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Stellar (XLM) - the full guide

What Stellar is, how the Stellar Consensus Protocol works, who really uses the network, the supply burn, risks, and how to buy and store XLM safely.

22 min readLast updated: October 11, 2026
16 chaptersEducational content, not investment advice.

1. TL;DR

Stellar is an open payment network that launched in 2014 and was rebuilt around its own consensus algorithm in 2015. Its goal is to move money and tokenized assets across borders in a few seconds for a fraction of a cent, and to connect those digital assets to real-world cash and bank accounts through regulated on and off ramps called anchors. [48][6]

The network's is the lumen, ticker XLM. Lumens pay transaction fees, satisfy the small account reserve that keeps the ledger free of spam, and act as a bridge asset on the built-in exchange. Fees are tiny: the network minimum is 100 stroops, which is 0.00001 XLM per operation. [1][8]

Stellar does not use mining or . It uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), a form of in which each chooses which other validators it trusts. The ledger closes roughly every five seconds. [4][5][3]

Supply is fixed. The original 100 billion lumens grew by about 1 percent a year until validators switched inflation off in October 2019; in November 2019 the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) burned more than 55 billion lumens, leaving a total supply of about 50 billion. At the time of writing about 35.06 billion were circulating and about 14.67 billion sat in SDF's publicly listed mandate accounts. [1][25][26][2]

Real usage is easier to verify than for most networks: Circle's USDC has been issued natively on Stellar since January 2021, MoneyGram runs cash on and off ramps on it, and Franklin Templeton has run the share register of a US-registered money market fund on Stellar since 2021. [34][36][38]

The main things to understand before you hold XLM: the 1 XLM minimum balance, the memo field exchanges require, the trustline model for non-XLM assets, SDF's large (but transparent) holdings, and the fact that consensus depends on a relatively small group of identified validator organizations. [1][11][7][2][16]

2. Live stats

The figures below update automatically from public market data; everything else on this page was checked at the time of writing.

3. What problem does it try to solve

Think of today's cross-border money system as a collection of walled gardens. Each bank, card network and remittance company keeps its own ledger, and moving value between them means a chain of intermediaries, each adding delay and cost. The 2015 SCP paper opens with exactly this complaint: "Financial infrastructure is currently a mess of closed systems," and the gaps between them make transactions expensive and slow. [4]

Stellar's answer is a single shared ledger that anyone can read and anyone can submit transactions to, where a dollar token, a euro token and a lumen can all be held in the same account and swapped on a built-in order book. The network itself is deliberately simple: it is designed for payments and asset issuance first, and smart contracts were added only in 2024. [48][14]

The second half of the design is the anchor. An anchor is a regulated business (a bank, a fintech, a remittance firm) that accepts a deposit in the real world and issues the matching token on Stellar, or takes the token back and pays out cash. Stellar's documentation defines anchors as "the on and off-ramps that connect the Stellar network to traditional financial rails." Without anchors, a blockchain is a closed system of its own; with them, the token on the ledger is a claim on something a regulated company holds. [6]

Why does this matter for an ordinary person? Because the pain points are concrete: a worker sending money home pays a fee and waits days; an aid agency needs to pay thousands of displaced people who may not have bank accounts; a fund manager wants an investor register that updates in seconds rather than at the end of the month. Stellar's pitch is that one open network with regulated edges can serve all three. The rest of this guide checks how much of that pitch is verifiable. [42][38][36]

4. History, founders, organization and governance

Founding and the Ripple connection

Stellar was created in 2014 by Jed McCaleb, who had founded the Mt. Gox exchange and co-founded Ripple, together with Joyce Kim, a former attorney. The network launched publicly on July 31, 2014, and the project received 3 million dollars of seed funding from the payments company Stripe. The sources we used do not give the month of the seed round or confirm Kim's SDF title, so we leave those out. [29][30]

The first version of Stellar was modelled on the Ripple protocol. In 2015 the project replaced its consensus layer with a new algorithm, the Stellar Consensus Protocol, written by Stanford professor David Mazières, and relaunched the network. The mainnet's identifier still carries that date: the network passphrase is "Public Global Stellar Network ; September 2015." A reserve of about 258.9 million lumens was set aside during that 2015 relaunch and remains visible in supply statistics. [30][4][19][1]

The Stellar Development Foundation

The Stellar Development Foundation is the nonprofit that stewards the protocol. Its stated mission is "creating equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology." It is a nonprofit corporation but, according to public records cited by Wikipedia, not a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity; its funding comes mainly from the lumens it was allocated at launch. [27][30][25]

SDF publishes a leadership page listing Denelle Dixon (CEO), Jed McCaleb (co-founder, also a board member), David Mazières, Jose Fernandez da Ponte (President and Chief Growth Officer, who joined in 2025), Tomer Weller (Chief Product Officer) and others. The board includes Jed McCaleb, Lin-Hua Wu, Ronaldo Lemos, Ginger Baker and Asiff Hirji. [28][40][46][44]

