Stellar Ecosystem Overview

Key Insights

• By the end of 2025, the Stellar Development Foundation aims for Stellar to have $3 billion in yield-bearing RWA’s onchain and be a top-ten chain in DeFi TVL. This could create a flywheel where more institutional capital increases user engagement, thereby leading to higher transaction volumes and ecosystem activity.
• Groundbreaking implementations on Stellar include UN humanitarian aid disbursements, TPN, the first national blockchain-based payments system, and Franklin Templeton's FOBXX, the first onchain money market fund. Germany's GIZ also saves €400,000 annually by distributing over €2 million in salaries using Stellar. In 2024, Airtm’s global payments platform processed $1.2 billion in stablecoin transaction volume.
• Stellar's global infrastructure spans 170+ countries through wallet partners and 12 stablecoins, enabling traditional finance integration with new financial products and services for users worldwide.
• At the end of May, $528.8 million in real-world assets (RWAs) (excluding stablecoins) were issued on Stellar, making it the third-largest network by RWAs issued. As traditional finance increasingly adopts blockchain rails, the network’s strength in regulated assets could drive disproportionate growth.
• In Q1 2025, Stellar had $3.4 billion in RWA payments volume (including stablecoins), with an average transaction fee of $0.00015, underscoring the network’s affordability for payments. In 2024, Stellar had $32 billion in payment volume, with $10.6 billion of that in RWA payment volume.

Primer

Stellar (XLM) is a Layer-1 blockchain for creating applications and smart contracts, issuing assets, and connecting to existing financial rails.

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.

Under the SCP, there are no monetary rewards for validators, who operate the network via Proof-of-Agreement (PoA) through a system of federated voting. Stellar’s smart contracts platform, Soroban, went live in February 2024.

Development of Stellar 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, provide 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 Stellar’s 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.

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Ecosystem Map

Stellar Ecosystem Overview

Genesis of the Stellar Ecosystem

Since Stellar’s launch in July 2014, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has focused on supporting the development of an ecosystem of products, tools, and applications that people can use for everyday financial services. From the start, the SDF has sought to connect traditional financial institutions to Stellar for digital asset issuance rather than trying to replace them. Stellar launched with support from these institutions, known as Anchors, which provide the on and off-ramps that connect Stellar to traditional financial rails. This focus on payments and digital asset issuance led to eventual groundbreaking implementations, including the first regulated money market fund on a blockchain (Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX via the BENJI token) in April 2021, humanitarian aid distributions through UNCHR (December 2022 launch), and partnerships with companies like MoneyGram International to make cross-border payments accessible (June 2022 launch).

Stellar was first introduced as a “decentralized protocol for sending and receiving money in any pair of currencies.” With its focus on payments, the SDF optimized the network’s design for cheaper, faster transactions. Part of this optimization included the deliberate decision not to support smart contracts, whose introduction (based on the available known network architectures at the time) would have caused complexity, security implications, and slowness antithetical to optimizing for payments. Importantly, this meant that any additional features, such as the network’s distributed exchange, had to be built directly into the protocol and implemented via a protocol-level upgrade, rather than deployed permissionlessly via smart contracts like on Ethereum. The downsides of this include risking the network’s security by introducing new potential vulnerabilities with each upgrade, slow rollout, and limiting development to Stellar Core codebase developers.

In March 2022, the SDF acknowledged that the downsides of this tradeoff no longer outweighed the benefits and announced Project Jump Cannon to develop native onchain smart contracts for Stellar. Two years later, in February 2024, Stellar's native smart contracts platform, Soroban, went live. Since then, a myriad of applications for DeFi and other use-cases beyond payments, asset issuance, and Anchors have been and are being developed. This report will overview those applications alongside the longstanding elements of the Stellar ecosystem, including protocol-level features, that existed prior to Soroban’s release.

Stellar Decentralized Exchange (SDEX) and Native AMMs

Prior to the introduction of Soroban, protocol-level features were released that would be classified as part of a network’s ecosystem on networks where these features were introduced via smart contract deployments from third-party developers.

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. Using the order books design, accounts can buy or sell assets using the Manage Buy Offer, Manager Sell Offer, or Passive Order operations, with transaction fees paid in Stellar’s native token XLM. Notably, passive orders allow markets to have zero spread, as the execution price of the trade must be more favorable than the price to buy or sell set by the passive order.

