Stellar price in focus ahead of Bell Protocol 30 vote
Published on 11/12/2026 at 13:08 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWSBell upgrade sets the near-term focus
- Stellar's Bell, Protocol 30 upgrade is scheduled for a mainnet validator vote on November 23, 2026, at 17:00 UTC.
- The upgrade proposes muxed contract addresses, ML-DSA signature verification for smart contracts and millisecond ledger timing.
- Investing.com displayed XLM/USD at USD 0.14493, with a market capitalization of USD 5.13 billion and 24-hour volume of USD 113.05 million.
Stellar price remains tied to the network's next major governance milestone: validators are scheduled to vote on the Bell, Protocol 30 upgrade for mainnet on November 23, 2026, at 17:00 UTC. The date is scheduled rather than guaranteed, and the upgrade would take effect only if the vote passes.
At the retrieved reading of the Investing.com Stellar page, XLM/USD was shown at USD 0.14493. The same page displayed a market capitalization of USD 5.13 billion, 24-hour volume of USD 113.05 million and a rank of 16. It also showed a 52-week range of USD 0.13725 to USD 0.29948. The page displayed a time of 06:38:01 but did not provide a verifiable date in the retrieved content, so the quote is presented as the reading available for this report rather than as a dated UTC tick.
What Bell changes
According to the Stellar Development Foundation, Bell includes three proposed protocol changes. CAP-84 introduces muxed contract addresses, allowing a smart contract to carry a 64-bit identifier for customer balances. The new contract address format begins with W and is intended to help exchanges, custodians and payment providers use a single smart account for multiple customers.
CAP-87 enables smart contracts to verify ML-DSA post-quantum signatures. This does not make the entire network post-quantum: Stellar's network transaction signatures remain Ed25519. CAP-88 adds millisecond timing to ledger data, removing a protocol-level limitation that could otherwise restrict future efforts to reduce ledger close times. The foundation states that Bell itself does not make the network produce blocks faster than five seconds.
Why the vote matters for XLM
The testnet vote was scheduled for November 3, 2026, ahead of the mainnet decision. The Stellar network status page confirms that validators are due to vote on whether to upgrade mainnet to Bell, with the network upgrade immediate if the vote goes through.
For most XLM holders, the vote is primarily a network-development event rather than a stated change to token supply or transaction-signature rules. The practical preparation falls on validators, wallet providers, exchanges, indexers and developers, which need to support the new address and ledger-data formats. The Stellar price therefore remains exposed to market conditions while investors assess whether the planned technical changes translate into broader ecosystem adoption.
Further coverage is available on the Stellar topic page.
