- The Stellar network processed over 1 billion operations in the third quarter. This is a 70% increase quarter-over-quarter while maintaining 99.99% uptime.
- In the third quarter, Stellar’s presence in the real world assets space continued to grow, with RWA market capitalization increasing 14% sequentially to $562 million.
Stellar is a public, open-source blockchain protocol started in 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim under the nonprofit Stellar Development Foundation (SDF). In its Q3 2025 report, the Stellar Foundation highlighted the continued momentum of the network’s real-world asset (RWA) tokenization.
Designed from the ground up for asset issuance, the Stellar platform natively supports tokenized representations of money market funds, bonds, stocks, and commodities, conveying a clear message that it is “built for asset tokenization.”
During the quarter, the network processed more than 1 billion operations. This is an increase of approximately 70% quarter-over-quarter, with an uptime of 99.99% and an average ledger close time of 5.76 seconds. Transaction fees remain very low at around $0.00055 per operation.
This maintains Stellar’s position as the most cost-effective blockchain, ranking it as the 15th largest token with a market capitalization of approximately $8.8 billion.
Exceptional performance and network scale
Stellar’s appeal lies in its low-cost, high-speed infrastructure that is both scalable and accessible. With this in mind, Stellar is a natural fit for global RWA use cases.
In the third quarter, RWA’s Stellar market capitalization reached $562 million, an increase of 14% sequentially, and total supply increased by 20%. Meanwhile, cross-border RWA payments hit a record high of $5.4 billion, up 27% from the previous quarter. Earlier this year, Stellar recorded $3.4 billion in RWA payments in the first quarter alone.
This growth is driven by institutional participation and real-world integration. As reported by Crypto News Flash, Mercado Bitcoin has announced a $200 million RWA issuance on Stellar, with assets expected to go public between this month and December.
In addition to this, Franklin Templeton’s Franklin On-Chain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX) is a regulated US mutual fund that bridges traditional finance and blockchain by issuing each share as a BENJI token recorded on the Stellar blockchain. Publishers such as WisdomTree, Ondo, and Centrifuge continue to expand the network’s organizational footprint.
Earlier this year, Visa integrated Stellar into its stablecoin payments platform. This means Visa can settle transactions using stablecoins, including Stellar. Ondo Finance’s high-yield stablecoin USDY, launched on Stellar, is backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries and combines stablecoin features with DeFi yields.
The network’s Total Value Locked (TVL) is currently $144.42 million, reflecting a 71% year-over-year increase and 3.6x expansion in overall DeFi activity, despite an 8.24% decline in the past 24 hours. Stellar’s stablecoin market capitalization increased by 4.64% over the past week to reach $257.45 million, with USDC maintaining its dominance at 95.63%.
Beyond DeFi and stablecoins, Stellar’s infrastructure continues to enable real-world applications. Through the Stellar Disbursement Platform, partners such as GIZ, UNDP, and the World Food Program have processed $4.2 million year-to-date, marking a 50% increase sequentially.
They also revealed the following in X:
The Stellar Ambassador program also continued to grow throughout the quarter, with 400 new registrations, 160 community events, and double-digit regional growth across Latin America and Asia Pacific.
Advances in XLM technology
As reported by CNF, the Whisk upgrade went live in September. Whisk introduced parallel execution, a tool that allows multiple transactions to be processed simultaneously instead of sequentially. This is considered an important enhancement for throughput and network efficiency.
In addition to this, we introduced faster block times and unified token events to streamline on-chain operations. For developers, this means increased responsiveness. > Protocol 24 mainnet upgrade on October 22nd. This upgrade was essential for participants running core infrastructure components such as Stellar Core, Horizon, RPC, and Galexie, ensuring system compatibility and improving network performance.
Protocol 25 will further advance Stellar’s capabilities and introduce zk-ready encryption to enhance privacy and enable compliance-focused applications. Meanwhile, XLM is trading at $0.27. 8.85% Over the past 7 days.
