Stellar price: Bell upgrade advances toward mainnet vote
Published on 11/05/2026 at 13:03 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWSWhat matters for XLM holders
- Stellar's Bell, Protocol 30, passed its scheduled testnet vote on November 3, with a mainnet validator vote planned for November 23.
- The upgrade proposes muxed contract addresses, post-quantum signature verification for smart contracts and millisecond ledger timing.
- MetaMask added Stellar as a default network on October 29, while a Mercado Bitcoin security incident involved approximately 6.7 million XLM in suspicious transfers.
The Stellar price remains tied to a developing network story rather than a single confirmed market catalyst. Stellar's Bell, Protocol 30 upgrade has moved beyond its scheduled testnet vote, while validators are due to consider the mainnet upgrade on November 23, 2026, at 17:00 UTC.
According to the Stellar Development Foundation, Bell includes three proposed protocol changes. CAP-84 introduces muxed contract addresses for smart contracts, allowing one contract to distinguish payments for multiple customers. CAP-87 enables smart contracts to verify ML-DSA post-quantum signatures, although Stellar's network transaction signatures remain Ed25519. CAP-88 changes ledger timing to milliseconds, but the foundation says the change alone does not make the network produce blocks faster.
Protocol vote remains conditional
The mainnet date is a scheduled validator vote, not a guaranteed activation. Bell takes effect only if validators approve it. The foundation also says dates can change, and developers, wallets, exchanges, issuers and infrastructure operators need to update relevant software before the vote. For investors, that makes implementation readiness and validator approval more important than treating the announcement as a completed mainnet upgrade.
Access expands through MetaMask
A separate adoption development arrived on October 29. In its announcement, the Stellar Development Foundation said MetaMask 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. This lowers the wallet-access barrier, but the announcement does not establish a direct effect on XLM demand or price.
Security risk remains separate
Investor attention also has a risk-related counterpoint. CoinPaper, citing Bitquery and other security investigations, reported that approximately 6.7 million XLM were held in a wallet associated with Mercado Bitcoin's November 2 security incident. The report said investigators found no evidence that the Stellar blockchain itself was compromised, while Mercado Bitcoin stated that customers suffered no financial losses. The event therefore concerns exchange operations and custody risk, not a reported protocol failure.
The checked Investing.com Stellar page displayed XLM at USD 0.16683 at 18:45:21 Berlin time on November 5, with a reported market capitalization of USD 5.88 billion, 24-hour volume of USD 162.63 million and a 52-week range of USD 0.13725 to USD 0.31124. Because the page read is later than the configured publication window, it should be treated as a dated source reading rather than as a 13:00-14:00 Berlin snapshot. The Stellar price therefore needs to be assessed alongside the conditional upgrade timeline, adoption developments and venue-specific security risks.
More background is available on the Stellar topic page.
