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Stellar H2 2025 Ecosystem Report
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Overview

Stellar is an open-source blockchain network designed to facilitate fast, low-cost cross-border payments and asset tokenization. Built with a focus on financial inclusion and global money movement, Stellar is powered by the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), sub-6 second transaction finality, and minimal transaction fees, positioning the network as infrastructure for payment applications, remittances, and real-world asset tokenization. With over 10 million active accounts, 21.5 billion+ total operations, crossing 1B in RWA and growing adoption across stablecoin settlements, cross-border payments, remittances, and institutional asset tokenization, Stellar has established itself as a leading blockchain platform for payment-focused applications and financial infrastructure.

H2 2025 marked a transformative period for Stellar as the network evolved from a payment-focused blockchain to enterprise-grade financial infrastructure with enhanced privacy capabilities, institutional partnerships, and real-world asset adoption. The half-year witnessed significant achievements including the launch of Whisk (Protocol 23), the biggest protocol upgrade since smart contracts, introducing 8 transformative CAPs for parallel transaction processing, unified events, fee reductions, and configurable network parameters. The X-Ray (Protocol 25) upgrade went live on January 22nd and introduced native support for zero-knowledge primitives including BN254 and Poseidon, enabling developers to build configurable, compliance-forward privacy applications. Major institutional milestones included PayPal USD (PYUSD) going live on Stellar, extending to hundreds of millions of users and merchants worldwide, while U.S. Bank began testing custom stablecoin issuance on Stellar. By the end of December 2025, tokenized RWAs on Steller reached 172% year-over-year growth, with RedSwan bringing $100M of tokenized commercial real estate to the network and Franklin Templeton expanding its tokenized U.S. Treasury fund to European institutional investors on Stellar.

The half-year's developments underscore Stellar's unique positioning at the intersection of payment infrastructure, institutional finance, and real-world asset tokenization. With major financial institutions including PayPal, U.S. Bank, Franklin Templeton, MoneyGram, and Visa/Wirex utilizing Stellar for payments, settlement, and asset issuance, Stellar is demonstrating how blockchain infrastructure can serve both traditional finance and next-generation payment applications. The network's focus on payment use cases, combined with strong developer engagement through initiatives like Meridian 2025, hackathons, and the Stellar Community Fund, positions Stellar as a critical infrastructure layer for applications requiring fast settlement, low costs, and global reach. With daily transaction counts averaging 4.0-4.5 million, and institutional partnerships accelerating, Stellar enters 2026 poised to further demonstrate how payment-focused blockchain infrastructure can serve both traditional finance and emerging use cases, establishing itself as a preferred platform for cross-border payments, remittances, and real-world asset tokenization.

Key Developments: H2 2025

  • The Stellar Development Foundation updated its mandate framework, reorganizing XLM holdings into four focus areas: SDF Development, Stellar Growth (largest focus), Product and Innovation, and Assets and Liquidity (newest focus area). The foundation also joined the Blockchain Payments Consortium as a founding member, collaborating with industry leaders to advance blockchain payment standards.
  • Stellar launched Whisk (Protocol 23), the biggest protocol upgrade since smart contracts, introducing 8 transformative CAPs for parallel transaction processing, unified events, fee reductions, state archival work, and configurable network parameters. The X-Ray (Protocol 25) upgrade introduces native support for zero-knowledge primitives including BN254 and Poseidon, enabling developers to build configurable, compliance-forward privacy applications.
  • Circle CCTP V2 is coming to Stellar, bringing enhanced cross-chain transfer protocol capabilities to the network.
  • Meridian 2025, the annual Stellar conference, brought together developers, institutions, and ecosystem partners to build the future of finance. The Stellar i³ Awards 2025 recognized innovative projects and builders in the Stellar ecosystem.

Ecosystem

Enterprise & RWAs

  • RedSwan brings $100M of tokenized commercial real estate to Stellar, opening low-threshold investment opportunities for everyday people while providing new sources of liquidity for real estate firms.
  • The introduction of the ZARC Coin, a South African Rand pegged asset on the Stellar network, expanded access to African currencies.
  • PYUSD was made available on Stellar in September 2025, making trusted stablecoins more accessible worldwide.
  • Stellar enables rapid, low cost settlement for cross border payments, providing real world cost savings. AirTM (a global payment platform with 2.5M + users) saves 20-25% on transaction costs by using Stellar to run global payroll for their enterprise clients.
  • U.S. Bank begins testing custom stablecoin issuance on Stellar, exploring programmable money to reduce settlement costs, minimize intermediary fees, and enable near-instant 24/7 settlement with built-in compliance features. Stablecoins have hit $250B and redefined money, with the evolution and mainstream adoption of stablecoins transforming payment infrastructure.
  • Etherfuse aims to bring 100 sovereign currencies onchain, tokenizing non-U.S. sovereign debt from countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia to make traditionally local instruments globally accessible.

