Q2 2026: What Stellar was built for has arrived

We've spent seven years making the same bet: that real financial infrastructure would eventually need public rails — open, compliant, reliable, low-cost — built for institutions and real-world users alike. Q2 is the quarter that bet became the market's conclusion.

It became visible from both ends of the financial system, days apart. On one end, DTCC. The institution overseeing more than $114 trillion across U.S. capital markets selected Stellar as one of the first public blockchains for tokenization. On the other, MoneyGram launched MGUSD, bringing a regulated digital dollar to a cash network serving more than 60 million customers, many in markets where access is still the problem.

The same rail. The same week. The same reason. We walked through all of it on the Q2 webinar. Here's the short version.

This is the shape of the quarter: a barbell. The world's largest financial-infrastructure player on one end, the world's most access-constrained users on the other, both moving toward the same infrastructure for the same reason.

Institutions aren't choosing public blockchains because they suddenly became fashionable. They're choosing Stellar because it was built for the requirements they bring: compliance-aware architecture, validator accountability in consensus, a privacy roadmap they can plan around, and low, predictable fees, all from the start, not retrofitted.

When you custody trillions, "the network was down" is not a sentence you can say. In more than a decade, Stellar has never made anyone say it.

That reliability was tested harder than ever this quarter. By incident count, the first half of 2026 was the most attacked half-year our industry has recorded, with 207 exploits, per TRM Labs, and dozens in Q2 alone. 

Through it, Stellar held: 99.99%+ uptime, average fees around one hundredth of a penny, and zero core protocol security incidents. Active accounts crossed 10.7 million.

Most chains treat advancing and staying reliable as a trade-off. We don't. Yardstick shipped a governed freeze, the only consensus-driven mechanism of its kind on a major public chain, proof that the network hardens as it grows.

The headline number: $3 billion in real-world assets on Stellar, with three billion-dollar milestones in a single calendar year — $1B in January, $2B in April, $3B in June.

The broader tokenization market grew roughly 50% over that period. Stellar grew four times faster. This isn't just market growth; it's share gain, and it's broad. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries, sovereign bond funds across the EU, UK, and U.S., money market funds, tokenized credit through Centrifuge, and gold through Matrixdock's XAUm. Multiple asset classes, different issuers and jurisdictions, the same conclusion.

Assets accumulating is half the story. The other half is assets moving.

Stablecoin transfer volume reached $11.4 billion in Q2, an all-time high, up 72% quarter over quarter, and our first double-digit-billion quarter, with velocity holding around 33x. That's value moving at record scale on public infrastructure.

A next layer is forming on top of that movement: yield-bearing stablecoins, led by Figure's YLDS, the first SEC-registered yield-bearing dollar product on Stellar. As value moves toward everyday usage, usage moves toward more sophisticated products. And with Circle's CCTP live and connecting 23 chains, those assets aren't confined to Stellar.

If assets are one end of the barbell and people are the other, builders are the layer that connects them. This quarter, that layer was the story.

Stellar reached 2,968 monthly active developers as of June 30: an all-time high, #2 globally, ahead of both Solana and Bitcoin, according to Electric Capital. Activity is up 125% year over year while every other major ecosystem contracted. That's structural growth.

Distribution doesn't happen because assets exist. It happens because builders make assets usable, turning a tokenized fund into a savings product in Lagos, a remittance in Mexico City, a payroll rail in Istanbul. The growth is concentrated where the needs are real: Nigeria, India, Turkey, and Brazil. Behind it is a deliberate engine: programs, hackathons, and Stellar Community Fund rounds 42 and 43, which put $5.5 million behind 55 companies.

Different markets, different entry points, same direction.

In LATAM, the entry point is remittances and access: MGUSD, YLDS, and Stellar House Mexico City. In Europe, it's regulated issuance: AllUnity's EURAU, Cashlink, and Spiko approaching $1B. In Africa, it's utility and payment access, where sending money still costs 8.8% on average. In APAC, it's institutional credibility and new corridors: Matrixdock, Bitkub, Ant Digital's TopNod, Kenanga, and Marketnode. And the Middle East and Turkey expanded materially this quarter, from Istanbul Blockchain Week to Tokinvest bringing BENJI to the region.

The pattern is the same everywhere: regulated assets, usable wallets, local distribution, and infrastructure that fits the market it serves.

The roadmap is built to carry this demand. On the webinar, Chief Product Officer Tomer Weller walked through all of it, privacy, agents, and quantum, and how we ship.

Confidential tokens are landing on the primitives shipped at Yardstick: configurable, opt-in, and compliant, on a base layer that stays open and auditable. Stellar joined the x402 Foundation, with a board seat, to help shape how agents pay on the internet. And on June 9 we published our Quantum Preparedness Plan, a three-stage path to post-quantum security that's already becoming protocol. One major upgrade per quarter, with the next already in planning: advancement without sacrificing reliability.

The roadmap is built to carry this demand. On the webinar, Chief Product Officer Tomer Weller walked through all of it, privacy, agents, and quantum, and how we ship.

Confidential tokens are landing on the primitives shipped at Yardstick: configurable, opt-in, and compliant, on a base layer that stays open and auditable. Stellar joined the x402 Foundation, with a board seat, to help shape how agents pay on the internet. And on June 9 we published our Quantum Preparedness Plan, a three-stage path to post-quantum security that's already becoming protocol. One major upgrade per quarter, with the next already in planning: advancement without sacrificing reliability.