The 2019 reset

In November 2019 SDF published a post called "SDF's next steps" that remains the most important governance document in Stellar's history. It disclosed that of roughly 105 billion lumens then in existence, only about 20 billion were "out in the world," 17 billion were in SDF's operating fund and 68 billion were earmarked for giveaway programs. SDF concluded these allocations were "too large," burned 5 billion from its operating fund and 50 billion from the giveaway programs, ended the giveaway programs, and committed never to burn again. The lumens were sent to an account with no signers, GALAXYVOIDAOPZTDLHILAJQKCVVFMD4IKLXLSZV5YHO7VY74IWZILUTO. [25]

The same post created a formal "mandate": every remaining SDF allocation was to be placed in its own public account so the community could track spending. The mandate page still exists and shows balances by category. At the time of writing it listed roughly 2.57 billion XLM for SDF development, 5.33 billion for Stellar growth, 3.45 billion for product and innovation and 3.32 billion for assets and liquidity, with the categories restructured in 2025. [2]

How the protocol is governed

Changes to the core protocol are proposed as Core Advancement Proposals (CAPs) and ecosystem standards as Stellar Ecosystem Proposals (SEPs), in a public GitHub repository modelled on Bitcoin's BIPs and Ethereum's EIPs. A new protocol version only takes effect when validators arm the upgrade and vote for it at a scheduled time; SDF publishes an upgrade guide before each vote. The cadence in 2026 has been roughly one protocol upgrade per quarter: Protocol 25 (X-Ray) on January 22, Protocol 26 (Yardstick) on May 6, Protocol 27 (Zipper) voted on July 8, Protocol 28 (Adapter) on September 16 and Protocol 29, a security-only release, on October 1, 2026. [32][53][50][51][52][20]

5. The technology, explained simply

Federated Byzantine Agreement

Most blockchains pick who writes the next block using (spend electricity) or (lock up coins). Stellar does neither. In SCP, each validator publishes a "quorum set": the list of other validators it trusts, and how many of them must agree before it will accept a result. The overlapping trust choices of all validators form the network-wide quorum. The SCP paper compares this to how independent internet providers' peering decisions together form one internet. [4][5]

A useful analogy: imagine a jury where each juror has named the handful of colleagues whose judgement they trust, and will only sign a verdict once enough of their trusted colleagues have signed. If those trust circles overlap enough, the whole jury converges on one verdict; if they do not, the jury stalls rather than splitting into two contradictory verdicts. [5]

Each round has two phases. In nomination, validators propose candidate transaction sets and converge on one. In the ballot protocol, they "prepare" and then "commit" that value through federated voting, moving from voted to accepted to confirmed. A confirmed value is final; there is no probabilistic waiting for more blocks. The whole process generally takes about 5 seconds, and Stellar Core "typically" updates the ledger every 5 to 7 seconds. [5][3][12]

How a Stellar payment settles

  1. Sender

    signs transaction

  2. Core node

    broadcasts to peers

  3. Nomination

    validators pick a tx set

  4. Ballot

    prepare and commit

  5. Ledger closes

    final, ~5 s

One ledger close, roughly every 5 seconds

Safety first, liveness second

SCP is explicitly tuned to prefer stopping over forking. Stellar's documentation says the protocol "prioritizes fault tolerance and safety over liveness" and that "blocks can sometimes get stuck while waiting for nodes to agree." This is not theoretical. On May 15, 2019 the network halted for 67 minutes when one validator went down for maintenance while others were "shaky or down"; no transactions were processed, but the ledger state stayed consistent and no funds were lost. SDF wrote that "a temporary halt is preferable to the permanent confusion of a fork." [5][21]

A second incident on April 6, 2021 is often misreported as a network outage. SDF's own three validators and its public Horizon API went offline for roughly ten hours after a software bug; because most validators were unaffected, the network kept closing ledgers, although exchanges that relied on SDF's Horizon paused withdrawals. Validators voted to adopt the fixed Stellar Core release as Protocol 16 on April 10, 2021. [22][23][24]

Tier 1 organizations and the validator set

Because trust is explicit, the network has a recognized group of "Tier 1 organizations" that, in the documentation's words, "bear the safety and liveness of the Stellar network." Each must run three full validators in different data centers or regions, publish complete history archives, link its identity on-chain (SEP-20) and in its stellar.toml file (SEP-1), and keep uptime above 99.9 percent. In July 2026 SDF announced that MoneyGram, Figure Markets and Range would join this group. [16][17]

At the time of writing the Radar network monitor listed 317 nodes, of which 106 were configured as validators, 98 were actively participating in consensus, and 23 distinct organizations operated validators, including SDF, Franklin Templeton, Blockdaemon, LOBSTR, SatoshiPay, Public Node, MoneyGram, Figure and Range. These numbers change constantly; check Radar or Stellar Expert for current values. [18][60]