In November 2021, network validators upgraded Stellar to Protocol 18, which introduced Automated Market Makers (AMMs) built in at the protocol level. These AMMs use native liquidity pools that contain two tokens whose prices are determined via a constant product price curve, whereby x*y=k. “x” and “y” signify tokens in a liquidity pool, and “k” is the product of the token reserves. As the two tokens enter and leave the pool, the price of the tokens against one another constantly rebalances. All swaps incur a 0.3% trading fee. Users can deposit tokens into a given liquidity pool to receive liquidity pool tokens, which confer a share of the fee proportional to the user’s share of tokens in the liquidity pool. Fees are collected when tokens are withdrawn from the pool. Applications such as LumenSwap, StellarX, and StellarTerm provide a front-end interface for users to interact with both the SDEX and native liquidity pools. Many wallets that support Stellar, such as LOBSTR and xBull, also include built-in SDEX and native liquidity pool functionality.

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 (Stellar’s network of fiat on/off ramps) 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.

Key primitives, such as asset creation, multi-signature accounts, and time-bound transactions, are native to Stellar's protocol. In contrast, other networks, like Ethereum, require the deployment of smart contracts to achieve the same functionality.

As of the end of May, Stellar’s SDEX has facilitated $4.7 billion in volume in the last year. Moreover, daily average volume in May 2025 was $2.6 million, a 20% increase from an average of $2.2 million in June 2024.

Volume peaked at $35.7 million on Nov. 24, 2024, following the US Presidential election on Nov. 5, 2025. This volume peak coincided with a run-up in the price of XLM from $0.09 on Nov. 5, 2024, to $0.56 on Dec. 2, 2024. Also, over the last year, the SDEX averaged 719,154 trades and 15,923 unique traders.

Likewise, Stellar’s native AMMs facilitated $667.9 million in volume last year, following the same volume pattern as the SDEX. The 0.3% fee on each swap generated $2.0 million in fees over the same time period. Moreover, daily average volume in May 2025 was $931,800, a 60% increase from an average of $581,100 in June 2024.

Anchors

Since the network’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 were first known as Gateways and are now called Anchors. Typical Anchor organizations today 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 May 2025, the Stellar Anchor Directory lists 69 Anchor financial intermediaries that collectively 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 12 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, etc) in more than 170 countries. Additionally, MoneyGram Ramps supports cash deposits (on-ramp) from the local currency to USDC on Stellar in more than 30 countries and cash withdrawals (off-ramp) from USDC on Stellar to the local currency in more than 170 countries. MoneyGram International launched its own wallet, MoneyGram Wallet, in the fall of 2024 and is also integrated with 21 other wallets.

Many Anchor organizations also support XLM, Stellar’s native token, while WisdomTree and Franklin Templeton support the RWAs they have issued on Stellar. The 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.

Payments

As a more than decade-old network built for payments, Stellar has realized a robust payments ecosystem across its supported wallets, applications, and custom payments solutions, like the Stellar Disbursement Platform (SDP). In 2024, Stellar had $32 billion in payment volume, with $10.6 billion of that RWA payments volume (including stablecoins). Notably, the 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).

More recently, in Q1 2025, Stellar had $3.4 billion in RWA payments volume, with an average transaction fee of $0.00015, underscoring the network’s affordability for payments. Moreover, in May 2025, Stellar averaged 19,526 wallets with a stablecoin transaction each day, up 22.5% from 15,938 in May 2024.

On Stellar, the vast majority of payments are made in USDC or XLM. In May, Stellar averaged $62.7 million in daily USDC sent (payments), up more than 2.5x from a daily average of $24.6 million in May 2024. Likewise, Stellar averaged 68.7 million in XLM sent daily in May, up 3.9x from a daily average of 17.6 million in May 2024. Notably, Stellar averaged 96,390 in daily EURC payments in May and 2.1 million in BENJI. EURC is issued by Circle and is a tokenized representation of the euro (EUR), while each BENJI token represents one share of Franklin Templeton’s onchain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX).

Wallets

More than 50 wallets designed for users around the world support Stellar. Most recently, the Arculus wallet integrated with Stellar via MoneyGram International in April. Before this, in February 2025, HOT Protocol launched its HOT Wallet on Stellar. HOT Wallet is a multichain wallet designed for native DeFi users that can be downloaded as a browser extension, mobile application, or via a user’s Telegram. In June 2024, Stellar added support for Passkeys, which eliminate the need for seed phrases or passwords as authentication is done using a device’s biometric, PIN, or pattern, at the protocol level, allowing all wallets to offer Passkey implementations. Additionally, the SDF is focused on further developing its Freighter browser extension wallet into a mobile application, adding support for advanced authentication, and application integration tools. In Q1 2025, 942,000 new wallet addresses were created on Stellar.

