Bell upgrade announced October 20: What it means for the Stellar price

Stellar (XLM) announced Protocol 30, known as Bell, on October 20, 2026, with validator votes scheduled for November 3 and November 23. The Stellar price is 0.17016 USD as of October 25, 2026, down 4.34 percent compared with the UTC daily close of October 24, 2026.

Bell sets two validator votes for November 2026

According to the Stellar Development Foundation, the Bell testnet vote is scheduled for November 3, 2026, at 1700 UTC, while the mainnet vote is scheduled for November 23, 2026, at 1700 UTC. The release includes three protocol proposals: a new address format for smart contracts, millisecond-resolution ledger close times and ML-DSA signature verification for smart contracts. ML-DSA is a post-quantum digital signature method intended to help applications verify signatures against future cryptographic threats.

The Foundation guide says Stellar Core version 30.0.0 became available on October 16, 2026, and that software development kits must be updated before the respective votes. A validator vote is not an automatic activation: the protocol change requires sufficient voting support from network validators.

October 11 activity reached 12 million transactions

Stellar processed 12 million transactions on October 11, 2026, at an average throughput of 139.15 transactions per second, according to TradingView, citing blockchain tracker Chainspect. The average transaction fee was 0.00012 USD, described in the report as the lowest seven-day reading. Protocol 28, called Adapter, had already introduced changes to how validators handle transaction sets before the October 11 activity.

The Bell changes also carry an implementation requirement. Lumen Loop reports that the update affects software development kits, ledger data formats and infrastructure components, including Stellar Core, Horizon and RPC services. The report also says existing XLM balances do not require a token migration.

Chainlink data feeds went live on October 14

Chainlink Data Feeds and Data Streams became available on Stellar on October 14, 2026, according to the Stellar Development Foundation. Data feeds provide market information for smart contracts, while data streams deliver lower-latency market data. The Foundation said the services can support lending markets, prediction markets, perpetual futures and tokenized assets across an ecosystem valued at more than 4 billion USD in real-world assets.

Stellar price data shows a 0.17016 USD level

According to Investing.com, Stellar price is 0.17016 USD as of October 25, 2026, down 4.34 percent compared with the UTC daily close of October 24, 2026. The daily high is 0.17397 USD and the daily low for the UTC day is 0.16990 USD. Market capitalization is 6.00 billion USD, ranking Stellar 16th, while 24-hour volume is 116.23 million USD. Circulating supply is 35.23 billion XLM.

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