Accounts, trustlines and the built-in exchange

Stellar uses an , not UTXOs. An account exists once it holds the minimum balance of two base reserves (currently 1 XLM). Every extra thing an account stores, such as a trustline to an asset, an open order or an extra signer, is a "subentry" that adds another 0.5 XLM to the reserve, up to 1,000 subentries. To hold any asset other than lumens an account must first open a trustline to that asset's issuer. [7][1]

Issuers get protocol-level controls that matter to regulated firms: Authorization Required (the issuer must approve each holder), Authorization Revocable (the issuer can freeze holdings) and Clawback Enabled (the issuer can take back and burn tokens). Franklin Templeton's case study says these native controls, rather than smart-contract add-ons, are why it picked Stellar in 2021 for a fund that reports to the SEC. [10][38]

Soroban smart contracts

Smart contracts arrived late. Validators voted Protocol 20 onto mainnet on February 20, 2024, enabling Soroban, a platform in which contracts are written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly, then executed in a sandboxed virtual machine. Soroban charges separate "resource fees" for CPU, storage and bandwidth, and uses "state archival": contract data has a time-to-live and must be extended or restored, which is Stellar's answer to state bloat. Rollout was phased, with validators raising capacity limits gradually. [14][13][8][15]

The Stellar stack

  • Applications

    wallets, anchors, exchanges, disbursement tools

  • APIs and SDKs

    Horizon (legacy), Stellar RPC, SDKs in many languages

  • Soroban

    Rust to Wasm smart contracts, resource fees, state archival

  • Stellar Core protocol

    accounts, assets, trustlines, built-in DEX, path payments

  • Consensus

    SCP, federated voting, ~5 s ledger close

Recent protocol work

Protocol 26 (Yardstick, May 2026) added CAP-0077, a "Quorum Freeze" that lets validators, through the normal consensus process, freeze specific ledger keys during an incident; SDF describes it as a governed, reversible alternative to improvised emergency responses. Protocol 25 added cryptographic primitives (BN254, Poseidon) for zero-knowledge tooling. In June 2026 SDF published a Quantum Preparedness Plan with the goal that by the end of 2027 every account can add a quantum-safe signer without changing its address. Protocol 29 (October 1, 2026) fixed security vulnerabilities in Stellar Core and introduced no new CAPs. [50][53][54][20]

The reference implementation, stellar-core, is written in C++20 and released under the Apache-2.0 license. There is no second independent production implementation of the core protocol that we could verify. [31]

6. The token

Supply

Stellar launched with 100 billion lumens. For roughly its first five years the protocol minted about 1 percent a year, distributed through a voting mechanism; this generated 5,443,902,087 lumens before validators voted to end inflation on October 28, 2019. One week later, on November 4, 2019, SDF burned 55,442,095,285.7418 XLM. The result is a of 50,001,786,839 XLM that has been unchanged since, and there is no mechanism to create more. [1][25]

Item (dashboard.stellar.org API)Amount (XLM)
Original supply (2014)100,000,000,000
Inflation minted 2014-20195,443,902,087
Burned (mostly November 2019)55,442,115,247
Total supply50,001,786,839
Circulating supply35,059,789,556
SDF mandate accounts14,672,292,657
Upgrade reserve (2015)258,885,847
Fee pool (locked)10,818,778

Source: [26]

What lumens are for

Lumens have three protocol-level jobs. First, fees: every operation pays at least 100 stroops (0.00001 XLM), and when a ledger is full, a surge-pricing auction decides who gets in. Second, reserves: the 1 XLM minimum balance and 0.5 XLM per subentry keep the ledger from being flooded with empty accounts. Third, liquidity: lumens are the only asset that needs no trustline, so they often serve as the bridge in multi-hop "path payments" on the built-in exchange. [8][1][7]

A detail that surprises many readers: transaction fees are not paid to validators. The docs state that "the lumens collected from transaction fees go into a locked account and are not given to or used by anyone." Validators earn nothing from the protocol; Tier 1 organizations run infrastructure, in SDF's words, "not for financial return." [8][17]

Distribution and concentration

SDF's mandate accounts held about 14.67 billion XLM at the time of writing, which is roughly 29 percent of total supply and around 42 percent of the circulating figure reported by the dashboard. The balances and the account addresses are public, and the mandate page shows which category each account serves. This is unusually transparent, but it is also a concentration risk: a single nonprofit controls the largest pool of lumens and sells or grants them at its discretion. [2][26]

The Stellar Community Fund, SDF's grant program, reported at the time of writing that it had awarded 42 million XLM across 656 funded submissions, with build-track awards of up to 150,000 dollars in XLM. SDF's Q2 2026 update said rounds 42 and 43 put 5.5 million dollars behind 55 companies. [49][44]

7. Real adoption

We separate three kinds of evidence: live production usage that can be checked on-chain or in regulator filings, announcements and pilots, and narratives we could not verify.

