Q3 2025: Scaling what works. Growing stronger.

Q3 2025 marked another quarter of measurable growth and real-world adoption across the Stellar ecosystem.
From record RWA volumes to developer acceleration, Stellar continues to prove that open networks can deliver institutional-grade trust and usability at scale.

Performance that scales

The Stellar network kept its momentum through Q3 — faster, cheaper, and more reliable than ever.
More than 1 billion operations were processed this quarter (+70% QoQ) with 99.99% uptime and an average ledger close of 5.76 seconds.
Transaction fees stayed near zero at $0.00055 per operation, keeping Stellar among the most efficient blockchains in the world.
According to Chainspect, Stellar now ranks #4 globally for actual network usage — proof of real traction.

Developers building for the real world

Stellar’s developer community continues to outpace the broader market.
Full-time developers grew 37% year to date — and overall, Stellar’s developer base is growing nearly eight times the industry average — while engagement in hackathons and activations rose 70% QoQ.
Smart-contract activity reached an all-time high of 1 million invocations per day (+700% QoQ), and new Ambassadors expanded across LATAM and APAC.
Developers are choosing Stellar because it’s practical, high-performance, and proven.

Utility at scale: RWAs and DeFi

Q3 reinforced Stellar’s position as the home for RWAa.
RWA market cap hit $562M (+14 % QoQ) with total supply up 20%, while cross-border RWA payments reached an all-time high of $5.4B (+27% QoQ).
Major issuers — Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, Ondo, Centrifuge, and Mercado Bitcoin — continued to expand the network’s institutional footprint.
DeFi mirrored that momentum: TVL grew 71% to $144M, a 3.6× increase year over year.
Projects like Blend, Beans, and Etherfuse are making yield and credit accessible to everyday users, while integrations with LayerZero, NEAR Intents, Centrifuge deRWA, and Ondo USDY connected Stellar to 95+ networks across the broader DeFi economy.

Institutional trust, proven reach

Q3 delivered key enterprise milestones.
Visa added Stellar to its stablecoin settlement network.
MoneyGram launched its next-gen wallet in Colombia using USDC on Stellar.
Through the Stellar Disbursement Platform, partners including GIZ, UNDP, and the World Food Programme processed $4.2M YTD (+50% QoQ).
And PayPal’s PYUSD launched on Stellar, extending regulated digital dollars to 400M accounts and 35M merchants worldwide.
From impact to enterprise, Stellar continues to bridge global finance and open technology.

Product momentum

Stellar’s biggest upgrade since smart contracts — Whisk — went live in September, introducing parallel execution, faster block times, and unified token events.
Next, Protocol 25 will add zk-ready cryptography, advancing privacy-enabled, compliance-forward applications.
On Stellar, privacy is the bridge to trust — configurable, auditable, and built for scale.

Momentum ahead

At Meridian 2025 in Rio, more than 1,000 attendees from 65 countries and 229 companies transacted 425,000 XLM through Meridian Pay.
As the ecosystem looks toward Meridian 2026 at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, the message remains clear: Stellar is scaling what works — and growing stronger.