PayFi

PayFi, short for Payment Financing, makes essential financial use cases, such as credit, trade finance, and remittances, more accessible, secure, and efficient by leveraging blockchain technology and stablecoins. Some notable PayFi applications built on Stellar include:

• Pelago: PolyFlow’s payment channels for supply chain financing and B2B settlements are built using Soroban, Stellar’s smart contract platform. These channels use Stellar’s network to enable near-instant and free settlement in USDC and other digital assets.
• Huma Finance Institutional: A permissioned service that requires KYC/KYB approval for institutional and professional investors to lend capital. At the end of May, the Huma Institutional application listed one pool on Stellar for qualified investors to deposit USDC to Arf for cross-border payments financing.
• Arf: Provides short-term, revolving, USDC-based credit lines for licensed financial institutions to facilitate cross-border payments, eliminating the need to maintain significant pre-funded capital in accounts across multiple countries.

Additionally, many other payment applications have built on or integrated with Stellar. These include:

• Airtm: Powered by Bridge’s stablecoin orchestration service, Airtm provides users with a globally connected digital dollar account to receive payments, access money in e-wallets, and convert between fiat currencies and stablecoins like USDC or USDP. Users can also transfer funds directly to their local bank accounts in 16 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. In 2024, Airtm processed $1.2 billion in total stablecoin transaction volume. Since launching payouts through Bridge in March 2024, nearly half of Airtm’s total enterprise payout volume has flowed through this integration.
• Félix: A WhatsApp-based platform that uses Stellar to help US-based users send money to relatives in Latin America. Specifically, users can fund transactions with debit cards, while recipients receive funds in USDC, which can then be converted into local fiat currencies via Stellar’s on and off-ramps like Bitso. On average, this entire process takes less than a minute, making it a fast, affordable alternative to traditional remittance services.
• Fonbnk: A global marketplace that allows users to convert airtime (prepaid credit on a mobile phone) into stablecoins that can be deposited into digital wallets, swapped for local currency, or used to access DeFi services.
• MoneyGram International (MGI): MGI enables consumers and businesses to move and manage money in nearly every country around the world.
• Transparent Network (TPN): Ukraine’s first national instant payments system build on a blockchain.
• Vesseo: A Stellar-based digital wallet. Through its partners, Vesseo enables its users to purchase, hold, and pay bills in USDC, as well as open virtual US bank accounts. This offering is crucial in markets like Argentina, which has historically faced some of the highest inflation rates in Latin America, leading many to safeguard their savings by converting Argentinian pesos to US dollars.

Stellar Disbursement Platform

The Stellar Disbursements Platform (SDP) is a turnkey solution for sending digital payments to many individuals for purposes such as humanitarian aid, micropayments, global payroll, and international creator and vendor payouts. The SDP supports batch sends of up to 10,000 disbursements, with recipients able to cash out in local currency via Stellar’s Anchors, which collectively offer more than 400,000 off-ramps. The SDP also includes the ability to send SMS invitations for individuals to create wallets to access funds and monitor the delivery of funds. Wallets that support the SDP include Decaf, Beans, Vibrant Assist, and Freedom Pay Wallet. Notably, the SDF’s 2025 roadmap includes enabling one-click mass payouts and enterprise payment flows for the SDP.

Stellar became the first blockchain used to deploy UN Aid in December 2022 when the SDP was used by the UN Refugee Agency (UNCHR) for digital cash distribution to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine. Over two years, $4.6 million was disbursed to roughly 2,500 households. Implementations like these result in significant savings for the disbursers, who often previously used systems that were orders of magnitude more expensive. United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly Clements stated in October 2024 that $12 million had been saved in Ukraine alone through its Financial Gateway initiative, which uses the SDP as one of its implementations.

On April 25, 2025, the SDP surpassed $7 million in lifetime disbursements, with more than $7.6 million distributed as of May 31, 2025. Of this, $4.6 million has been cash assistance, $2.9 million payroll, and the remaining $90,000 disbursed for a number of other purposes, including charitable donations, user rewards, global payroll, and cash assistance payroll.

