The Stellar Development Foundation's Q3 2026 report shows record developer counts alongside sharp gains in stablecoin and tokenized asset activity
Stellar now has the second-largest developer base of any blockchain ecosystem. Only Ethereum ranks higher.
A post on X said the network rose from ninth to second place in active developers, with 4,000 developers building on it.
The detailed numbers come from the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), which published its Q3 2026 report on October 19, 2026. As of September 30, 2026, Stellar counted 3,922 monthly active developers, a record for the network.
The developer numbers, unpacked
SDF said the 3,922 figure is up 125% year-over-year. That put Stellar behind Ethereum and ahead of everyone else.
A single end-of-quarter number can be noisy. So the foundation also reported a quarterly average of 3,661 developers, up 170% from a year earlier.
Full-time developers averaged 475, also a record. That is a 30% increase year-over-year.
Total monthly actives more than doubled while full-time headcount grew by about a third.
For comparison, SDF reported 2,968 monthly active developers at the end of Q2 2026. Stellar already held the number two spot then, ahead of Solana and Bitcoin.
The money moving on the network
Total network volume reached $33.2 billion in Q3 2026, up 71% quarter-over-quarter. Most of that growth came from stablecoins.
Stablecoin transfer volume hit $25.1 billion. That is up 121% from the prior quarter and 314% from a year earlier.
One number deserves attention. Stellar’s stablecoin market cap was $496 million, far smaller than the $25.1 billion in quarterly transfer volume.
Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) also grew quickly. These are traditional financial instruments, such as funds or bonds, represented as tokens on a blockchain. Stellar’s RWA total reached $4.1 billion, up 36% quarter-over-quarter and 548% year-over-year.
Infrastructure and upgrades
SDF reported 99.99% uptime across 12 years of operation.
The network also added three new Tier 1 validators during the quarter, bringing the total to 10. MoneyGram was among the new additions.
Two protocol upgrades, named Zipper and Adapter, were deployed during Q3.
How Stellar got here
Stellar has existed for more than a decade and spent most of that time known as a payments network.
The timing also stands out. SDF released the report shortly before Meridian 2026, its annual ecosystem conference, scheduled for October 28-29 in Lisbon.
What this means
The gap between monthly actives and full-time developers is a key thing to watch. If the 475 full-time figure keeps growing alongside total activity, many of the new arrivals are staying.
