Stellar’s on-chain real-world asset (RWA) footprint has expanded materially, with aggregate RWA value now approaching the $1 billion mark and reshaping the network’s utility profile. Early January 2026 also brought a reported 10.8% uptick in RWA value after 2025 ended with $757 million in total RWA supply, including $472 million categorized as yield-bearing assets.
That growth has been reinforced by deeper capital parked in RWA applications, as RWA-related TVL climbed 95% in 2025 to $211 million and signaled heavier on-chain balance-sheet usage. As institutional issuers become more active, the operational bar rises for custodians and platform operators supporting tokenized, yield-bearing instruments.
Institutional rails and the operational baseline
Stellar’s momentum is tied to institutional relationships that bring credibility and distribution on-ramps through names such as Franklin Templeton and Société Générale-FORGE. As these channels mature, teams need to treat tokenized instruments less like generic crypto assets and more like regulated financial products with stricter legal, custody, and audit expectations.
In practical terms, growing RWA supply and TVL translate into higher requirements for client-asset segregation, tighter external audit cycles, and more disciplined solvency and liquidity-risk governance. The same growth signals opportunity, but it also increases the surface area for counterparty exposure and operational errors as flows scale.
XLM market structure and the Protocol 25 pressure test
On the market side, XLM saw a notable reset in late 2025, with a 34% correction before stabilizing into early January 2026. Daily-chart commentary has pointed to an inverse head-and-shoulders structure, with a neckline near $0.254 and a near-term technical objective around $0.330 if a breakout confirms, alongside positive Chaikin Money Flow and Money Flow Index readings that suggest dip accumulation.
The risk stack remains multi-layered, and tokenized RWAs still sit inside evolving regulatory regimes that can change custody rules and audit obligations quickly. Separately, the RWA sector recorded about $14.6 million in exploit losses in H1 2025, reinforcing the need for operational resilience and external code-audit discipline.
Market structure considerations also matter for forward performance: a large circulating XLM supply and historical sell-wall pressure have been associated with constrained upside and failed breakouts. In addition, XLM’s price behavior has shown correlation with other large altcoins such as XRP, which increases exposure to broader risk-on/risk-off swings across the market.
Longer-range scenarios cited in market commentary have stretched to $0.98–$1.76, but those paths are explicitly conditional on sustained strength above $0.45 and on successful delivery and acceptance of key network upgrades. The most immediate checkpoint is Protocol 25 (“X-Ray”), scheduled for later in January 2026, which aims to introduce zero-knowledge privacy features and will test how operators balance privacy primitives with regulatory transparency, custody models, and auditability.