The Stellar Development Foundation published a comprehensive 2025 year-in-review highlighting major ecosystem growth: RWAs grew 172%, TVL reached $211M+ (up 95%), and the network processed 21.5B+ operations across 10M+ active accounts. Key institutional milestones included PayPal USD going live on Stellar, Franklin Templeton expanding tokenized Treasuries to European investors, and the Marshall Islands completing the world's first onchain UBI disbursement.
Stellar's 2025 demonstrated the network's readiness for institutional adoption and real-world financial services deployment. The ecosystem grew to 800+ projects across six continents with a 31% increase in full-time developers. Protocol upgrades focused on scalability (targeting 5000 TPS) and privacy, with the Whisk upgrade (Protocol 23) introducing 8 transformative CAPs and X-Ray (Protocol 25) adding zero-knowledge primitives. Major institutional partnerships materialized: PayPal USD launched on Stellar, Wirex and Visa settled USDC/EURC onchain, US Bank tested custom stablecoin issuance, and Franklin Templeton expanded its $580M tokenized Treasury fund. Real-world asset issuance diversified across Ondo (USDY), RedSwan ($100M tokenized real estate), and others. The Marshall Islands' UBI program demonstrated Stellar's capacity for sovereign financial infrastructure, while SDF's privacy strategy positioned the network as a proving ground for compliance-forward, configurable privacy solutions.