Verified live usage

  • USDC on Stellar. Circle issues USDC natively on Stellar from the account GA5ZSEJYB37JRC5AVCIA5MOP4RHTM335X2KGX3IHOJAPP5RE34K4KZVN, created on January 20, 2021. At the time of writing Stellar Expert showed about 370.7 million USDC outstanding on Stellar, about 2.48 million trustlines and more than 120 million payments in the asset's history. Circle's CCTP went live on Stellar in May 2026, linking it to 23 other chains. [33][34][35]
  • MoneyGram Ramps. MoneyGram has operated cash-to-USDC and USDC-to-cash on Stellar since the partnership began in 2021; SDF cites coverage in "170+ countries," and the CCTP announcement cites 475,000+ MoneyGram locations. In April 2026 the two extended the partnership for multiple years, with a stablecoin balance in the MoneyGram app live in Colombia and El Salvador, and in July 2026 MoneyGram became a Tier 1 validator. [36][37][35][17]
  • Franklin Templeton BENJI (FOBXX). The Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund has used Stellar since 2021 as the official record of share ownership; it is a US-registered mutual fund (a money market fund) with SEC obligations. SDF's 2026 case study reports about 654 million dollars of the fund's roughly 2 billion dollars in assets on Stellar, and the fund uses Stellar's authorization and clawback flags to meet its legal duties. [38][39]
  • PayPal USD (PYUSD). Paxos-issued, NYDFS-regulated PYUSD went live on Stellar on September 18, 2025, with wallets including Lobstr and Bitcoin.com supporting it. [40]
  • USDT0. Tether's USDT reached Stellar through the USDT0 bridge standard on September 2, 2026. [41]
  • Humanitarian disbursements. UNHCR, with UNICC, piloted direct cash assistance in Ukraine in 2022 using USDC on Stellar, the open-source Stellar Disbursement Platform, Vesseo wallets and MoneyGram cash-out. [42][43]
  • Network-level activity. SDF's Q1 and Q2 2026 reports cite 22.5 billion cumulative operations, 10.7 million active accounts, 11.4 billion dollars of stablecoin transfer volume in Q2 2026 and 3 billion dollars of tokenized real-world assets by June 2026. These are SDF's own figures and should be read as such; the underlying ledger is public. [45][44]

Announced partnerships and pilots

  • DTCC tokenization. SDF's Q2 2026 update says DTCC, which oversees more than 114 trillion dollars in US capital markets, "selected Stellar as one of the first public blockchains for tokenization," and SDF's case study describes DTC's tokenization service as planning to connect to Stellar. We found no evidence yet of live DTCC-issued assets on the ledger. [44][47]
  • Banks and asset managers. SDF's Q1 2026 report names U.S. Bank, Amundi, Societe Generale, AllUnity and Kenanga as having "advanced activity on or around the network." Treat these as institutional pilots or product launches reported by SDF, not independently verified volumes. [45]
  • MoneyGram MGUSD. SDF's Q2 2026 update says MoneyGram launched MGUSD, a regulated digital dollar, in the quarter. [44]
  • Bermuda. SDF reports that Bermuda chose Stellar in Q2 2026 to power a plan for an onchain national economy. [44]

Rumors and narratives - NOT verified

  • Claims that Stellar is "ISO 20022 compliant" or officially part of a SWIFT migration. See chapter 8. [55]
  • Claims that specific central banks have selected Stellar for a CBDC. We found no primary source at the time of writing.
  • Volume figures that compare Stellar to Visa or SWIFT. The public ledger allows anyone to measure activity, but we found no independent audit of SDF's headline numbers. [44]

8. The ISO 20022 connection

is a messaging standard for financial institutions: a shared dictionary and format for payment instructions, used by SWIFT and by domestic payment systems. It is a standard for how banks describe a payment, not a certification that a blockchain can earn. Our ISO 20022 explainer covers the standard itself.

What is verifiable about Stellar: anchors connect the ledger to bank rails through documented SEP standards (SEP-6, SEP-24 for deposits and withdrawals, SEP-31 for cross-border payments, SEP-12 for KYC data), and several regulated institutions issue assets on the network. These interfaces are where ISO 20022 messages, if used, would meet the chain: inside the anchor's banking integration, not in the Stellar protocol. [6][38][40]

The honest framing is this: Stellar's design philosophy (identified, accountable validators; issuer controls enforced by the protocol; regulated anchors at the edges) is compatible with how regulated institutions work, which is why a US-registered money market fund and NYDFS-regulated stablecoins operate on it. That compatibility is real. A formal ISO 20022 designation is not something we could verify. [38][40][17]

9. Ecosystem and competitors

Inside the ecosystem

The developer stack has three layers of access. Horizon is the original REST API, which SDF says is "nearing end-of-life" in favour of Stellar RPC and new portfolio APIs; Stellar RPC serves smart contract interactions; SDKs exist for JavaScript, Go, Rust, Python, Java, iOS, PHP, C#, Flutter and Elixir. Mainnet, Testnet and Futurenet give developers free test environments. [12][51]

