Stellar is quietly becoming one of the more interesting infrastructures for tokenized assets and global payments. But there is a major disconnect between network adoption and XLM economics.

Disclaimer: This content is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or professional advice. We do not recommend any buying, selling, or holding of digital assets.

All views are the author’s own. Digital assets involve high risk and volatility, and readers should conduct their own research before making any decisions.

This report is not sponsored by any mentioned companies.

Business Model Analysis

Stellar has a very clear positioning as a financial blockchain infrastructure: fast and cheap transactions, native asset issuance, DEX and historical focus on payments create a good technological base for RWA. What is particularly interesting is that Stellar is not simply trying to “add RWA” to an existing network — asset tokenization fits well with Stellar’s ​​original concept as an infrastructure for transferring financial value.

Stellar’s ​​strength is the institutional use case. For tokenized bonds, funds, stablecoins and other financial assets, low transaction costs and fast settlement may be more important than the maximum number of DeFi applications.

However, the main problem with the investment case is that technological advantage does not yet equal economic advantage. Stellar competes not only with other blockchains, but also with specialized RWA platforms and financial infrastructures, which may have stronger regulatory relationships, distribution and institutional sales.

Therefore, the key question for CQS is whether Stellar can turn good infrastructure into a large-scale business with real economic activity. This is something that has not yet been proven as strongly as in the most successful blockchain ecosystems.

Business Score 8.2/10

Financial Metrics

Stellar’s ​​financials show a very interesting but contradictory picture. On the one hand, TVL grew from $76 million in 2025 to $208 million, and the number of transactions increased from 320.9 million to 444.5 million. This confirms that the network’s usage is expanding.

On the other hand, Revenue and Fees show the opposite picture: the current $43.6 thousand is significantly lower than the $287.3 thousand in 2025. That is, the growth in usage is not yet converted into revenue growth. This is one of Stellar’s ​​main weaknesses in our model.

Of particular importance is the relationship between network scale and Revenue. With a TVL of over $200 million and a Market Cap of over $5 billion, the protocol generates only tens of thousands of dollars in revenue. This means that the current valuation is largely based on the future potential of the network, and not on its current ability to generate economic cash flow.

Treasury at $3.1 billion is a very strong asset, but it needs to be treated separately from operating Revenue. A large treasury creates financial stability and a resource for ecosystem development, but in itself does not prove Product-Market Fit.

The main conclusion: Stellar has real use, but does not yet have adequate monetization. For CQS, this is a fundamental difference between “the network is used” and “the network creates economic value.”

Financial Score 6.7/10

Tokenomics

The tokenomics of XLM are one of the most problematic blocks of the Stellar investment case. Unlike BNB, where the entire maximum supply is already circulating, Stellar has a significant gap between circulating supply and max supply: 34.3 billion out of 50 billion tokens. So, approximately 31% of the maximum supply is not yet in circulation.

This creates a potential supply overhang. Even if Stellar’s ​​business grows, the additional supply may partially absorb the created economic value and restrain the token’s appreciation.

The second fundamental drawback is the lack of a buyback or dividend/revenue-sharing mechanism. The holder of XLM does not have a direct right to a part of the economic result of the network. Therefore, value capture occurs mainly through the demand for the use of the token itself, and not through participation in cash flow.

Thus, Stellar has a useful token, but not ideal investment tokenomics. For us, this is an important distinction: a good blockchain ≠ automatically a good token.

Token Score 5.8/10

Valuation

After the decrease in Market Cap from approximately $11.5 billion in 2025 to $5.5–5.7 billion today, Stellar’s ​​valuation has become much less aggressive. This is positive from the Grantham perspective: we don’t want to buy a strong narrative at any price.

However, XLM still has a difficult intrinsic value problem. With the current Revenue of $43.6 thousand, it is impossible to justify a multi-billion capitalization using traditional business valuation methods. So, the investor is actually paying for Stellar’s ​​future scaling, and not for the current cash-generating business.

TVL, transactions and RWA adoption give reason for optimism, but so far it is not enough to call XLM clearly undervalued. For this, it is necessary to see a transition from “growth in usage” to “growth in economic monetization”.

