Stellar Bell Upgrade Nears as Stellar price Holds Near USD 0.17
Published on 10/30/2026 at 18:50 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWSBell Upgrade Sets November Votes
- Stellar's proposed Bell Protocol 30 includes muxed contract addresses, ML-DSA verification for smart contracts and millisecond ledger timing.
- Validators are scheduled to vote on the testnet on November 3 and the mainnet on November 23, 2026, at 1700 UTC.
- Investing.com displayed XLM at 0.16994 USD at 18:48:11 Berlin time on October 30, with a market capitalization of 6.04 billion USD.
Stellar is approaching two scheduled votes on Bell, Protocol 30, a proposed network upgrade that targets smart-account infrastructure, post-quantum signature verification and future ledger-speed improvements. The Stellar Development Foundation says the testnet vote is planned for November 3, 2026, and the mainnet vote for November 23, both at 1700 UTC. The dates remain subject to change and represent validator votes, not automatic activation.
At 18:48:11 Berlin time on October 30, the Investing.com page displayed XLM at 0.16994 USD. It also showed a 24-hour volume of 125.65 million USD, a market capitalization of 6.04 billion USD and a market rank of 16. The page listed a seven-day change of -3.0352 percent, a one-month change of -23.4603 percent and a one-year change of -46.1367 percent.
What Bell Would Change
According to the Stellar Development Foundation, Bell combines three proposed changes. CAP-84 introduces muxed contract addresses with a new W prefix, allowing one smart contract to distinguish payments for multiple customers through an attached identifier. This is aimed at exchanges, custodians and payment businesses that want to use smart accounts at larger scale.
CAP-87 would let Stellar smart contracts verify ML-DSA signatures, a post-quantum signature standard. The scope is important for investors: the Foundation states that network transaction signatures remain Ed25519 for now. Bell therefore adds a building block for quantum-resistant smart-contract accounts, but it does not make every Stellar account natively post-quantum secure.
CAP-88 changes the ledger's timing format to milliseconds. The Foundation describes this as preparation for potentially faster ledger close times; Bell itself does not reduce the current five-second target. The change also means that infrastructure using raw ledger data must update its XDR definitions before the relevant vote.
Investor Context for XLM
The official upgrade guide says SDK upgrades are required for integrations that decode Protocol 30 ledgers or handle the new W address type. That operational requirement primarily concerns developers, validators, wallets, exchanges and infrastructure providers rather than creating a direct action for every token holder.
For the market, the Stellar price remains a separate question from the network's technical roadmap. The current quote is below 0.17 USD, while the source's reported monthly and yearly changes show substantial weakness. Bell could improve the network's capacity for institutional and custodial use, but the effect on XLM demand will depend on actual adoption, transaction activity and the token's role in those applications. The scheduled votes are therefore concrete milestones, not a guaranteed price catalyst.
More coverage and future updates are available on the Stellar topic page.