Wallets and services that appear in SDF's own announcements include Lobstr, Bitcoin.com, Chipper Cash, Decaf, Arculus, Meru and others supporting PYUSD; Vesseo for humanitarian payouts; and validator operators such as Blockdaemon, LOBSTR, SatoshiPay, Public Node, Figure and Range. Infrastructure firms Alchemy, Infura (Consensys) and Marketnode also appear in the validator list at the time of writing. [40][42][18]

On the asset side, SDF's 2026 reports describe tokenized US Treasuries, European sovereign bond funds (Spiko), tokenized credit (Centrifuge), gold (Matrixdock XAUm), euro stablecoins (AllUnity EURAU) and Figure's YLDS, which SDF describes as an SEC-registered yield-bearing dollar product. According to Electric Capital data cited by SDF, Stellar had 2,968 monthly active developers at June 30, 2026. These figures come from SDF and should be weighed accordingly. [44]

Competitors

XRP Ledger. The closest relative: same co-founder, similar age, similar focus on payments and a built-in exchange, and a comparable "identified validators" model. Both compete for the same remittance and tokenization partners. [58][29]

Ethereum, Solana, Tron and other general-purpose chains for stablecoins. The bulk of global stablecoin supply lives on these networks. Stellar's USDC float of roughly 370 million dollars at the time of writing is small relative to the more than 180 billion dollars of total USDT that SDF cites in its USDT0 announcement. Stellar's bet is on cash access and regulated issuers rather than on raw DeFi liquidity. [34][41]

Permissioned and bank-run ledgers. For tokenized funds and interbank settlement, Stellar also competes with private blockchains and with incumbents' own systems. DTCC selecting a public chain is notable precisely because the default alternative is a private one. [44][47]

Traditional remittance rails. MoneyGram is both Stellar's largest cash partner and a reminder that the incumbent networks already reach the end customer; Stellar adds the settlement layer, it does not replace the agent network. [36][37]

10. Regulation and legal history

United States

We found no SEC enforcement action naming XLM as a security, and XLM is not among the thirteen assets listed in the SEC's June 2023 complaint against Coinbase (which named SOL, ADA, MATIC, FIL, SAND, AXS, CHZ, FLOW, ICP, NEAR, VGX, DASH and NEXO). That absence is not a legal ruling; it simply means XLM's status has not been litigated. SDF has, however, run a large program of US regulatory outreach since its 2019 mandate, and regulated products operate on the chain: Franklin Templeton's SEC-registered fund since 2021 and PayPal's NYDFS-regulated PYUSD since 2025. [56][25][38][40]

On March 17, 2026 the SEC, together with guidance from the CFTC, published an interpretive release (No. 33-11412, effective March 23, 2026) that lists Stellar (XLM) among sixteen examples of "digital commodities", which it says are not themselves securities; XRP, ADA and HBAR are on the same list. This is the first regulator statement on XLM's status that we found. It is an interpretation rather than a statute or a court ruling, and the SEC says it may revise it. [61]

European Union

The EU's regulation entered into force in June 2023 and applied fully from December 2024, with a grandfathering period for existing service providers ending on July 1, 2026. MiCA requires a crypto-asset white paper for assets admitted to trading. ESMA's interim register lists a MiCA white paper for XLM drawn up by the German data provider Crypto Risk Metrics and notified to BaFin (record dated 2026-01-15). It is a third-party disclosure document, not an approval or a classification by the regulator. [55][62]

Exchange availability

XLM is listed on large exchanges including Kraken (which notes that availability varies by country) and Binance. The exchanges that this site has verified for Israeli users are shown in chapter 14. [29][57]

Litigation history

Unlike some peers, Stellar has no major court case defining its token's status, and we found no record of SDF being a defendant in a regulatory action at the time of writing. Before March 2026 that absence meant uncertainty; the SEC's 2026 release now gives a regulator's view, though not a court ruling. [61]

11. Key risks

Validator concentration and liveness. Consensus depends on a modest set of identified organizations; 23 organizations ran validators at the time of writing, and a smaller Tier 1 core must agree for the network to progress. SCP's design means that if too many of them go offline or misconfigure, the network stops rather than forks, as it did for 67 minutes in 2019. [18][16][21]

Single reference implementation. Only one production implementation of Stellar Core exists, so a critical bug affects every validator at once. Protocol 29 in October 2026 was a security-only release to fix vulnerabilities in Stellar Core. [31][20]

SDF concentration. One nonprofit holds roughly 29 percent of total supply, writes most of the code, proposes most upgrades and funds most of the ecosystem. Its transparency is high, but key-person and single-organization risk is real. [2][32]