DeFi

  • Composability on Stellar works through real-world integrations like the Blend/DeFindex/Beans integration, demonstrating how lending protocols, abstraction layers, and wallets can work together to create seamless DeFi experiences. Blend has nearly $90m in TVL and offers competitive yields like 10%+ APRs.
  • SolvFinance will integrate its BTC+ vault with Stellar, enabling automated yield generation on BTC held on the network. Users can bring over existing SolvBTC to Stellar and use existing USDC liquidity on Stellar to earn yield.
  • Stellar integrated with NEAR Intents which can bring in users from 20+ chains into your Stellar app with just one integration.
  • Stellar joined the Chainlink Scale program and adopted Data Feeds, Data Streams, and CCIP to power next-generation DeFi applications with reliable oracle infrastructure.

Privacy & Infrastructure

  • Privacy and openness can coexist and reinforce one another on Stellar, with blockchain enabling configurable privacy for institutions. Stellar serves as the proving ground for real-world privacy, with SDF's strategy for building configurable, compliance-forward privacy features. Privacy Pools are being prototyped on Stellar, exploring privacy-preserving transaction mechanisms that maintain compliance capabilities.
  • The introduction of the Golang Stellar SDK provides Go developers with tools to build on the Stellar network. The Stellar Events system enables tracking and retroactive event processing, providing developers with comprehensive onchain activity monitoring capabilities. Stellar RPC improvements including infinite scroll functionality and performance enhancements for developers querying network data.
  • Stellar is progressing toward 5,000 theoretical TPS, including parallelization of Stellar Core and performance optimizations to increase network throughput. Stellar's 2025 achievements include 172% RWA growth, 95% TVL increase to $211M+, 800 active projects, 10M+ active accounts, 21.5B+ operations, and major institutional partnerships including PayPal PYUSD, Franklin Templeton, MoneyGram, and U.S. Bank.

Closing Thoughts

H2 2025 has established Stellar as an enterprise-grade payment infrastructure capable of supporting both institutional finance and cross-border payments, with the network demonstrating exceptional technical achievements, institutional adoption, and ecosystem expansion. The half-year's developments showcase a clear evolution from a payment-focused blockchain to infrastructure trusted by major financial institutions, stablecoin issuers, and payment companies. The introduction of Whisk (Protocol 23) and X-Ray (Protocol 25) upgrades, providing parallel transaction processing, unified events, and native zero-knowledge privacy primitives, combined with major institutional partnerships including PayPal PYUSD, U.S. Bank, Franklin Templeton, and MoneyGram, signals Stellar's growing recognition as a preferred settlement layer for next-generation payment applications requiring both technical excellence and institutional-grade infrastructure.

Onchain metrics indicate sustained network growth and ecosystem maturation. With daily transaction volumes averaging 4.0-4.5 million throughout H2 2025, Stellar demonstrated reliable high-throughput performance across payments, stablecoin settlements, remittances, and institutional asset tokenization.

Entering 2026, Stellar is poised to accelerate real world asset tokenization through its institutional partnerships, broadening access to financial services through a blossoming DeFi ecosystem while continuing to prove its strength in payments, stablecoin settlements and remittances for both retail and enterprise use cases.

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Disclosure: The authors of this content and members of Nansen may be participating or invested in some of the protocols or tokens mentioned herein. The foregoing statement acts as a disclosure of potential conflicts of interest and is not a recommendation to purchase or invest in any token or participate in any protocol. Nansen does not recommend any particular course of action in relation to any token or protocol. The content herein is meant purely for educational and informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as financial, investment, legal, tax or any other professional or other advice. None of the content and information herein is presented to induce or to attempt to induce any reader or other person to buy, sell or hold any token or participate in any protocol or enter into, or offer to enter into, any agreement for or with a view to buying or selling any token or participating in any protocol. Statements made herein (including statements of opinion, if any) are wholly generic and not tailored to take into account the personal needs and unique circumstances of any reader or any other person. Readers are strongly urged to exercise caution and have regard to their own personal needs and circumstances before making any decision to buy or sell any token or participate in any protocol. Observations and views expressed herein may be changed by Nansen at any time without notice. Nansen accepts no liability whatsoever for any losses or liabilities arising from the use of or reliance on any of this content.