Stellar spent years wearing the “payments chain” label. Nansen’s new H2 2025 Ecosystem Report argues the network used the back half of 2025 to outgrow that box — leaning harder into institutional finance, stablecoin settlement, and real-world asset tokenization, while shipping protocol upgrades aimed at throughput and privacy.
The headline metrics in Nansen’s read: daily transactions averaged 4.0–4.5 million, Stellar crossed 10 million active accounts and 21.5B+ total operations, and the ecosystem’s on-chain economy expanded with RWAs and DeFi growth figures that look much more “financial infrastructure” than “community experiment.”
The big upgrades: Whisk and X-Ray
Nansen points to Whisk (Protocol 23) as a major upgrade — described as the biggest protocol step since smart contracts — introducing multiple changes including parallel transaction processing, fee reductions, a unified events system, and configurable network parameters.
Then came X-Ray (Protocol 25), which went live January 22 and added native support for zero-knowledge primitives including BN254 and Poseidon — positioned as the foundation for “configurable, compliance-forward privacy” applications rather than privacy-for-privacy’s-sake.
Institutions and RWAs: PYUSD, U.S. Bank tests, and tokenized real-world assets
On the adoption side, the report highlights PayPal USD (PYUSD) going live on Stellar in September 2025, and says U.S. Bank began testing custom stablecoin issuance on Stellar to explore programmable money, reduced settlement costs, and 24/7 settlement with compliance features.
Nansen also says tokenized RWAs on Stellar grew 172% year-over-year by end-December 2025, with examples including RedSwan bringing $100M of tokenized commercial real estate and Franklin Templeton expanding a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund to European institutional investors on Stellar.
DeFi is growing around the rails
Stellar’s DeFi story in the report is less about meme-y TVL races and more about “integration reality.” Nansen points to composable integrations (Blend/DeFindex/Beans), noting Blend nearing $90M TVL and citing “10%+ APR” yields as an example of competitive on-chain rates.
It also flags multiple ecosystem integrations and infrastructure hooks: NEAR Intents (a pathway to bring users from “20+ chains” via one integration), Chainlink Scale with adoption of data feeds/streams and CCIP, and Circle CCTP V2 coming to Stellar.
Why it matters for crypto
- Stellar is leaning into “regulated finance” primitives. Nansen frames privacy as configurable and compliance-forward (via X-Ray’s ZK primitives), which is a clear signal the target audience includes institutions, not just retail users.
- RWAs on Stellar are no longer a side quest. Nansen’s 172% YoY RWA growth claim, plus examples like tokenized commercial real estate and Treasuries, positions Stellar as a settlement layer competing for tokenized asset issuance.
- Stablecoins are becoming the adoption wedge. PYUSD going live and U.S. Bank testing issuance reinforce the idea that “payments chains” win when stablecoins become day-to-day plumbing, not just exchange quote assets.
- Infrastructure upgrades are aiming at scale, not marketing. Whisk’s parallel processing and fee changes plus stated progress toward higher TPS show the chain is optimizing for high-throughput settlement use cases.
What to watch next
- Follow-through on privacy apps built on X-Ray primitives. Nansen mentions “privacy pools” prototyping and compliance-forward privacy direction — the next signal is real apps and usage, not just capability.
- CCTP V2 timeline and integrations. Nansen says CCTP V2 is coming to Stellar; watch for launch timing and which wallets/apps wire it in first.
- More institutional issuance pilots. The report highlights U.S. Bank testing stablecoin issuance; watch for expansion beyond testing and for additional issuers.
- RWA growth continuity into 2026. After the “172% YoY” headline, the market will watch whether issuance stays sticky (new assets, more jurisdictions, more distribution).
- Network throughput roadmap execution. Nansen cites progress toward higher theoretical TPS; watch for concrete performance milestones and developer-facing tooling improvements.
Source: Nansen Research — “Stellar H2 2025 Ecosystem Report”