A similar spike in activity occurred on October 11 (12 million transactions at 139 TPS), and the cost of transfers remained just as low.
The current traffic growth is a consequence of recent code updates. In the Protocol 28 (“Adapter”) upgrade released in September, developers rebuilt the throughput mechanisms for increased flow, delivering a peak of 217.4 TPS over a 100-block window on September 26.
The infrastructure optimization continued with the launch of Chainlink price data feeds on October 14. Right now, developers are preparing the network for the next upgrade, Protocol 30 (“Bell”), which will be voted on in the coming days.
Where does so much traffic come from?
The October transaction peak was driven by an inflow of large capital into the stablecoin and tokenized real-world asset (RWA) sectors. According to a fresh report for Q3 2025, the total financial volume of transactions on the Stellar network reached $33.2 billion (+71% quarter over quarter).
At the same time, the volume of stablecoin transfers grew by 121% to $25.1 billion (+314% year over year), partly thanks to the new asset USDT0, which gained $200 million in turnover in 10 weeks.
In parallel, the volume of RWA-class assets on the blockchain reached $4.1 billion. A landmark event for the segment was the first institutional repo deal with automatic rollover collateralized by U.S. Treasuries (USDM1 tokens).
Against this backdrop, Stellar secured second place in the global ranking of L1 networks by the number of active developers: currently, almost four thousand specialists are developing the platform’s infrastructure.
In unison, the network maintains uptime at 99.99% despite the influx of new users — the total number of accounts has already exceeded 11 million. The broken daily milestone shows that the system is ready to operate without failures or cost increases as a permanent payment highway for large regulated capital.
