A payment network built for moving currencies cheaply, with a nonprofit steering it.
Live market data
CoinGecko data; may be delayed.
No declared max supply: no FDV is computable, supply follows demand.
70.5% of the achievable supply is already circulating.
$0.88 -80.67% · Jan 2, 2018
Source: CoinGecko, snapshot of Oct 27, 2026. Figures may be delayed.
This asset is not mapped to a DefiLlama-tracked protocol or chain, or the provider reports no data for it. When a verified mapping exists, the table appears here.
Stellar is designed for issuing and exchanging representations of real currencies rather than for general computation. Its built-in order book lets a payment convert between assets automatically along a path, which suits remittances and cross-currency transfers. Its stewardship is unusual: a nonprofit foundation, not a commercial company, which shapes how it approaches financial access.
The network's value is in anchors and corridors, not in smart contract activity.
Cheap fees by design means limited token value capture from volume.
Nonprofit stewardship changes incentives compared with company-led payment networks.
Stellar uses federated Byzantine agreement: each node chooses which other nodes it trusts, and agreement emerges from the overlap between those quorum slices. Assets are issued by anchors, entities that hold the real currency and issue a matching token, so using a Stellar dollar means trusting whoever issued it. The protocol also runs a native order book, letting payments route through conversions automatically.
Minimal transaction fees on the network
Account reserves required to hold assets
Bridge asset for currency pairs without a direct market
XLM's role is deliberately minimal. It pays very small transaction fees, is required as a minimum account reserve, and acts as a bridge asset when no direct market exists between two currencies. Because fees are tiny by design and stablecoin transfers can route directly, payment volume on Stellar does not create proportional demand for XLM. That is a design choice for cheap payments, not an oversight, but it caps the token's upside from usage.
XLM launched with 100 billion units and an initial 1% annual inflation that the network voted to remove in 2019 — inflation was retired and the supply is now effectively fixed, with only the 2019 burn (55 billion XLM destroyed) and gradual fee burn shaping the number. The total is permanently lower than genesis, and there is no schedule that adds new XLM. The distribution question matters more than the cap: a large share sits with the Stellar Development Foundation, released through ecosystem programs.
The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit, leads protocol development and holds the ecosystem reserve, with protocol changes via CAPs (Core Advancement Proposals) and validator voting. Network upgrades require supermajority validator quorum — and the validator set is still heavily SDF-influenced. The 2024 Protocol 22 upgrade (Soroban smart contracts) shipped through this process. Governance works, but readers should see it for what it is: a foundation-directed network with real, but limited, community voice.
Anchor dependency: an issued asset is only as good as the institution backing it.
Weak token value capture from payment volume, by design.
Direct competition from stablecoins on cheaper general-purpose chains.
Adoption depends on regulated partners in each corridor, which is slow institutional work.
Smaller developer ecosystem than general-purpose smart contract networks.
Stellar's smart contract platform, live since Protocol 22 in early 2024. It uses a Rust-based WASM environment with metered resource pricing, designed to bring programmability to a payments-focused network. Adoption is early relative to major L1s — the honest read is that Stellar is catching up on programmability rather than leading it.
Both target cross-border payments, but Stellar leans on asset issuance and anchored fiat (anyone can issue tokens with trustlines), while XRP Ledger uses issued IOUs and market makers plus its own DEX. Governance differs too: SDF is a non-profit foundation, Ripple is a for-profit company. Use cases overlap in remittances; compliance posture and ecosystem composition are the real differentiators.
Last verified:
Stellar · stellar.org · primary source
The project's official site, retrieved on the date shown, supporting how it describes itself. It does not establish supply, governance or issuance mechanics.
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Serves a comparable role, so the two are worth reading side by side.
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Listed as an organization active in this asset's ecosystem.
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