The world's government debt is coming onchain. It's choosing Stellar.

The Stellar network now holds more tokenized non-US government debt than any other blockchain, a lead it has held since February. Here's what's behind the number, and why the fastest-growing corner of the RWA market keeps landing on the same network.

A quick map of what follows:

• Exactly which race Stellar leads, and where Ethereum is still ahead.
• The growth curve behind the number, from roughly $500 million in early 2025 to more than $3 billion in June 2026.
• The issuers doing the work, from Mexican CETES and Brazilian Tesouro bonds to euro-denominated T-bills.
• Why sovereign issuers keep choosing the same network, and where the category goes next.

A data point made the rounds this week: Stellar has overtaken Ethereum in tokenized non-US government debt, with roughly $490 million in sovereign instruments onchain, according to RWA.xyz data as of August 20, 2026. Stellar first passed Ethereum in this category in early February and has held the top spot on the leaderboard every day since.

Let's be precise about the claim, because precision is the point. Ethereum still leads in tokenized US Treasuries and in total RWA value, and the whole market is growing across every chain. What Stellar leads is a specific race: sovereign debt issued outside the US, in currencies other than the dollar. We think that race matters more than its current size suggests. Most of the world's governments and businesses don't operate in dollars. The networks that serve them will define where tokenization goes next.

The category lead is one milestone on a steeper curve. Real-world assets on Stellar, excluding stablecoins, grew from roughly $500 million in early 2025 to $854.6 million by the end of Q4 2025, crossed $1 billion in January 2026, closed Q1 at $1.52 billion (up 91% in a single quarter), passed $2 billion in April, and topped $3 billion in June. That's roughly a threefold increase year over year, one of the fastest RWA growth trajectories of any chain this cycle.

Zoom out and Stellar now represents about 9% of all distributed RWA value across every blockchain, per RWA.xyz, placing it among the top four networks alongside Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana. Notably, it's the only network in that group outside the EVM ecosystem.

The non-US sovereign debt lead is built from real products serving real markets. Etherfuse Stablebonds bring Mexican CETES and Brazilian Tesouro bonds onchain. Spiko's euro-denominated T-bill fund grew from roughly $520 million to $970 million over the past year, with most of that growth landing on Stellar. South Korean Treasury Bonds and the Marshall Islands' digital sovereign bond round out a roster that spans five continents.

The surrounding ecosystem reinforces it. Franklin Templeton's BENJI, the first US-registered mutual fund to use a public blockchain as its system of record, runs on Stellar. Ondo's USDY and WisdomTree's WTGXX are live on the network. USDC market cap on Stellar grew about 15% quarter over quarter to more than $256 million in Q1 2026, and euro-denominated stablecoins arrived in force: Société Générale-FORGE's EURCV and AllUnity's EURAU both launched on mainnet, with EUR stablecoin volume up 12x year over year.

And the assets are moving, which is the part that matters. Stablecoin payment volume on Stellar hit $5.5 billion in Q1 2026, up 72% year over year, with transaction velocity up 75%. Tokenized value that sits still is a spreadsheet exercise. On Stellar, it circulates.

Ask the issuers and a consistent picture emerges. First, Stellar was purpose-built for cross-border, multi-currency settlement: fees are fractions of a cent, finality arrives in about five seconds, and the architecture assumes value will cross borders and currencies rather than treating that as an edge case. For a sovereign issuer optimizing for its own currency corridors rather than dollar-denominated Treasuries, that design is the product.

Second, compliance is native. Asset-level controls, the anchor network, and KYC-friendly primitives are built into the protocol, which means a regulated issuer spends its budget on its product rather than on custom compliance tooling. Third, dollar liquidity is frictionless: USDC is live natively on Stellar with Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, so tokenized sovereign debt settles against regulated digital dollars without wrapped-token workarounds.

Institutions have noticed, and around the world the roster keeps deepening: U.S. Bank, Amundi, Société Générale, AllUnity, Kenanga in Malaysia, and SDF's work with Marketnode in Singapore, backed by SGX and Temasek. That geographic spread is hard to replicate and increasingly the moat.

Three things that make us excited that the curve will continue. RWAs on Stellar are becoming productive collateral: Templar's April launch enabled lending and borrowing against tokenized assets, including Centrifuge's deJAAA and deJTRSY and Etherfuse's CETES and USTRY. Agentic commerce is emerging as a new demand vector, with the x402 protocol positioning Stellar as a settlement rail for machine-to-machine payments. And regulatory clarity outside the US keeps opening new markets, from further EU issuance following EURAU and EURCV to institutional expansion across APAC.

To the teams making this real, Etherfuse, Spiko, Circle, Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and every issuer bringing sovereign instruments to Stellar: this milestone is yours. The scoreboard just caught up to the work.

Explore real-world assets on Stellar at stellar.org, or dig into the data yourself at RWA.xyz.