Therefore, I would not call the current valuation cheap, but potentially interesting, provided that the RWA thesis is realized. This is a fundamental difference.

Valuation Score 7.0/10

Final Review

Stellar is an interesting example of a situation where the quality of the infrastructure is ahead of the quality of the investment economics of the token. The network has a strong technology foundation, a significant treasury, TVL and transaction growth, and a logical positioning in payments and RWA.

But the numbers show an important problem: the growth in usage is not yet translating into growth in Revenue. This means that Stellar has not yet proven its ability to capture the economic value that its infrastructure creates.

This is where the main difference between Stellar and BNB Chain arises. BNB has a large-scale economic activity and a much stronger value capture mechanism for the token. Stellar still has potential, but much of that value remains at the network level, not the XLM token.

From Grantham’s perspective, this means: Stellar deserves attention, but investors should not pay today for an economic outcome that has yet to appear.

What is positive (✅):

• Strong positioning in payments + RWA.
• TVL growth: $76m → $208m.
• Transaction growth: 320.9m → 444.5m.
• Very large Treasury — $3.1 billion.
• Low cost and speed of settlement.
• Native asset issuance and DEX.
• Logical fit for tokenized financial assets.
• Significant Market Cap correction relative to 2025.

Main concerns (🔴):

• Revenue only $43.6k with a Market Cap of over $5.5 billion.
• Lack of buyback/dividend/value-sharing.
• 15.7 billion XLM not yet circulating.
• Discrepancy between the scale of network activity and monetization.
• Strong competition from Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain and specialized RWA platforms.
• Most of the valuation is based on future RWA adoption.

Answers to key questions:

Would I own the business outright?

Yes, but not at any cost.

Stellar has an interesting infrastructure with real use cases in payments and RWA, a strong balance sheet and a good technology base. As a business platform it deserves attention.

But today I would not call it as proven an economic machine as BNB Chain. The main reason is weak monetization relative to the scale of the network.

Would I buy the token under current economics?

Rather not — or only as a speculative/value opportunity with high risk.

XLM has real utility, but the current token economics do not provide a strong enough mechanism for accumulating value.

With a market cap of around $5.7 billion, the investor is essentially betting on Stellar’s ​​future scaling in RWA and payments. This could be a very profitable scenario, but it is not yet confirmed by the current financial monetization.

What would need to change for an A+ rating?

• Revenue should start to grow along with TVL and transaction activity.
• Stellar should demonstrate large-scale institutional RWA adoption.
• XLM should gain a stronger value capture mechanism from network growth.
• Dilution risk from the remaining 15.7B XLM should decrease.
• Need to see that RWA/payments create sustainable economic demand, not just transaction activity.
• Stellar should establish a competitive advantage over Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, and specialized RWA platforms.

THE RESEARCHER

Stellar RWA: The Blockchain With a $3.1B Treasury — But Where Is the Value Capture? was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Five Solana wrappers on one company, one issuer-designated conversion route, and nine weeks of swap-level flow through it. Public data only, no position taken.

I first looked at SpaceX before the listing, when access arrived before the stock. A listing-day follow-up mapped how similar tickers led to different claims and records. This time I follow the on-chain wrappers after the event.

Something large appears in a market. The immediate story is that money moved toward it.

That reflex is common in “record volume” headlines. We can see that one market got quieter and another got busier. Whether the second got busier because of the first is the migration claim, and it is difficult to verify.

Two episodes made me distrust it.

USDC, March 2023. Circle disclosed $3.3bn of reserves stuck at Silicon Valley Bank; USDC traded to roughly $0.88. The next day Curve printed the highest daily volume in its history, about $6.03bn. Read as activity, a record day. Read as liquidity, the opposite: USDT drained toward a single-digit share of the 3pool while USDC and DAI ballooned past 46%. The busiest pool was the exit — and it reversed.

