Stellar price in focus as Bell upgrade heads toward key votes
Published on 11/01/2026 at 13:06 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWSStellar faces a protocol test
- Bell, Protocol 30 is scheduled for a Stellar testnet vote on November 3 and a mainnet vote on November 23, 2026.
- The upgrade proposes muxed contract addresses, post-quantum signature verification for smart contracts and millisecond ledger timing.
- XLM was quoted at 0.17 USD at 12:05:35 UTC on November 1, while recent institutional integrations have not yet produced a clear token-price response.
The Stellar price is entering a protocol-focused week as the network approaches two scheduled votes on Bell, Protocol 30. The Stellar Development Foundation says validators are due to vote on a testnet upgrade on November 3, 2026, followed by a mainnet vote on November 23, both at 17:00 UTC. Approval is required before the upgrade takes effect.
At 12:05:35 UTC on November 1, equivalent to 13:05:35 in Berlin, XLM was quoted at 0.17 USD. Perplexity Finance reported a market capitalization of 5,462,240,729 USD and volume of 80,456,256 XLM. The quote was marked as current and the market as open. The available quote does not establish a verified UTC daily close comparison for November 1, so no daily percentage move is presented here.
What Bell would change
According to the Stellar Development Foundation, Bell contains three proposed changes. Muxed contract addresses would allow one smart contract to identify multiple customers, potentially making business wallets and custodial applications easier to operate at scale. Smart contracts would also be able to verify ML-DSA post-quantum signatures. The foundation stresses that this would not make the entire network post-quantum: ordinary network transaction signatures would remain Ed25519 for now.
The third change introduces millisecond precision for ledger timing. That does not itself shorten Stellar's roughly five-second ledger cycle, but it removes a protocol constraint for possible faster closing times in later upgrades. Developers and infrastructure operators would need to update relevant software and data decoders before the votes.
Network growth versus token demand
Stellar's institutional positioning has also strengthened. Yahoo Finance reported on October 28 that Securitize plans to integrate Stellar for the issuance and administration of tokenized financial products. The report said Stellar held 3.77 billion USD in distributed real-world-asset value as of October 28, ranking fourth among the networks cited. No specific fund or launch date was announced.
That distinction matters for investors. More tokenized assets and smart-account activity could improve the network's utility, but they do not automatically create proportional demand for XLM. The token is used for fees and account reserves, while many applications on Stellar use stablecoins or tokenized securities as their primary assets. The upcoming Bell votes therefore offer a concrete technical catalyst, but their effect on the Stellar price will depend on adoption after implementation rather than on approval alone.
More coverage is available on the Stellar topic page.
