Stellar 2025: A Podium Finish

In 2025, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) showed that more than a decade of ecosystem support and collaboration had prepared the Stellar network to meet a seismic shift in sentiment and adoption. The 2025 roadmap was clear: improve technical performance for both builders and enterprises, expand product offerings through the Stellar Disbursement Platform, and prepare the protocol for privacy features that are configurable and compliance-friendly from the start.

Throughout the year, those decisions helped the network show up for the moment. Tokenized yield scaled across institutional use cases, settlement operated continuously under real volume, and payment rails held steady as deployment expanded.

After 11 years, the network continues to grow significantly. What follows is a clear look at what changed, who showed up, and why the network and the ecosystem are entering the new year on firmer ground than ever before.

Our 2025 victory lap ↓

To match the growth and strength of the Stellar ecosystem, Stellar protocol upgrades focused on scalability and usability. These upgrades increased network speed and capacity, TVL climbed 95% to hit $211M+, and SDF began investing in practical, production-ready privacy features.

In Q2, SDF, with support from the Stellar ecosystem, introduced parallelism in core, cached ledger state more aggressively, and increased theoretical throughput to 2000+ TPS while continuing toward our goal of 5000 TPS. This progress set the stage for the biggest protocol upgrade since smart contracts: Whisk (Protocol 23).

The Whisk upgrade included 8 transformative CAPs designed to make building on Stellar faster, easier, and cheaper. From parallel transaction processing to unified events, fee reductions, state archival foundational work, and configurable network parameters, these CAPs reduce friction for developers, increase throughput, and lower costs for projects building on Stellar. All setting the stage for what’s to come in 2026 and beyond.

In September, Tomer Weller, Chief Product Officer at SDF, announced SDF’s strategy for privacy at Meridian 2025, sharing the roadmap and why Stellar will be the proving ground for real-world privacy. SDF believes that blockchains should be open and transparent by default. But we also recognize that privacy is necessary for mass adoption - so we're building it to be configurable and compliance-forward from the start. To achieve this, SDF will support research & innovation, invest in core privacy infrastructure, and build open source prototypes. This includes partnering with Nethermind on a bridge between Stellar and Wormhole, and adding RISC Zero verifier support to Stellar smart contracts. These give developers the primitives they need to build privacy-enabled applications.

Tomer also highlighted how ecosystem projects like Moonlight, Amon Privacy, and human.tech are advancing privacy-preserving solutions on the network, and shared that SDF joined the Confidential Token Association alongside projects like OpenZeppelin, Zama, and Inco to develop industry standards for confidential tokens.

The next protocol upgrade, X-Ray (Protocol 25), is planned to go live on Mainnet on January 22, 2026. This upgrade will allow developers to build configurable, compliance-forward privacy applications by introducing native support for widely used zero-knowledge primitives, including BN254 and Poseidon.

With performance improvements shipped and privacy primitives landing, DeFi applications gained a clearer path to scale. Crucially, this progress does not compromise operational stability or bypass compliance considerations. The enterprises using Stellar today need privacy solutions. The ones coming tomorrow expect it.

One of the strongest indicators of this year’s success is validation from the network’s institutional partners.

PayPal, Visa, Wirex, Mastercard, Ondo, and NEAR Intents integrated Stellar directly into their production systems to support payments, settlement, and asset issuance - proving that institutions are turning to Stellar to build innovative products and offerings

PayPal USD (PYUSD) went live on the Stellar network in Q3, extending to hundreds of millions of users and merchants worldwide, making Stellar the fourth supported blockchain alongside Ethereum, Solana, and Arbitrum. The integration expanded PYUSD’s real-world reach and enabled new use cases on Stellar, including instant payroll, remittances, and working capital (“PayFi”). This expansion marked a key institutional milestone for Stellar, reinforcing its role as a trusted settlement layer for enterprise-scale digital assets.

For years, stablecoins have been deemed crypto's 'killer app' by combining the power of the blockchain with the stability of fiat currency. As we see cross-border payments being a key area where digital currencies can provide real-world value, building with Stellar will help advance the use of this technology and provide benefits for all users," said May Zabaneh, Vice President of the Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and Digital Currency Group, PayPal.

More below from Larry Wade, PayPal's Global Head of Compliance:

In addition, Wirex and Visa launched USDC and EURC settlements on Stellar, allowing card payments to be settled in stablecoins directly onchain. For users and partners, this means faster settlement, lower costs, and always-on payments across both USD and EUR markets.

Cuy Sheffield, VP, Head of Crypto at Visa said:

Visa is working with innovative partners like Wirex to explore new ways that stablecoins and blockchains can enhance the payment experience. Wirex’s use of USDC and EURC on Stellar highlights how onchain settlement can bring more speed, transparency and programmability to digital payments.

Meanwhile, U.S. Bank and PwC began testing custom stablecoin issuance on Stellar. This underscores that banks are ready to unlock the next phase of innovation with programmable money—reducing settlement and reconciliation costs, minimizing intermediary fees, and enabling near-instant, 24/7 settlement.

For bank customers, we have to think about protections around KYC, the ability to unwind transactions, the ability to clawback transactions," said Mike Villano, Senior Vice President, Head of Digital Asset Products at U.S. Bank. "One of the great things about the Stellar network was learning that the ability to freeze assets and unwind transactions is at the network’s base operating layer.

Testing asks whether something works. Validation shows whether it can scale. Integration assumes it does. At this stage, institutions choose Stellar because it's one of the top blockchains for financial services.

2025 also brought meaningful evolution in leadership.

José Fernández da Ponte

José Fernández da Ponte joined as President and Chief Growth Officer, coming from PayPal where he helped shape the company’s digital assets and payments strategy. He brings deep institutional and regulatory experience that will accelerate enterprise adoption on Stellar.

Jason Karsh

Jason Karsh joined as Chief Marketing Officer, drawing on experience at crypto‑native organizations such as Blockchain.com and The Block. He brings crypto-native fluency and brand-building experience to elevate SDF and the network's positioning, with a focus on enterprise adoption and developer growth.

Denelle Dixon

Alongside them, Denelle Dixon continues to do what she does best: lead, both inside the organization and outside with partners and policymakers. Over the course of the year, she has engaged institutions and regulators globally to advance innovation on Stellar and make the case for open, public networks as infrastructure for financial services.

As she wrote in The Permissionless Premium: "Nobody cares about 'openness' as an abstract principle. What matters is whether your infrastructure lets the unexpected happen - and whether you can capture the value when it does."

If you made it this far, congratulations - you just witnessed a decade of infrastructure work pay off in real time!

For years, we've been talking about what makes Stellar special. Fast, absurdly cheap, and purpose-built to support real-world financial services with a proven track record. But 2025 wasn't about flexing those features. It was about execution - systems running at scale, institutions using them, and real value moving onchain because the rails actually work.

Open systems that institutions trust. Tokenization that creates actual impact. Privacy that works in the real world. A network that's never been better to build on.

The numbers are there. The partners showed up. The team is stacked. The growth is undeniable.

It's only up from here.

Cheers to 2026!