Most notably, GIZ, Germany’s main international development agency, distributed more than €2 million in less than six months as it used the SDP for payroll alongside the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organization (UOSSM) to support a healthcare system in North-Western Syria. Prior to the SDP implementation, first piloted in 2024, GIZ used a complex cash-based process involving multiple intermediaries to pay hospital workers. This system was exceedingly expensive compared to the SDP, where Stellar network fees are approximately $0.01 per 10,000 payments. As a result, GIZ will realize an estimated €400,000 in annual savings (~20% savings) on more than €2 million in distributions as it has scaled from paying 30 hospital employees to more than 900 as of April 2025. Hospital employees receive their salary payments in US dollar stablecoins on Stellar through a Digibank wallet, which supports on and off-ramps to the local currency. Under the previous system, GIZ sent funds to Turkey, which were manually withdrawn and transported to Syria, often resulting in 2-3 month delays due to complex logistics and security considerations. Moreover, UOSSM Programs Coordinator Muid Hachamada stated that switching to the SDP for disbursements has “saved our team 500+ hours a month.”

Since 2023, BiGGer, a software development company, has used the SDP to disburse over $1 million in payroll wages to more than 100 workers across South America.

Finally, in January 2025, the SDF announced a partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Europe and Central Asia to create tools on Stellar for cross-border transactions and low-cost digital payment solutions for humanitarian aid, remittances, and national cash transfer programs.

RWAs

At the end of May, $528.8 million in real-world assets (RWAs) (excluding stablecoins) were issued on Stellar, making it the third-largest network by RWAs issued behind Ethereum ($7.2 billion) and ZKsync Era ($2.2 billion). More than 92% of Stellar’s RWA market cap is BENJI, each token of which represents one share of Franklin Templeton’s onchain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX). FOBXX invests at least 99.5% of its total assets in US government securities, cash, and repurchase agreements fully collateralized by US government securities or cash. Each FOBXX share is pegged to the US Dollar and earns a yield automatically reinvested for additional shares. Investors can gain exposure to FOBXX using Franklin Templeton’s Benji investments platform, which allows users to hold the BENJI token on Stellar or other supported chains via a built-in wallet.

FOBXX was first issued on Stellar in April 2021, making it the first regulated money market fund on a blockchain. In February 2025, Franklin Templeton expanded the availability of BENJI on Stellar beyond the US via gBENJI (global Benji) to investors in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland, following regulatory approval in October 2024 by Luxembourg regulators.

Following BENJI and gBENJI in market cap are the following four RWAs:

• SPXU: Issued by WisdomTree and tracks the performance of the WisdomTree 500 Index, which comprises the 500 largest U.S.-domiciled and listed companies.
• TECH: Also issued by WisdomTree and provides exposure to the WisdomTree Technology and Innovation 100 Index, which tracks the performance of the top 100 U.S.-listed technology companies by market capitalization.
• BB1: Issued by Bitbond Finance GmbH, and represents a German yield-bearing bond. Notably, interest and principal repayments are made in XLM with the euro amount converted to XLM at the time of payment.
• CETES: A tokenized fund of Mexican short-term treasury bills offered by Etherfuse that closed May with a $2.3 million market cap.

Some other RWAs offered by WisdomTree on Stellar include the Floating Rate Treasury Digital Fund (FLTTX), Gold Token (WTGOLD), Government Money Market Digital Fund (WTGXX), and 3-7 Year Treasury Digital Fund (WTTSX). According to RWA.XYZ, at the end of May 2025, there was $7.1 billion in tokenized treasuries across all blockchains. Stellar ranked second with $483.2 million (6.8% market share), trailing only Ethereum’s $5.5 billion (77.6% market share). Solana ranked third with $308.2 million (4.3% market share).

Stablecoins

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency pegged to another asset or underlying currency, such as the US dollar or the euro. Stablecoins serve as a medium of exchange that allows tokenholders to transact on blockchains while mitigating price risk and are used across DeFi applications for purposes such as liquidity provision, token swaps, lending, borrowing, being used as collateral, and funding perpetual contract trading.

At the end of May, Stellar had a total stablecoin market cap of $168.8 million, a 15% increase year-over-year (YoY). More than 98% of Stellar’s stablecoin market cap is USDC ($165.6 million). USDC is a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US Dollar (USD) collateralized by cash and cash equivalents, and is the second-largest stablecoin after USDT by overall market capitalization ($61.7 billion versus USDT’s $152.8 billion). According to the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) team, the drawdowns in USDC shown in the above chart are driven by a Binance Cold Storage wallet that periodically transfers USDC accumulated on Stellar to another Circle-supported network.