Weak fee-driven demand. Fees of 0.00001 XLM go to a locked pool and are not paid to validators. Demand for lumens therefore comes mainly from reserves and liquidity, not from fee revenue, and the economic link between network usage and token value is thin. [8]

Dependence on issuers and anchors. The most-used assets on Stellar (USDC, PYUSD, BENJI) are controlled by their issuers, who can freeze or claw back balances by design. That is a feature for regulators and a risk for users who expect bearer assets. [10][38]

Competition for the same partners. Stablecoin issuers and asset managers deploy on many chains at once; Circle, PayPal and Franklin Templeton all run on several networks, so Stellar must keep earning the business. [35][40][38]

Quantum and cryptographic transition. SDF itself says current elliptic-curve signatures will eventually be broken and has set a 2027 target for quantum-safe signers; a migration of this size carries execution risk. [54]

Market risk. XLM has a long history of large price swings; the live chart in chapter 16 shows the recent range. Nothing here changes that. [57]

This page is educational and is not investment advice.

12. Bull case vs bear case

The

Supporters argue that Stellar has spent a decade building what regulated institutions say they need: a public chain with identified validators, issuer controls built into the protocol, sub-cent fees and ledgers that close in about five seconds, plus MoneyGram cash on and off ramps that SDF says cover more than 170 countries. The evidence they point to is concrete and recent: a US-registered money market fund that has kept its share register on Stellar since 2021, PYUSD and USDT arriving in 2025 and 2026, tokenized real-world assets that SDF reports grew from 785 million dollars at the end of 2025 to 3 billion dollars by June 2026, and DTCC's announced selection of Stellar as one of its first public chains for tokenization. Because the supply is fixed, supporters add, every new account reserve and liquidity pool that uses XLM draws on a supply that cannot be expanded. [38][36][40][41][45][44][47][1]

The

Skeptics reply that most of these wins do not require anyone to hold lumens. Stablecoins and tokenized funds are the product; XLM costs a fraction of a cent to use, and its fees go to a locked pool rather than to validators. SDF still holds about 29 percent of total supply and funds the ecosystem by spending it. Safety rests on a small group of identified Tier 1 organizations running a single code base, and the headline adoption numbers come from SDF itself. Stellar's USDC float of about 370 million dollars is small next to the stablecoin supply on Ethereum, Tron and Solana, and its largest issuers, Circle, PayPal and Franklin Templeton, also run on other chains. [8][2][18][31][44][34][41][35][40][38]

Both cases rest on verifiable facts; they differ on whether network usage translates into demand for the token. The reader decides.

What both sides can monitor

Several things can be checked over time. One is the USDC and other stablecoin balances on the ledger, which anyone can read in a block explorer. Another is SDF's mandate accounts, which show how fast its holdings are spent. A third is whether DTCC's tokenization service actually issues assets on Stellar. A fourth is how many organizations run Tier 1 validators. Finally, SDF's 2027 target for quantum-safe signers is a dated milestone. [34][2][47][18][54]

13. Scorecard

Scores follow the rubric used for every coin on this site; the rationale for each category is shown in the card.

Unweighted average

6.7 / 10

How scores are set
  • Technology8/10

    Mainnet since 2015 with final ledgers about every 5 seconds, fees of 0.00001 XLM per operation, Soroban smart contracts since 2024 and a regular quarterly upgrade cadence. The last halt (67 minutes, 2019) lost no funds and the 2021 incident hit only SDF's validators. A single production implementation (stellar-core) keeps it below 9-10.

    Sources 1Sources 2Sources 3

  • Real adoption7/10

    Multiple named, checkable production users: Circle's native USDC (about 370.7 million outstanding at verification), MoneyGram cash ramps, Franklin Templeton's US-registered fund register since 2021 and PayPal's PYUSD. It stays below 8 because the stablecoin float is small next to Ethereum, Tron and Solana, and the headline network figures come from SDF itself.

    Sources 1Sources 2Sources 3

  • Tokenomics6/10

    Supply is fixed at about 50.0 billion XLM since the 2019 burn with no way to mint more, and SDF's holdings sit in public mandate accounts with category labels. But SDF still holds about 29 percent of total supply at its discretion, there is no strict public release schedule, and fees go to a locked pool so demand for the token is thin.

    Sources 1Sources 2Sources 3

  • Decentralization5/10

    Anyone can run a validator (106 configured, 23 organizations at verification), but safety rests on a small group of identified Tier 1 organizations. SDF writes most of the code and proposes most upgrades, and there is no second production client, which matches the rubric's council-based anchor of 5.

    Sources 1Sources 2Sources 3

  • Team and funding8/10

    SDF is a known nonprofit with a public leadership page, a public mandate that tracks every treasury allocation, quarterly reports, and a consistent record of shipping roughly one protocol upgrade a quarter in 2026. The 2019 admission that allocations were too large and the single-organization dependence are the main caveats.

