Stellar strengthens payments network with Protocol 26 and $3B in tokenized RWAs

Stellar quietly posted one of the strongest quarters any Layer 1 has seen in 2026, and it did it in the lane that actually matters to Wall Street: regulated finance. The Stellar Development Foundation’s Q2 2026 network report, released on August 3, shows tokenized real-world assets on the network reached $3.05 billion, a 100% increase from the prior quarter. That growth rate is roughly four times faster than the broader RWA tokenization market. Meanwhile, stablecoin transfer volumes hit an all-time high of $11.4 billion, and the network averaged approximately 4.9 million daily transactions. Protocol 26 sets the stage Much of this momentum traces back to a single date: May 6, 2026, when Protocol 26, nicknamed “Yardstick,” went live on Stellar’s mainnet. The upgrade had been cooking since early April, hitting stable releases on April 8 and clearing testnet on April 16 before the full activation. Two features stand out. First, a governed on-chain freeze mechanism, which gives issuers the ability to pause or restrict asset transfers in compliance with regulatory requirements. Second, improved 256-bit arithmetic functionality, which lets the network handle calculations with far greater ...