Some of the most notable Anchors that have built on top of Stellar to provide on and off-ramps for Circle’s USDC stablecoin on Stellar include MoneyGram International, Coinme, Bitso, and Fonbnk. The SDF website states USDC on Stellar has facilitated more than 4.5 million lifetime payments with more than $3 billion in lifetime payment volume.

EURC is also issued by Circle and is a tokenized representation of the euro (EUR). Other notable fiat-backed stablecoins on Stellar include GYEN (Japanese yen), ZUSD (US dollar), AUDD (Australian dollar), EURS (euro), VEUR (euro), VCHF (Swiss franc), and QCAD (Canadian dollar). Additionally, USDGLO is redeemable 1:1 for USDC. Its issuer, Brale, retains 100% of earnings on the first $2 million of assets backing USDGLO. Beyond this, the Glo Foundation receives “an increasing share of these earnings,” which are donated to charitable causes.

In April 2025, the SDF announced it aims to have $3 billion in yield-bearing RWA assets (not including stablecoins) on Stellar by the end of 2025, a more than 10x increase from the $290 million in RWA market cap on Stellar at the end of December 2024. Notable upcoming RWA and stablecoin issuers on Stellar include:

• Paxos: In October 2024, Paxos announced it would integrate with Stellar for issuance of its digital assets, including PayPal USD (PYUSD), Pax Dollar (USDP), and Pax Gold (PAXG). Paxos is licensed by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) in the US, the MAS in Singapore, and FSRA in Abu Dhabi Global Market, making its offerings attractive for regulated institutions.
• Ondo: In February 2025, the SDF announced Ondo’s United States Dollar Yield (USDY) stablecoin would be issued on Stellar. USDY is a tokenized note secured by short-term US Treasuries (~99%) and bank demand deposits (~1%). The token is non-rebasing, as the per-token price increases as yield accrues each day. Notably, USDY is not offered or sold in the US, to US persons, or other restricted jurisdictions.
• Etherfuse: In December 2024, Etherfuse announced it had launched its first Stablebond on Stellar. Each Stablebond is a tokenized fund of a government-issued treasury bond from countries like the United States and Mexico. Like Ondo’s USDY, the token price increases as yield accrues. To date, three stablebonds are offered on Stellar: CETES (backed by Mexican short-term treasury bills), TESOURO (backed by Brazilian government bonds), and USTRY (backed by U.S. government debt).
• SGForge: In February, SGForge announced it would launch its Euro-backed stablecoin (EURCV) on Stellar. EURCV is fully compliant with the EU’s MiCA regulations, making it attractive for European-based institutions.
• PayPal USD (PYUSD): In June, PayPal announced it will make its PayPal USD (PYUSD) available on the Stellar network pending regulatory approval by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). PYUSD is issued by Paxos Trust Company and backed 1:1 by U.S. dollar deposits, U.S. Treasuries, and similar cash equivalents

DeFi

In April 2025, the SDF announced its goal to have Stellar rank in the top 10 networks by total-value locked (TVL) (including borrows) by the end of 2025. At the end of May 2025, Stellar ranked 70th with $64.1 million in TVL without borrows, up 4x year-over-year (YoY). Including borrows, Stellar had a TVL of $70.6 million, while the 10th largest network by TVL was Sui with $2.1 billion, and the top network was Ethereum with $81.8 billion. In XLM terms, Stellar’s TVL without borrows has increased 61% YoY from 150.6 million XLM to 242.5 million XLM, as the price of XLM increased 149% from $0.11 to $0.26 over the same period.

Notably, prior to June 4, 2025, TVL from Stellar’s SDEX was not counted on DefiLlama. On June 24, 2025, the SDEX had $20.1 million in active offers locked on the order book.

At the end of May 2025, the top four protocols by TVL each had over $10 million in TVL, while the top six each had more than $4 million.

