Stellar price holds near USD 0.17 as Bell upgrade sets November votes
Published on 10/29/2026 at 18:35 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWSWhat matters for XLM investors
- Stellar's Bell Protocol 30 is scheduled for validator votes on November 3 and November 23, 2026.
- The upgrade would add multiplexed contract addresses, ML-DSA signature verification for smart contracts and millisecond ledger timing.
- XLM was listed at 0.16933 USD on Investing.com at 17:13:36 Berlin time, while its 24-hour volume was 106.40 million USD.
- The network is also highlighting institutional tokenization and payments activity at its Meridian 2026 event.
The Stellar price was listed at 0.16933 USD on Investing.com at 17:13:36 Berlin time on October 29, 2026. That was 0.27 percent above the page's indicated previous value. Using Yahoo Finance's verified October 28 UTC daily close of 0.172191 USD as the comparison basis, the intraday reading was 1.66 percent lower. The move was therefore below the 5 percent threshold for making price action the main news angle.
Investing.com also listed a 24-hour trading volume of 106.40 million USD, a market capitalization of 5.95 billion USD, a market rank of 17 and 35.23 billion XLM in circulation. These figures describe the market snapshot available on the quoted page and should not be read as a forecast.
Bell puts implementation on the calendar
The more consequential near-term development is Bell, also called Protocol 30. In its official Bell announcement, Stellar said validators are scheduled to vote on the testnet upgrade on November 3, 2026, at 17:00 UTC and on the mainnet upgrade on November 23 at 17:00 UTC. The changes take effect only if validators approve them.
Bell contains three proposed changes. CAP-84 would let a smart contract use multiplexed addresses with a customer identifier, allowing one contract to serve multiple customers. CAP-87 would enable smart contracts to verify ML-DSA post-quantum signatures. CAP-88 would record ledger timing in milliseconds, removing a technical barrier to faster ledger closing in a later step. Stellar's upgrade guide says SDKs and applications that decode ledger data must be updated, while existing contracts continue to work unchanged.
Institutional use remains the test
The upgrade comes as Stellar promotes use cases beyond simply holding tokens. Tearsheet reported from Meridian 2026 in Lisbon that the Stellar Development Foundation is focusing on payment and stablecoin volume, as well as tokenized assets used as collateral, in lending, margin and repo transactions. The report also described announcements involving Securitize, Janus Henderson, Centrifuge, Archax and U.S. Bank.
For investors tracking the Stellar price, the distinction is important: Bell provides technical infrastructure, but its market relevance depends on whether wallets, exchanges, developers and financial institutions adopt the changes. The next objective milestones are the November votes, not a confirmed activation or a guaranteed effect on XLM.
Further coverage and the latest developments are available on the Stellar topic page.
