacy systems. For further information on SDP technical specifications, case studies, and integrations, see Messari’s Stellar Ecosystem Overview report.
Average daily SDP payment volume increased 220.3% QoQ from $19,500 to $62,450. Moreover, on Nov. 11, 2025, the SDP surpassed $10 million in lifetime disbursements, with $10.7 million distributed lifetime at the end of 2025. Of this, $4.8 million has been cash assistance, $5.9 million payroll, and the remaining $18,000 disbursed for a number of other purposes, including charitable donations, user rewards, global payroll, and cash assistance payroll.
Hope for Haiti: In December, VIA Scienceannounced a collaboration with SDF to support the disbursement of aid through the nonprofit Hope for Haiti. The six-month program will distribute more than $200,000 to 325 mothers connected with Hope for Haiti’s nutritional programs. Each participant will receive a monthly stipend of $100 in USDC.
International AIDS Society (IAS): In July 2025, IAS used the SDP and Decaf wallet to replace cash-based scholarships for its conference, delivering tens of thousands in USDC across 425 payments to conference scholarship recipients, eliminating cash-handling risk and administrative overhead, while enabling real-time tracking and auditability.
Anchors
Since Stellar’s inception, traditional financial institutions have been essential as they provide the on and off-ramps that connect Stellar to traditional financial rails. These entities, called Anchors, include banks, crypto exchanges, and money transfer operators that have the capacity to help users send, deposit, or withdraw fiat for digital assets.
As of February 2026, the Stellar Anchor Directory lists 82 Anchor financial intermediaries that collectively offer services to more than 225 jurisdictions (countries, territories, etc). Together they support more than 170 fiat currencies (e.g., USD, ARS, EUR, MXN, BRL, NGN, PHP, RWF, KES, JPY, AUD, SGD, GBP, CLP, KRW, CFA, TWD, etc.) and 15 stablecoins backed 1:1 by the underlying fiat asset and yield-bearing equivalents, such as short-term treasuries, held in reserve (i.e., USDC, EURC, GYEN, ZUSD, UAH, AUDD, EURS, VCHF, VEUR, MXNe, SBC, USDGLO, PYUSD, USDM1, and USD [WisdomTree]) in more than 170 countries. Additionally, MoneyGram Rampssupports cash deposits (on-ramp) from the local currency to USDC on Stellar to 40 countries and cash withdrawals (off-ramp) from USDC on Stellar to the local currency in more than 170 countries across nearly 500,000 locations.
Many Anchor organizations also support XLM, the native token of the Stellar network, while WisdomTree and Franklin Templeton support the RWAs they have issued on Stellar. SDF offers the Anchor Platform, a set of tools and APIs for anyone with the supporting traditional financial system infrastructure to build their own on and off-ramp services for the Stellar network.
In September, Crossmint announced the integration of its wallet and stablecoin orchestration infrastructure on MoneyGram, enabling users to instantly receive USDC in a Crossmint wallet in the MoneyGram application. This USDC can be used with MoneyGram’s additional financial services and cashed out to a local currency when needed.
Network Upgrades
Whisk
In September, Stellar Network upgraded to Protocol 23 (Whisk), key features of which include:
Unified Events: A new single event format that allows classic operations to emit asset events in the same format as smart contract transactions.
Parallel Transaction Processing: Parallel execution of smart contract transactions is enabled, maintaining bounded execution time for transaction sets, while improving speed and CPU efficiency.
Fee Reductions: Whisk implemented fee reductions via improved WebAssembly caching and more efficient memory usage for read operations.
State Archival Foundation: Lays the groundwork for implementation of full state archival of the network in future upgrades.
Configurable Network Parameters: Increased flexibility for validators to optimize block timing and reduce latency through configurable SCP timing parameters.
Privacy
In September at Meridian 2025 in Rio de Janeiro, SDF’s Chief Product Officer, Tomer Weller, unveiled the organization’s roadmap for privacy on Stellar, with the ultimate goal of 100% private settlement for institutions, which are often legally required to keep client positions, trading strategies, counterparties, etc. confidential.
On Jan. 22, the X-Ray privacy protocol upgrade went live on the Stellar network, laying the groundwork for zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography so developers can build privacy-preserving, regulatorily compliant applications on the network. X-Ray introduced two important primitives:
BN254: A pairing-friendly elliptic curve for efficient zk-SNARK verification. Smart contracts can now verify zk-SNRK proofs onchain with BN254, making Stellar interoperable with leading networks using ZK technology, including Zcash, Ethereum, Sprout, and Starknet.
Poseidon: Poseidon2 hash permutations are much cheaper to represent inside ZK circuits than traditional hashes like SHA-256.
Following this release, on Feb. 9, SDF launched a ZK Gaming Hackathon with a $10,000 prize pool for developers to build games that prevent cheating and are trustless.
