Stellar Votes on Protocol 26 as Developer Activity and RWA Growth Accelerate

• Stellar validators will vote on Protocol 26 on May 6.
• Stellar’s RWA market cap reached $1.52B in Q1, while SCF Round 42 awarded $2.46M in XLM to 27 projects.

Stellar is entering a closely watched governance week as validators prepare to vote on Protocol 26, known as Yardstick, on May 6 at 17:00 UTC. The upgrade arrives as the network records stronger real-world asset activity, fresh developer participation, and new user-facing tools across its ecosystem.

Yardstick is a protocol release for businesses and developers preparing infrastructure, SDKs, and validators before the mainnet vote. Stellar has published an official guide that offers stable releases, a testnet upgrade that was completed on April 16, and a breakdown on how participants can become a validator.

Stellar has several technical additions in Protocol 26, including v2 TTL host functions, 256-bit integer arithmetic, BN254 cryptographic primitives, and benchmarking tools.

With these changes, developers gain broader numerical support, better contract lifecycle controls, and more ways to measure performance. Meanwhile, BN254 support gives builders more room to verify zk-SNARKs and design privacy-preserving applications after Stellar activated the X-Ray privacy upgrade in January.

The vote comes as Stellar’s real-world asset base expands. Messari reported that Stellar’s RWA market cap, excluding stablecoins, rose 91.4% quarter over quarter, moving from $796 million to $1.52 billion at the end of Q1 2026. It then crossed $2 billion on April 11, driven mainly by tokenized government treasury assets.

Weekly Developments Show Broader Stellar Ecosystem Activity

This week’s Stellar developments extend beyond the protocol vote. Stellar Passport drew attention as a smart account experience that removes seed phrases and lowers onboarding friction. The tool allows users to receive funds into a Passport account and forward them to a daily wallet, creating a simpler entry point for events and community activations.

Bastian Koh also noted upgrades to Stellar Passport organization pages. Ambassador chapters and teams can now run their own hubs with profiles, links, socials, embeds, and events that update automatically. The update gives community groups one shared page for discovery, event visibility, and mobile outreach.

Developer funding also remained active through the Stellar Community Fund Round 42. The recap said SCF received 83 submissions across Open, Integration, and RFP tracks. The program awarded 27 projects across those tracks, with a total funding of $2,461,916 worth of XLM.

Community activity continued in the Philippines, where Rise In reported 73 participants and 40 ecosystem project submissions during a builder event at STI Global. The turnout points to grassroots developer engagement as Stellar prepares its next protocol phase and expands its smart contract tooling.

Institutional tokenization also stayed in focus. Stellar said institutions can bring assets onchain with compliance controls, while Ric Golubov of Franklin Templeton Digital Assets discussed the firm’s long-running work on Stellar. Messari listed Franklin Templeton, Spiko, Ondo, Etherfuse, and WisdomTree among major RWA issuers or asset providers using Stellar.

The network’s DeFi base has grown with tokenized assets. Messari reported that Stellar DeFi TVL stood at $174.4 million at the end of Q1, following 284% year-over-year growth from 2024. RWA-related lending and borrowing activity also added composability across the network.

XLM traded at $0.1597 at press time, extending its weekly losses to 5.1% amid a 33% rise in trading volume. 

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