Terra, May 2022. Roughly $50bn of UST and LUNA went to zero in a week. Badev and Watsky, covering 44 blockchains for the Federal Reserve, found the reverse of a walk to safety: chains sharing more bridges with Terra were less likely to gain relative TVL share over the next six weeks, the odds of losing share rising roughly 40% per shared bridge. The bridges worked as transmission channels, not reallocation infrastructure.

What the Evidence Must Show

Reallocation needs a source, a destination, and a path between them. Two markets moving in opposite directions establish only the first two. Without linked transactions, the migration claim remains an inference.

A visible path shows only that reallocation is possible — Terra shows that the same path can carry a shock instead. Volume is not depth either: volume counts events, while depth determines what can be executed. Curve had record volume with a deteriorating pool on the same day. Holder counts can mislead for the same reason; a market can add holders while its book thins.

A Visible Path Through Five Wrappers

On 12 June 2026 SpaceX began trading on Nasdaq — priced at $135, opened at $150, and closed at $160.95. For four months beforehand, claims on the same exposure were already trading on Solana. The plumbing is public: every wrapper is a mint address with issuer-controlled metadata, every swap a transaction. If migration is measurable rather than inferred, it should be measurable here.

It is messier than the ticker suggests. Nine Solana mints carry a SpaceX-like symbol and four are squats — including three named “SpaceX” reporting pool reserves of $454M to $1.25bn against five-figure daily volume. Identifying the substitute set already requires information the ticker does not carry. I froze the canonical-mint list before comparing the post-IPO outcomes; inclusion required issuer-attributable on-chain metadata or issuer documentation, not a volume cutoff.

The five canonical wrappers do not form one market:

• SPACEX (PreStocks) is pre-IPO economic exposure through an SPV. The holder can swap into SPCXx or any other token, but must act before 12 March 2027. Unconverted tokens expire worthless.
• tSpaceX (Tessera) is a loan participation right, not a security. Redemption waits for the SPV to divest the underlying exposure; the holder cannot trigger it.
• SPCX (Backpack Securities) represents a real share held 1:1 in regulated custody. The holder can reach the actual share through ACATS/DTCC.
• SPCXx (Backed) and SPCXon (Ondo) both use issuer primary markets, but access differs sharply. Backed requires KYC and a $5,000 minimum. Ondo starts at $1 and excludes US holders.

On a screen, these are five ways to own SpaceX. In the plumbing, one can expire, one waits on the issuer, one reaches the real share, and two depend on primary-market access.

These differences existed before the IPO. The event made their consequences easier to observe.

The Designated Path Carried 3.5% of Supply

PreStocks names the conversion target itself — SPCXx, by mint address—with a deadline of 12 March 2027, after which unconverted tokens expire worthless. Conversion happens “through normal trading,” so the route is a public swap venue, and a pool for exactly that pair appeared at 16:23 UTC on listing day.

Here the path is visible, and net flow through it was small.

Gross flow into SPCXx over nine weeks: 1,586 tokens. Gross flow back: 1,283. Net: 303 tokens, or 3.5% of supply.

Four-fifths of the traffic on the conversion route was offset by flow in the other direction. The cumulative line goes negative on four days, peaks at 5.1% of supply on 12 July, then drifts back to 3.5%. A cumulative total that falls is not a one-way conversion queue; the route also carried two-way trading.

Possible explanation, not verified here: traders may have been trading around the lockup discount. PreStocks discloses that underlying shares unlock in tranches over six months and that the token trades at a market-priced discount until they do. The swaps do not identify trader intent.

Gross volume counts both directions, so I do not treat it as one-way reallocation.

Supply says something separate, and the two numbers should not be netted against each other. SPACEX cumulative net mint-minus-burn was 5,623.03 tokens on 11 June and 5,622.76 on 14 August—−0.27 tokens across the whole post-IPO period. Whatever trading occurred, it was not accompanied by a material contraction in observed net issuance.

That is not the same as “97% unconverted.” Holders were free to swap into anything else, and those exits appear in neither figure. The evidence supports two separate facts: small net flow along the designated path, and almost no change in observed net issuance.

The designated route never carried most of the flow either: SPCXx was 11.3% of all SPACEX selling in the event week, 43.2% during settling, 15.8% recently. The issuer’s “or any other token” is doing real work.