Then, on Feb. 13, Stellar Private Payments (SPP) were open-sourced, introducing a proof-of-concept (not yet audited) for a privacy-preserving payment system on Stellar using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). The SPP operates under the standard model of providing fully private balance transfers within the privacy pool, which do not reveal transaction amounts, balances, the sender, or the receiver. ZKPs are used to enable privacy in the pool and so that external observers cannot link deposits and withdrawals to specific in‑pool balances or counterparties. Deposit and withdrawal transactions to the privacy pool still reveal the interacting public account, and the amount either deposited or withdrawn, but no further information about internal balances or counterparties.
Built by Nethermind, the implementation enables ZKPs using Groth16 proofs via Circom circuits. Association Set Providers (ASPs) are used as a control mechanism to safeguard against illicit activity. ASPs maintain membership and non-membership Merkle trees that allow proving whether specific deposits are part of approved or blocked sets, enabling pool operators to enforce administrative controls without compromising user privacy. Importantly, the Common Reference String (CRS), which is used to generate and verify zero‑knowledge proofs for the pool’s transactions, was not generated doing a decentralized ceremony. This means all users must fully trust that the creators of the CRS did not keep the secret used to generate it. If they did, then they can mint unlimited value within the pool or bypass rules, with all ZKPs still verifying.
Network Analysis
Active Addresses
Average daily active addresses increased 3.4% QoQ from 57,790 to 59,780. The daily average of new addresses making their first transaction increased 23.5% QoQ from 5,880 to 7,260, while the daily average of returning addresses having made a transaction before that day increased 0.2% QoQ from 51,910 to 52,010.
Validators
Unlike many other blockchain networks, Stellar does not distribute inflationary token rewards or transaction fees to its validators. As such, there is no XLM staking mechanism. Under the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), a construction of the Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) consensus mechanism, each validator maintains a quorum set, a list of the nodes it trusts. Core nodes must then set a threshold (minimum number of nodes that must agree to reach consensus), with the combination of agreeing nodes within the quorum set called quorum slices. The validity and order of transactions are then determined through a system of federated voting, where candidate transactions are first nominated to be included in the ledger, followed by a ballot protocol to ensure the unanimous confirmation of nominated transaction sets.
At the end of 2025, Stellar had 81 active validators participating in SCP, down from 82 active validators at the end of Q3 2025. Collectively, these validators maintained a 99.99% uptime for Stellar throughout 2025.
The network also ended 2025 with 68 full validators (active validators also publishing a public history archive), down from 71 at the end of Q3 2025. The network is effectively run by Tier 1 Organizations, a group of organizations that generally run three validators and coordinate their quorum sets with one another. Together, Tier 1 Organizations bear the safety and liveness of the network, given that most other validators require their agreement under the SCP. SDF acts as a coordinator among Tier 1 Organizations to ensure network health, while each Tier 1 Organization maintains control over its quorum set. Since April 2025, there have been seven Tier 1 organizations, each operating three full validators, for a total of 21 Tier 1 validators. These areBlockdaemon, Creit Technologies, Franklin Templeton, LOBSTR, Public Node, SatoshiPay, and SDF.
Financial Analysis
XLM ended Q4 2025 as the 17th-largest crypto asset by market capitalization at $6.49 billion (-44.1% QoQ), underperforming the combined market capitalization of BTC, ETH, and SOL, which decreased by 24.4% QoQ. XLM’s price decreased 44.9% QoQ from $0.36 to $0.20, with the 0.8% discrepancy between market cap and price due to a 1.5% QoQ increase in circulating supply to 32.4 billion XLM. Year-over-year (YoY), XLM’s circulating market cap declined 35.4% from $10.05 billion at the close of Q4 2024.
XLM TradFi Products
In October 2025, WisdomTree launched the WisdomTree Physical Stellar Lumens ETP (XLMW) with exchange listing in Europe.
Additionally, two major U.S.-regulated crypto index funds expanded in 2025 to include XLM:
In December, Franklin Templeton expanded its Franklin Crypto Index to include spot XLM.
In September, Hashdexexpanded its crypto index U.S. ETF (NCIQ) to include spot XLM.
Circulating Supply + SDF Held XLM
The circulating supply of XLM is the 50 billion total supply, less XLM held by SDF, the Upgrade Reserve, and the Fee Pool.
XLM held by SDF (17.3 billion XLM at Q4-end, 34.6% of the total supply): SDF’s mandate is to use the XLM it holds to build, promote, and strengthen the Stellar network and ecosystem. SDF sells XLM it holds on public exchanges like Kraken, Coinbase, and Bitstamp, and through direct sales, to pay for SDF's operational expenses and to support the broader work of its mandate. The XLM is held across four account types:
SDF Development: 2.72 billion XLM (5.4% of the total token supply). This account covers SDF's operational expenses, including rent, server costs, network-level marketing, advocacy and policy work.
