Stellar price: Bell testnet approval leaves mainnet vote ahead
Published on 11/06/2026 at 07:00 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWSBell upgrade keeps Stellar in focus
- Testnet validators approved Bell, Protocol 30, on November 3, with the upgrade now live on Stellar testnet.
- Mainnet validators are scheduled to vote on November 23 at 17:00 UTC, but activation depends on approval.
- XLM was displayed at USD 0.16683 on the Investing.com page read, with a market capitalization of USD 5.88 billion.
- MetaMask made Stellar a default network in its mobile and extension products on October 29.
Testnet validators approved Stellar's Bell, Protocol 30, on November 3, putting the network's next major upgrade into its test phase. The mainnet vote is scheduled for November 23 at 17:00 UTC. The Stellar price was displayed at USD 0.16683 on the latest Investing.com page read, so the protocol milestone has not translated into a large price-led headline.
Testnet approval, mainnet still pending
According to Coinranking, validators approved Bell at the November 3 testnet vote and the upgrade is now live on testnet. The mainnet vote remains a scheduled event rather than a completed launch. It will take effect only if validators approve it.
The Stellar Development Foundation says Bell contains three protocol changes. CAP-84 introduces muxed contract addresses so one smart contract can serve multiple customers while retaining a customer identifier. CAP-87 enables ML-DSA post-quantum signature verification inside smart contracts, while network transaction signatures remain Ed25519. CAP-88 gives the ledger a millisecond clock, removing a technical barrier to future reductions in ledger close times. The foundation explicitly says Bell does not itself make the network faster than five seconds.
What investors should watch
The November 23 vote is therefore the next clear execution checkpoint. Wallets, exchanges, custodians, SDK users and other infrastructure providers need to prepare for the new address and ledger-data formats before the vote. The scheduled time is 17:00 UTC, or 18:00 in Berlin on November 23, 2026.
Access to the network also broadened before the testnet vote. In an October 29 announcement, the Stellar Development Foundation said MetaMask had made Stellar a default network in its mobile and extension products. Existing MetaMask accounts receive a Stellar address, and users can manage XLM, trustline assets and Soroban tokens alongside assets on other networks.
Price remains below recent peak
The Investing.com page showed a 24-hour volume of USD 162.63 million, a market capitalization of USD 5.88 billion and rank 16. It listed 35.33 billion XLM in circulation, a daily range of USD 0.15734 to USD 0.17082 and a 52-week range of USD 0.13725 to USD 0.31124. The page also displayed a 7-day change of -3.2249 percent and a one-year change of -38.1188 percent. These figures leave the upcoming vote and the practical rollout of Bell as the main near-term indicators for Stellar price rather than treating the testnet milestone as proof of a completed mainnet upgrade.
Further Stellar coverage is available on the Stellar topic page.
