Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) leadership is signaling a decisive push into mainstream finance for the remainder of 2025, hinting that “some of the biggest names in payments and asset management” are set to go live on the network in the coming weeks and months. Speaking alongside SDF CEO Denelle Dixon, José Fernández da Ponte—who joined SDF in mid-July and now serves as President & Chief Growth Officer—framed the acceleration as the culmination of a year spent laying technical and go-to-market groundwork. Biggest Names In Payments Coming To Stellar “We are the blockchain for financial services at scale,” Fernández da Ponte said, adding: “Over the next months, you will see some of the biggest names in payments and asset management that will continue to go live on the network.” He underscored the claim with growth figures from the on-chain economy: “If you look at TVL and DeFi for the last year, TVL in aggregate grew 2x. TVL on Stellar grew 9x… I have not seen a blockchain that has been growing there as fast.” The executive credited community-originated wallets and protocols, and the team’s continued work on “plumbing” for an open-source, permissionless stack, as catalysts for that momentum. Dixon, for her part, positioned the first half of 2025 as “laying the foundation,” and said the back half must deliver “big acceleration” on the tech side, singling out Protocol 23 as the upgrade set to make Stellar “stronger, faster, and developers’ lives easier.” Related Reading: Stellar (XLM) Turns Bullish, Can the $0.386 Wall Finally Break? She also flagged the on-network expansion of the stablecoin universe—“PYUSD on Stellar was announced, new assets are coming, and others continue to scale”—plus tangible usage wins from wallet programs that have converted one-off sign-ups into weekly activity. Those remarks track with SDF’s public roadmap and adoption goals for 2025, which emphasize real-world payments, DeFi depth, and pushing toward top-tier TVL rankings. The payments-stablecoin pillar is central to that strategy. In June, PayPal disclosed plans to make its dollar stablecoin, PYUSD, available on the Stellar network, pending regulatory approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services. The move would add another high-profile issuer to Stellar’s rails and broaden PYUSD’s distribution beyond its current venues. Neither PayPal nor SDF has provided a firm mainnet date, but the companies have reiterated the intent publicly throughout the summer. On the protocol side, Stellar’s “Whisk” release—Protocol 23—anchors the second-half execution plan. SDF documentation describes a package of eight Core Advancement Proposals that include parallelized processing, unified events, fee and throughput improvements, and developer-facing refinements around Soroban smart contracts. Related Reading: Stellar About To Moon? XLM Price Prediction Calls For 400% Explosion SDF scheduled testnet and governance milestones across the summer, setting up a mainnet vote around early September. The intent is straightforward: raise performance and ergonomics to meet the institutional-grade expectations of payments processors and asset managers now circling the network. The organization will attempt to convert that pipeline into concrete announcements this week at Meridian—SDF’s flagship annual conference—held September 17–18 in Rio de Janeiro. With builders, policy voices, and would-be enterprise adopters on site, the event’s timing aligns neatly with leadership’s “coming weeks” guidance, though neither Dixon nor Fernández da Ponte named specific partners. Will XLM Price Respond? For investors asking whether XLM will respond, the market has so far treated the integration drumbeat as a “show-me” story. As of September 16, XLM trades near $0.379. XLM remains capped by mid-summer high at $0.52 that bulls will argue require either marquee partner go-lives, visible PYUSD settlement flows, or a broader macro driven rally for the entire crypto market. Crypto analyst Crypto Patel (@CryptoPatel) shared via X on September 15: “Demand zone tested – XLM bulls ready to charge. Why this setup? Price retracing into a bullish Orderflow Zone → demand area in play. Strong rejection expected near current support. Previous week’s high at 0.4143 serving as liquidity magnet. 4H Market Structure remains bullish, supporting upside continuation.” At press time, XLM traded at $0.378. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
A new market-cap–based Elliott Wave study from independent chartist Quantum Ascend (@quantum_ascend) argues that Stellar’s native token XLM is positioned for a fifth-wave advance that could lift its valuation roughly 5x from here. In a video published on September 10, the analyst says he prefers to model market cap rather than the dollar price because XLM’s supply dynamics have periodically distorted spot-price returns. Stellar (XLM) Set To Explode 400% “Looking at this… the USD price is only up 12,000% while the market cap chart [is] up 52,000%. So… there is some kind of inflationary pressure on the asset… Stellar, we have to use the market cap chart to measure out exactly where the price is gonna go,” he said, before mapping Fibonacci extensions on the monthly and weekly time frames. Related Reading: XLM Battles $0.45 Resistance Again: Is This the Breakout That Finally Sparks a Run to $1? From a cycle that he dates to May 2016, the analyst counts five waves up into the January 2018 peak, five down into March 2020, and then a new, ongoing motive structure that has already printed waves one through four, with wave four “finished in April of this year.” He highlights an “88% week” in July that he interprets as part of the transition into the terminal wave. The crux of his call comes from overlapping Fibonacci projections: measuring the third-to-fourth-wave drawdown and the larger 2021 range, he finds confluence near the 3.618 extension, which