• FxDAO: FxDAO is an overcollateralized borrowing protocol that allows users to lock XLM into vaults to borrow stablecoins. At the end of May, 57.2 million XLM (~0.11% of the total token supply) was locked as collateral on FxDAO, with 2.6 million in USDx, 1.04 million in EURx, and 507,287 in GBPx tokens issued.
• Blend: Blend is an overcollateralized lending and borrowing protocol that allows anyone to deploy a new lending pool. At the end of May, assets supported by existing pools on Blend included XLM, USDC, EURC, AQUA, USDGLO, USTRY, CETES, XRF, USDx, EURx, and GBPx. Notably, Meru, a wallet designed for freelancers and remote workers in Latin America to get paid, save, and spend in USDC, integrated Blend into its application in 2024. HOT Wallet and Beans, which launched Beans Earn earlier in June, have also integrated Blend.
• Aquarius: Aquarius is a Soroban-deployed DEX on Stellar. Prior to its transition to Soroban in 2024, Aquarius acted as a front-end interface for market-making and liquidity provision on Stellar’s native DEX and AMMs. Users can swap tokens, provide liquidity, and earn associated trading fees. The protocol is governed by AQUA token holders who can use the token to vote on how to distribute AQUA token incentives to the protocol’s liquidity pools.
• Soroswap: Soroswap is a Soroban-deployed DEX on Stellar. It offers a Swap-Route API aggregation engine that routes trades for the best execution across DEXs on Stellar.
• Phoenix: Phoenix is a Soroban-deployed DEX on Stellar. On May 23, the airdrop of the protocol’s PHO token became claimable.

Additionally, LumenSwap is a front-end interface for Stellar’s SDEX and native liquidity pools. Some other notable live protocols include:

• Untangled: Untangled offers its Untangled Vault, a non-custodial cross-chain portfolio management solution on Stellar. At the end of May, one vault was available on Stellar for USDyc, which accepts deposits in USDC and is backed by collateral split across money market funds and yield-acquiring stablecoins.
• xyclooLabs: Offers XycLoans, a liquidity and flash loans implementation for the Soroban virtual machine.

The SDF has also set a goal for at least two live protocols by the end of 2025 in ten DeFi categories (lending, bridging, DEX, collateralized debt positions (CDP), options, derivatives, synthetics, yield, yield aggregator/managed pools, insurance/prediction). Protocols in development for new categories include:

• Yield: BOND Hive enables users to purchase fixed-yield bond products that capture yield from the spread on the spot and future price of crypto assets like BTC and ETH.
• Synthetics: Normal, an onchain synthetics protocol for investing in an index of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap, and EquitX, a DeFi synthetics protocol for small-cap equities that has been in testnet since late March.
• Derivatives/Perpetual Futures: Hermes, a liquidity pool-based perpetual exchange that will offer up to 100x leverage.
• Yield Aggregator/Managed Pools: DeFindex, a DeFi yield aggregator that can be directly integrated into wallet applications.
• DEX: In addition to Aquarius, Soroswap, and Phoenix, which already have AMMs deployed as smart contracts via Soroban, a number of other DEXs are also under development, including RaumFi DEX, Wombat, StellarBroker, and zkCross.

A few lending protocols are also being developed, including Mystic, a money market for RWAs, and Laina, which will offer single-token lending pools.

Closing Summary

Stellar is bringing institutional-grade assets onchain and into a growing DeFi ecosystem to serve a global and growing user base. With TVL up 4x YoY and major issuers like PayPal, SG-FORGE, Ondo, Centrifuge, and Etherfuse joining the network alongside protocols like Blend, Stellar is opening new opportunities for sustainable yield and liquidity, all on top of proven payments infrastructure. These new opportunities aim to bring financial services to emerging markets.

In Q1 2025, Stellar had $3.4 billion in RWA payments volume (including stablecoins), with an average transaction fee of $0.00015. Moreover, in 2024, Stellar had $32 billion in payment volume, with $10.6 billion of that in RWA payments volume.

At the end of May 2025, $528.8 million in real-world assets (RWAs) (excluding stablecoins) were issued on Stellar, making it the third-largest network by RWAs issued. Also at the end of May, Stellar ranked 70th among all eligible networks with $64.1 million in total-value locked (TVL), up 4x year-over-year (YoY).

Many more DeFi applications are scheduled to go live in the coming months as part of the SDF’s goal to have at least two live protocols for ten key DeFi categories by the end of 2025. Given this, and the project’s focus on a total addressable market in the tens of trillions (everyday financial services use cases), Stellar’s ecosystem is poised to continue to expand as it pushes towards the SDF’s goal to be a top 10 network by TVL, which required $2.1 billion at the end of May.