Stellar Growth: 6.29 billion XLM (12.6% of the total token supply). Uses include funding developer programs, hackathons, and Enterprise Fund Investments that deepen infrastructure across wallets, exchanges, DeFi protocols, and payment companies.
Product and Innovation: 4.49 billion XLM (9% of the total token supply). Used to identify, fund, and build Stellar ecosystem tools.
Assets and Liquidity: 3.5 billion XLM (7% of the total token supply). Used to support collaborations for asset issuance with institutions and fintechs, market-making programs, on and off-ramp infrastructure, and integrations with bridges and compliance providers.
Upgrade Reserve (259.29 million XLM at Q4-end, 0.52% of the total supply): XLM set aside, to be claimed, one-for-one, by holders of old Stellar network tokens, following Stellar network’s relaunch in November 2015 using the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP). A claim has not been made from the Upgrade Reserve since Q4 2021.
Fee Pool (8.97 million XLM at Q4-end, 0.018% of the total supply): On Stellar, all transaction fees are paid in XLM and sent to the fee pool, making them permanently inaccessible.
Transaction Fees
The average transaction fee on Stellar fell 54.7% QoQ from $0.0013 to $0.0006. Likewise, average daily transaction fees (USD) declined 52% QoQ from $6,020 in Q3 2025 to $2,915 in Q4 2025. This decrease was driven by the protocol 23 (Whisk) upgrade in September, which implemented fee reductions via improved WebAssembly caching and more efficient memory usage for read operations. Moreover, the transaction fee for smart contract transactions (Soroban fee) is configurable via Stellar Limits Proposals (SLPs) that allow the network to tune performance and reduce fees. Increasing network capacity keeps the network out of surge pricing, reducing fees.
Still, Stellar smart contract transaction fees increased 24x YoY from $11,150 in Q4 2024 to $246,060 in Q4 2025. As a result, transaction fees (USD) increased 4.3x YoY from $62,270 in Q4 2024 to $268,160 in Q4 2025, and in XLM terms increased 9x YoY from 92,880 XLM to 848,600 XLM. This increase is due Stellar smart contracts’ resource fee, which is required for each transaction based on the resource consumption (CPU, storage, bandwidth) declared in the transaction.
Transaction Fee Design
The resource fee exists so the network is not treated as a free database, and is the reason Stellar smart contract fees are higher than Classic fees. Beyond this consideration, for both Stellar smart contracts and Classic, SDF aims to keep fees as low as possible to ensure equitable access to financial products, with fees viewed as a security mechanism to prevent ledger bloat and spam. For a full primer on fee types on Stellar, see Stellar’s documentation.
Closing Summary
Q4 2025 and beyond were momentous for Stellar. The RWA market cap on Stellar (excluding stablecoins) surpassed $1 billion on Jan. 21, and increased 184% in 2025 from $301 million to $855 million. Moreover, the stablecoin market cap on Stellar increased 53% year-over-year from $159 million to $244 million, driven by PayPal’s PYUSD launch on the network in September, and USDC’s 45% YoY increase in market cap to $223 million. This expansion is being validated by institutional adoption, as U.S. Bank is testing custom issuance of its own stablecoin on Stellar, underscoring the network’s appeal due to its reliability (>99.99% uptime), affordability (settlement at <1 U.S. cent), and built-in asset controls for regulatory compliance. On top of this, in December, the Marshall Islands completed the world’s first onchain universal basic income disbursement by a national government on Stellar.
Stellar also moved one step closer to SDF’s goal of 100% private settlement for institutions, which is required for regulatory compliance. With the release of Stellar’s X-Ray privacy protocol upgrade in January, developers can now build privacy-preserving, regulatorily compliant applications on the network.
Finally, Stellar is realizing increased DeFi composability, thereby achieving greater capital efficiency and DeFi TVL, as more protocols are launched and issued assets are adopted on the network. This includes lending and borrowing protocol Templar, which will soon support native crypto assets, stablecoins, and freely transferable RWAs. With the foundation of Stellar’s financial adoption laid in 2025, Stellar enters 2026 positioned for further use by institutions and individuals alike.
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Matt is a Research Manager at Messari for the Protocol Reporting team. A generalist at heart, who's curious about anything and everything, and ultimately, on an adventure to find out what's true. He was an investigative reporter and multifamily/senior housing development associate before joining Messari in 2022.
Matt is a Research Manager at Messari for the Protocol Reporting team. A generalist at heart, who's curious about anything and everything, and ultimately, on an adventure to find out what's true. He was an investigative reporter and multifamily/senior housing development associate before joining Messari in 2022.