places XLM’s fully diluted valuation zone between roughly $60 billion and $71 billion. “My primary there is going to be $60 billion on the market cap… could see a throw over there to that $71 [billion] as well,” he said. Translating capitalization into a notional price path, Quantum Ascend frames a primary price objective around $1.96 per XLM—with a more aggressive extension near $2.28—while emphasizing adherence to Elliott Wave proportionality: “We’re looking at 400% or a 5X… everyone’s going to be screaming for $2; it’s going to end up at like $1.96… another reason that makes sense is that the third wave cannot be the shortest… I feel really good about that target right there.” The analyst also notes that a rapid, internally impulsive sub-structure is plausible for the fifth wave (“could see five waves in this fifth wave here pretty quick”), given the asset’s history of condensed moves. As of September 11, 2025, XLM changes hands around $0.386 with a market capitalization near $12.28 billion, per CoinMarketCap. A move to the analyst’s $60 billion primary target would imply an appreciation on the order of ~4.9x from today’s valuation, with the precise dollar price contingent on circulating-supply conditions at the time of arrival. Related Reading: Stellar (XLM) Turns Bullish, Can the $0.386 Wall Finally Break? Supply mechanics are a key backdrop to his market-cap emphasis. In November 2019, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) reduced total XLM supply to ~50 billion via a 55 billion token burn; since then, no new lumens are created at the protocol level, although circulating supply has continued to evolve as SDF distributes treasury holdings over time. This helps explain why long-horizon market-cap curves can diverge from simple price charts, particularly when comparing epochs with different circulating float. If realized, a primary target near $1.96 would set a new all-time high for XLM, exceeding the $0.938 peak recorded on January 4, 2018. That historical marker is relevant because, in Elliott terms, structurally new highs often validate the completion of a cycle’s terminal wave—though the analyst himself ties confirmation to the unfolding of the internal wave structure rather than to a single price print. To be sure, Elliott counting and Fibonacci confluence are interpretive frameworks, not certainties. Macro liquidity, the path of Bitcoin dominance, and idiosyncratic issuance/distribution by large holders can all alter trajectories and timing. Still, for believers in cycle symmetry, Quantum Ascend’s case is straightforward: a high-time-timeframe fifth wave for XLM, projected at roughly $60 billion in market cap, equating to about a 400% rally from current levels—“just shy of $2” on price. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
After breaking out of its five-month downtrend, an analyst suggests a repeat of Stellar (XLM)’s last cycle playbook could be on the horizon. The cryptocurrency has confirmed its breakdown from a bullish reversal pattern and eyes a surge toward new targets Related Reading: Ethereum Jumps To $2,000 Amid Market Surge – Analyst Says This Resistance Is Next Stellar Breakout Targets $0.39 Amid the market pump, Stellar has broken out of a key demand zone and retested the $0.30 mark for the first time since March. The cryptocurrency has been in a downtrend since its November 2024 breakout, when it reached a three-year high of $0.63. During this year’s retraces, XLM dropped 68% from the highs to a five-month low of $0.20. However, the late-April market recovery saw the cryptocurrency surge above the downtrend and attempt to confirm the breakout after recording a weekly close above the $0.28 mark. On Friday, Stellar has reclaimed the $0.29 resistance and retested the $0.30 mark for the first time in nearly two months. Following today’s performance, Ali Martinez pointed out that Stellar is breaking out of a two-month inverse head and Shoulder pattern. This pattern is a bullish reversal setup that suggests a potential shift from a downtrend to an uptrend. Earlier this week, the analyst pointed out that the pattern’s right shoulder was forming and the neckline sat around the $0.29 mark. According to his post, a breakout from this formation potentially eyed a 30% rally toward the $0.39 resistance, lost during the February retraces. XLM To Repeat Historical Tendencies? Analyst Rekt Capital highlighted that the cryptocurrency confirmed the end of its multi-month downtrend and a breakout from its Downtrending Channel. Per the post, if XLM weekly closes above its key area, between $0.27-$0.29, any dips into this zone would figure as a successful reclaim of the area as support to support a move to higher regions. The analyst explained that reclaiming the $0.27-$0.29 area is crucial because it is a “historical demand region on the monthly timeframe.” In the past, turning this zone into support during bull markets has enabled Stellar to rally toward the $0.37-$0.40 mark. In 2021, the cryptocurrency rallied toward its cycle high of $0.80 after retesting the key demand zone and breaking out of the $0.37 barrier. Similarly, it hit its all-time high (ATH) of $0.87 after a breakout from this area. Related Reading: Crypto Analyst Says XRP Price Must Clear This Level Or Risk Crash To $1.9 If XLM repeats history and rallies to the next resistance, it must reclaim and confirm that level to continue with its historical tendencies. “As such, a reclaim could see XLM challenge the $0.52 blue highs over time,” Rekt Capital concluded. Meanwhile, analyst CW has noted that after breaking the upper line of the downtrend channel, Stellar would encounter resistance in two selling walls, one between the $0.34-$0.38 levels, and a big one around the $0.47-$0.70 zone. As of this writing, Stellar trades at $0.296, a 2% increase in the daily timeframe. Featured Image from Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com