Nor was it where post-IPO trading concentrated. In the event week, Backpack’s SPCX—the only one redeemable into an actual share—traded $23.47M against SPCXx’s $3.28M. That says where activity gathered, not where SPACEX holders went. The two measurements should remain separate.

The IPO Did Not Empty the Neighbourhood

A 3.5% net flow is small but not zero. Did the IPO drain the market around it? SPACEX activity moved in that direction: 1.32× baseline during the anticipation window, 0.47× during IPO week, 0.02× through late June and July, and 0.01× by August.

The control group breaks that explanation. Anthropic’s and xAI’s pre-IPO tokens — companies that did not go public — fell to 0.02× over the same windows, closely enough that Panel B shows two lines on top of each other. Five Backed xStocks held as controls finished at 1.10× baseline; the two xStock peers at 1.69×.

Note: SPYx reached 12.6× baseline in the event week, against a control median of 1.6×. A broad-index reaction to the IPO is plausible but not verified. The group result uses the median, so this observation does not determine it.

In this sample, the split followed issuer families more closely than exposure to SpaceX. One issuer’s product line went quiet; tokenized equities on the same chain, venues, and token standard did not. The data do not identify why PreStocks went quiet.

Possible explanation, not verified here: one possibility is an issuer-level liquidity or distribution shock — for example, a market maker reducing inventory across several PreStocks products. I do not have historical LP attribution or issuer-side traffic data to test that mechanism.

The timing also disagrees with an immediate IPO effect. SPACEX was still above half its baseline during listing week; the larger decline came later. The untied wrapper followed another path: tSpaceX held 0.80× through the settling window, a 40× gap against SPACEX, and only fell to 0.22× five weeks later.

A mechanism in which the SpaceX listing emptied its own substitutes cannot explain why Anthropic’s pre-IPO token died at the same rate on the same schedule.

What the Wrapper Terms Allowed

The cleanest fact in the exercise is the flat blue line. tSpaceX was minted once, 1,190.0000 tokens on 9 February, and stood at 1,189.9971 on 14 August—a decline of 0.003 tokens, or 0.0002%, spread across about two dozen dust-sized burns. No redemption of any economic size occurred, straight through the SpaceX IPO.

That is consistent with the architecture. Tessera’s on-chain metadata describes a loan participation right held through a Cayman segregated portfolio, with redemption triggered by “divestment of the underlying exposure.” The holder cannot initiate it. No divestment occurred, so no redemption occurred — the routes that were available and the routes that were used are the same set.

The terms tell us which exits holders could initiate, but they cannot by themselves explain why SPACEX and tSpaceX later traded differently; issuer and liquidity-provider effects remain mixed together.

The difference is not only legal. I recorded Jupiter quotes for four of the five wrappers every half hour for a week — 311 captures — at $1,000, $10,000 and $50,000, in both directions. SPCXon is absent because its mint could not be confirmed against issuer-controlled metadata, so it never entered the frozen universe. A quoted $10,000 buy cost 5–21 bps for SPCX, SPCXx and tSpaceX, and 788 bps for SPACEX. At $50,000 the ordering spread to SPCX 14 bps → SPCXx 75 bps → tSpaceX 115 bps → SPACEX 4,664 bps: a 300-fold range across four claims on one company.

The more useful number turned out to be how often the trade was possible at all, and on which side.

Jupiter returned a routable $50,000 buy quote for SPACEX in every one of the 311 captures. It returned a routable $50,000 sell quote in 13% of them, and returned none for a $10,000 sell in 19% of them. A quote to buy into the expiring wrapper was always available; a quote to get out at size usually was not.

That asymmetry is the part a single-direction measurement hides, and it matters here more than the headline basis points, because the trade this wrapper’s holders face before March 2027 is the sell. The three wrappers with a working exit route quote both directions at comparable cost. The one with a deadline does not.

The direction runs the other way for some neighbours — OPENAI and ANDURL, tracked alongside, returned no routable $50,000 buy quote in any capture, while a routable $50,000 sell quote existed in every one. Pool inventory is the obvious candidate; this panel does not identify the cause.