    Sources 1Sources 2Sources 3

  • Regulatory standing8/10

    The SEC's March 2026 interpretive release (issued with CFTC guidance) lists XLM among its examples of digital commodities, a regulator statement that gives meaningful clarity, and XLM is listed on Coinbase and Kraken. A third-party MiCA white paper for XLM is in ESMA's register. Not 9-10 because the release is interpretive and revisable, and no court or EU regulator has classified XLM.

    Sources 1Sources 2Sources 3Sources 4

  • Competitive position5/10

    A credible player in regulated stablecoin and tokenized-asset payments with the MoneyGram cash network as a differentiator, and DTCC named it among its first public chains (announced). But Ethereum, Tron and Solana hold most stablecoin supply, its largest regulated issuers (Circle, PayPal and Franklin Templeton) also issue on other chains, and the moat is unclear.

    Sources 1Sources 2Sources 3Sources 4Sources 5Sources 6

14. How to buy and store

Before the exchange and wallet list, four Stellar-specific pitfalls that cause most lost funds.

1. The memo when sending to an exchange. Exchanges typically hold all customers' lumens in one Stellar account and tell customers apart with the field. Stellar memos are optional at the protocol level and come in four types: text (up to 28 bytes), ID (a 64-bit number), hash and return. If you send XLM to an exchange and omit or mistype the memo, the coins arrive in the exchange's account with no way to credit you automatically. SEP-29 exists precisely because "users frequently forget to fill in a memo in their deposit transactions"; good wallets check for the config.memo_required flag and block the transaction, but do not rely on that. Always copy both the address and the memo from your exchange's deposit page. [9][11]

2. The minimum balance and base reserve. At the time of writing the base reserve was 0.5 XLM and a new account needs two base reserves, so 1 XLM, before it exists on the ledger. Every trustline, open offer, extra signer or data entry adds another 0.5 XLM that you cannot spend while that entry exists (a liquidity pool share costs 1 XLM). If you send 0.8 XLM to a brand-new wallet address, the transaction fails. Validators can vote to change these values, so check the lumens page in the official docs before relying on the numbers. [1][7]

3. Trustlines for everything that is not XLM. To receive USDC, PYUSD or any other asset on Stellar, your account must first add a trustline to that exact asset code and issuer, which locks 0.5 XLM. If you send USDC to an account without a USDC trustline, the payment fails. Check the issuer address too: several assets can share the code "USDC"; Circle's issuer is GA5ZSEJYB37JRC5AVCIA5MOP4RHTM335X2KGX3IHOJAPP5RE34K4KZVN. Some assets also carry Authorization Required, so the issuer must approve your account before you can hold them. [7][10][33]

4. Send XLM only on the Stellar network. Lumens exist on the Stellar ledger. Some exchanges offer wrapped or bridged versions on other chains; if a withdrawal screen asks you to choose a network, choose Stellar, and never send XLM to an Ethereum, BNB Chain or Solana address. Likewise, USDC on Stellar is a Stellar asset: moving it to another chain requires Circle's CCTP or an exchange, not a plain transfer. errors are usually irreversible. [33][35]

Two more habits: verify the first few and last few characters of any Stellar address (they start with G and are 56 characters long), and use a such as Stellar Expert to confirm that your test payment landed before sending the rest. [7][60]

Exchanges that list XLM

  • Kraken

    Israel is not on Kraken's list of unsupported regions, but its fiat deposit list does not include ILS and IOTA is not listed.

    Available to Israeli residents
    KrakenSign up on the official site

  • Coinbase

    Asset list confirmed from Coinbase's public exchange API; Coinbase's own help pages block automated access, so Israel availability and ILS deposits are unverified.

    CoinbaseSign up on the official site

  • Bitstamp

    All seven pairs are enabled in Bitstamp's public API; no current official Bitstamp page confirming Israel availability was found, so it is unverified.

    BitstampSign up on the official site

  • Bybit

    Israel is absent from Bybit's published list of restricted jurisdictions, which is not the same as an explicit license for Israeli residents.

    Available to Israeli residents
    BybitSign up on the official site

  • OKX

    OKX's app-availability page lists Israel among the countries and regions where OKX is available.

    Available to Israeli residents
    OKXSign up on the official site

  • Crypto.com

    Crypto.com's help center lists Israel among the regions where Crypto.com Web is available.

    Available to Israeli residents
    Crypto.comSign up on the official site

Cold wallets that support XLM

Buy only from the official store - never second-hand

  • Ledger

    via Ledger Wallet Help center

    Ledger's own coin pages cover all eight coins; XDC needs an unnamed third-party wallet and IOTA is shown via MetaMask.

    LedgerBuy on the official sitefrom 69 USD

  • Trezor

    via Trezor Suite Help center

    Trezor's coin pages state that Algorand and Hedera are not supported, and IOTA works only through a third-party wallet app. An official Trezor XDC page could not be found, so XDC is not listed.

