Crypto Gloss

Stellar

Stat Value
Ticker XLM
Price (USD) $0.174376
Market capitalization $6,137,392,414
24-hour change -1.2%
Circulating supply 35,201,673,787 XLM
Total supply 50,001,786,837 XLM
Maximum supply Not listed by CoinGecko
All-time high $0.875563 (January 2, 2018)
Asset type Native Stellar lumen; no smart-contract token address

Price, market capitalization and 24-hour change can refresh through CryptoGloss’s CoinGecko data proxy. Supply and all-time-high figures are a CoinGecko snapshot fetched 2026-10-18 at 16:35 UTC. XLM is the network’s native asset, so a token-contract field does not apply. Not investment advice.

Stellar is a public blockchain network designed for moving value and issuing digital assets. XLM, also called the lumen, is its native asset. XLM is not an ERC-20 contract token: it is built into the Stellar network and is used for transaction fees and account-reserve requirements. A balance labelled XLM on another chain may instead be a wrapped or bridged representation.

How Stellar Reaches Agreement

Stellar Consensus Protocol uses federated Byzantine agreement. Each node operator chooses quorum slices: groups of other nodes it considers sufficient for agreement. Overlapping trust choices can let the network reach consensus without proof-of-work mining or a single globally selected validator set. This design shifts part of the security question to the health of the quorum structure and the choices made by participants. Running a validator does not automatically pay XLM rewards.

Payments, Assets, and Smart Contracts

XLM pays network fees and helps satisfy minimum-balance requirements. Stellar also supports issued assets, payment paths, and a built-in order-book exchange. An anchor or issuer can connect a token to an off-chain asset such as a currency, but redemption depends on that issuer’s terms and operations; the blockchain entry alone is not a bank deposit guarantee.

Soroban adds smart contracts to the existing Stellar network. It is not a separate blockchain, and XLM remains the native network asset. Developers can use contracts for applications, while standard Stellar assets and contract-issued tokens have different technical and issuer properties.

Supply and Network Use

The Stellar Foundation’s documentation says 100 billion lumens were created at launch, network inflation ended by validator vote in 2019, and a large quantity was made inaccessible. Current total and circulating supply figures are different because they account for reserves, the fee pool, and Foundation holdings. The market table shows a third-party snapshot, not an immutable price or proof that adoption will raise XLM demand.

Trade-Offs and Risks

Low fees and quick settlement can help payment applications, but they do not guarantee that a corridor has liquidity, that an anchor will redeem an asset, or that every use case creates lasting demand for XLM. Users also depend on wallet security, asset issuers, quorum configuration, and application contracts. Reddit discussions about whether XLM has a fixed supply illustrate why “inflation stopped” and “nothing can ever change” are different claims; the network’s protocol and governance evidence should guide that question.

Social Media Sentiment

A June 2026 r/Stellar thread asked whether XLM has a fixed supply after inflation stopped in 2019. Replies disagreed about the difference between the current protocol rule and what a future network-wide upgrade could theoretically change. The discussion is anecdotal; the official supply documentation distinguishes historical creation, burned balances, and current circulating supply. Read the Reddit thread discussed here.

Last updated: 2026-10

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