(These quotes are the 7–14 August book; historical quotes cannot be reconstructed.)

Where the Evidence Stops

The route was visible, sanctioned by the issuer, and open on a public venue for nine weeks. Net flow through it remained small, and observed net issuance barely changed. Meanwhile, wrappers with no IPO also lost activity. These observations do not support a simple migration story; they do not identify the mechanism behind the wider decline.

The public trail stops in three places.

• Depth during the event. Jupiter quotes are live-only, so historical executable depth cannot be reconstructed after the fact. The charts measure activity, participation, or supply. The basis-point comparison is the 7–14 August book, not the June book; that week was recorded prospectively for exactly this reason, and the recording continues for the next event.
• Activity outside Solana DEXs. SPCXx also trades on Kraken and Bybit; Backpack’s token trades on its own exchange. The direction of the resulting coverage bias is unknown.
• Why PreStocks went quiet. The control group isolates the mismatch. It does not explain it.

The window is also incomplete. tSpaceX was still falling in the last interval, and net flow on the designated route was still drifting down in August.

Closing

These wrappers were easier to put on one screen than to treat as one market. They differed in who could redeem, what redemption delivered, when it could happen, what a fixed-size trade cost — and whether it could be routed at all. The issuer-designated pair made one exit visible, but most of its gross flow was offset in the other direction.

A route tells us what holders can do, not what they did. If one market loses activity while another gains it, I would call that an activity shift until transactions connect the source to the destination.

Appendix: Sources

• Market data: Dune dex_solana.trades and tokens_solana.transfers; live Jupiter quotes captured every ~32 minutes from 7–14 August 2026 (311 captures). The data-processing Gist contains the frozen universe configuration, Dune SQL, the depth collector, the transformation scripts, and the processed CSVs behind every figure. Plotting code is not included.
• Wrapper terms: PreStocks, Tessera tSpaceX metadata, and Backpack on SPCX.
• SpaceX IPO: CoinDesk and CNBC.
• Comparison cases: Federal Reserve, Interconnected DeFi: Ripple Effects from the Terra Collapse; CoinDesk, Curve’s $500M stablecoin pool hammered as traders flee USDC.

This post was originally published on my personal blog: https://egpivo.github.io/2026/08/30/markets-are-full-of-roads.html.

Markets Are Full of Roads. That Doesn’t Mean Capital Takes Them. was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From tokenized Treasuries and institutional finance to real-world assets, Solana is positioning itself as one of the fastest-growing blockchain infrastructures for the future of capital markets.

The tokenization of real-world assets is rapidly becoming one of the largest opportunities in digital finance. As trillions of dollars in traditional assets begin migrating onto blockchain networks, the competition is no longer just about smart contracts — it is about building the infrastructure capable of supporting institutional capital. Among the leading contenders, Solana has emerged as one of the fastest-growing platforms for Real-World Assets (RWAs), combining high throughput, low transaction costs, and a rapidly expanding financial ecosystem.

Disclaimer: This content is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or professional advice. We do not recommend any buying, selling, or holding of digital assets.

All views are the author’s own. Digital assets involve high risk and volatility, and readers should conduct their own research before making any decisions.

This report is not sponsored by any mentioned companies.

Business Model Analysis

Solana can no longer be considered just a layer 1 blockchain. In recent years, it has been transforming into a financial infrastructure capable of serving both crypto-native applications and institutional solutions in the field of tokenization of real assets. It is this transformation that is the main investment thesis of the project.

Solana’s greatest competitive advantage remains network effects. The large number of users, developers, DeFi protocols and liquidity creates barriers for competitors that are difficult to replicate with similar technological characteristics.

At the same time, Solana’s success increasingly depends not on technology, but on its ability to become a standard for new financial infrastructure. It is the scaling of RWA, stablecoins and institutional applications that determines the quality of business in the coming years..

Business rating: 9/10.

Financial Metrics

Current financials show a consolidation phase after an exceptionally strong 2025 cycle. The decline in TVL, fees, and revenues does not appear to be a structural problem, as the network continues to be among the world leaders in terms of the number of users, transactions, and transfer volume.