    TrezorBuy on the official site59-249 USD

  • Keystone

    via xBull Wallet Help center

    Keystone's firmware changelog names companion apps for XRP, Cardano, IOTA and Stellar, while Algorand, Hedera, Quant and XDC appear only on its generic asset list.

    KeystoneBuy on the official sitefrom 149 USD

  • Tangem

    via Tangem app Help center

    Tangem's help center lists six of the eight coins, with Hedera available only for Tangem hardware wallets, and no IOTA or Quant support was found.

    TangemBuy on the official sitefrom 59.9 USD
Set up a XLM wallet (guide 6)Withdraw XLM to your wallet (guide 7)Read the full buy-and-store guide

15. Sources

Official documentation

  1. [1]Stellar Docs - Lumens (XLM)View source
  2. [4]Stellar - consensus protocol paperView source
  3. [5]Stellar Docs - consensus protocolView source
  4. [6]Stellar Docs - anchors and rampsView source
  5. [7]Stellar Docs - accountsView source
  6. [8]Stellar Docs - fees and resource limitsView source
  7. [9]Stellar Docs - operations and transactionsView source
  8. [10]Stellar Docs - control asset accessView source
  9. [11]Stellar Protocol - SEP-0029 memo requirementsView source
  10. [12]Stellar Docs - Stellar stackView source
  11. [13]Stellar Docs - smart contracts overviewView source
  12. [16]Stellar Docs - Tier 1 organizationsView source
  13. [18]OBSRVR Radar - node APIView source
  14. [19]Stellar Horizon - mainnet status APIView source
  15. [20]Stellar Docs - software versionsView source
  16. [26]Stellar Dashboard - lumens supply APIView source
  17. [31]GitHub - stellar-core repositoryView source
  18. [32]GitHub - stellar-protocol repositoryView source
  19. [34]Stellar Expert - USDC asset statisticsView source
  20. [43]Stellar Docs - Disbursement PlatformView source
  21. [58]XRP Ledger - official siteView source
  22. [60]Stellar Expert - public network explorerView source

Regulators and legal

  1. [55]ESMA - MiCA regulation overviewView source
  2. [56]SEC - complaint against CoinbaseView source
  3. [61]SEC - crypto assets interpretive releaseView source
  4. [62]ESMA - MiCA register of white papersView source

Project publications

  1. [2]Stellar Foundation - SDF mandateView source
  2. [3]Stellar Foundation - consensus protocol overviewView source
  3. [14]Stellar Foundation - Protocol 20 mainnet launchView source
  4. [15]Stellar Foundation - Soroban smart contractsView source
  5. [17]Stellar - MoneyGram joins as Tier 1 validatorView source
  6. [21]Stellar Foundation - May 15 network haltView source
  7. [22]Stellar Foundation - halted SDF validators statementView source
  8. [23]Stellar status - validators dropped incidentView source
  9. [24]Stellar Foundation - decentralized to the coreView source
  10. [25]Stellar Foundation - SDF next stepsView source
  11. [27]Stellar Foundation - missionView source
  12. [28]Stellar Foundation - teamView source
  13. [29]Kraken Learn - what is StellarView source
  14. [33]Circle - USDC on StellarView source
  15. [35]Stellar Foundation - Circle CCTP liveView source
  16. [36]Stellar Foundation - MoneyGram rampsView source
  17. [37]Stellar - MoneyGram partnership extensionView source
  18. [38]Stellar Foundation - Franklin Templeton case studyView source
  19. [39]Stellar - Franklin OnChain fund milestoneView source
  20. [40]Stellar - PayPal USD availableView source
  21. [41]Stellar Foundation - USDT0 liveView source
  22. [42]Stellar Foundation - UNHCR case studyView source
  23. [44]Stellar Foundation - Q2 2026 reportView source
  24. [45]Stellar Foundation - Q1 2026 reportView source
  25. [46]Stellar Foundation - Q2 2025 reportView source
  26. [47]Stellar Foundation - DTCC case studyView source
  27. [48]Stellar Foundation - intro to StellarView source
  28. [49]Stellar - Community FundView source
  29. [50]Stellar Foundation - Protocol 26 YardstickView source
  30. [51]Stellar Foundation - Protocol 27 upgrade guideView source
  31. [52]Stellar Foundation - Protocol 28 upgrade guideView source
  32. [53]Stellar Foundation - Protocol 25 upgrade guideView source
  33. [54]Stellar Foundation - quantum preparedness planView source
  34. [57]Binance - Stellar price pageView source
  35. [59]Range - Tier 1 validator on StellarView source

Media

  1. [30]Wikipedia - Stellar payment networkView source

16. Live chart

The chart below shows the live XLM price; everything above it was checked at the time of writing.

Next step - Step 6 of 13Hedera (HBAR) - the full guideWhat Hedera is, how hashgraph consensus works, who governs the network, the fixed 50 billion HBAR supply, verified usage, risks, and how to buy and store HBAR safely.