A particularly positive signal is the stable size of the Treasury. This provides a resource for further development of the ecosystem even in the event of a prolonged bear market.

In the next stages of analysis, it is worth assessing not the absolute values ​​of TVL, but the efficiency of network monetization — that is, whether revenues are growing faster than economic activity.

Financial rating: 8.6/10

Tokenomics

SOL remains one of the strongest utility tokens among Layer-1 networks. The demand for the token is directly related to the use of the network through the payment of fees, staking and participation in consensus.

However, from the perspective of a fundamental investor, tokenomics is not yet perfect. The main drawback remains the lack of a mechanism that would directly transfer the economic growth of the ecosystem to the token holders. In the long term, this aspect will determine how quickly the market capitalization can reflect the real growth of the business..

Tokenomics rating: 8/10

Valuation

Solana’s current valuation looks much more reasonable than it did at the peak of the previous cycle. The market has already priced in some of the over-optimism, while the network’s fundamentals remain strong.

For an investor, this means that Solana today looks more like a quality business with a moderate valuation than an over-capitalized speculative asset. However, the potential for further growth will largely depend on the development of the RWA sector and institutional use of the network..

Valuation Score: 8.3/10

Final Review

Solana has long ceased to be just a fast blockchain and is gradually becoming a full-fledged financial infrastructure for digital assets and tokenization of real assets. The business has strong network effects, a significant user base and one of the most active ecosystems in the crypto industry. At the same time, the current token economy does not yet fully reflect the fundamental strength of the network, and financial indicators after the peak of 2025 demonstrate a phase of normalization. For a long-term investor, Solana remains one of the highest-quality crypto assets, but its investment attractiveness will largely depend on the ability to convert the growth of the network into stable accumulation of value for SOL holders.

What is positive (✅):

• one of the strongest blockchain ecosystems in terms of activity;
• high speed and low fees;
• large treasury and stable financial reserve;
• growing use of Solana as an infrastructure for RWA;
• strong institutional interest.

Main concerns (🔴):

• the token does not yet have a strong mechanism for direct value accumulation;
• financial metrics remain below 2025 peak values;
• Solana’s valuation is still largely dependent on the overall crypto market cycle..

Answers to key questions:

Would I own the business outright?

Yes.

If Solana were a private company, it would be one of the highest-quality infrastructure businesses in the digital economy. It has strong network effects, one of the largest developer communities, high user activity, and is gradually becoming a platform for tokenizing real assets, stablecoins, and institutional financial applications. The combination of scalable technology, low costs, and a broad ecosystem creates high barriers to competition and provides long-term growth potential.

Would I buy the token under current economics?

Yes, but with some caveats.

SOL is one of the strongest tokens among Layer-1 networks due to its fundamental role in the ecosystem: it is used to pay fees, staking, and ensure network security. After a significant correction, the market valuation has become more justified relative to fundamental indicators.

At the same time, the main drawback remains the mechanism of value accumulation. The value of the token today depends mainly on the growth of network usage and market demand, and not on the direct distribution of economic results among SOL holders. This makes the investment thesis less predictable compared to businesses where shareholders directly receive a part of the value created.

What would need to change for an A+ rating?

Solana’s transition to A+ requires the fulfillment of several key conditions:

• Sustained recovery of financial growth — a return to long-term growth in TVL, Revenue, and Fees independent of speculative market cycles.
• Strengthening value capture for SOL — increasing the economic value accumulated by token holders through burning, staking, or other models that directly link the development of the network to the value of SOL.
• Consolidating leadership in the RWA segment — transforming Solana into one of the main networks for tokenizing real assets with large-scale use by banks, funds, and large issuers.
• Reducing revenue cyclicality — confirming that the network is able to consistently generate economic activity regardless of the phases of the crypto market.
• Further strengthening institutional demand — increasing the number of large financial partnerships and real-world use cases that provide a long-term competitive advantage.

THE RESEARCHER

Solana’s RWA Revolution: Why Wall Street Is Moving On-Chain was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.