Stellar DeFi TVL in 2026: The Numbers by Protocol

Stellar DeFi by the numbers (October 2026)

DefiLlama's daily series for Stellar starts in February 2024. Taking the first of each period:

Date	Stellar DeFi TVL
1 Oct 2024	$10.3M
1 Dec 2024	$37.9M
1 Jul 2025	$73.2M
1 Aug 2025	$122.9M
1 Jan 2026	$155.6M
1 Jun 2026	$240.1M
1 Jul 2026	$209.6M
22 Aug 2026	$264.9M
2 Sep 2026	$225.3M
1 Oct 2026 (record)	$272.8M
6 Oct 2026	$271.6M (live chain figure)

XLM was about $0.20 on 1 January 2026 and about $0.216 on 6 October, per DefiLlama's price feed, so most of this year's growth is new deposits rather than a rising XLM price. That is a real change from 2025, when Stellar DeFi was small enough that one or two protocols could double it.

TVL by protocol

Three protocols counted in the chain total hold four-fifths of it: Blend ($162.8M), Aquarius ($39.5M) and the protocol's own order book ($17.7M). Sushi, the classic AMM pools and Templar each hold $13–15M. Below that, no protocol had more than $5M on 6 October 2026.

Protocol	Category	TVL, 6 Oct 2026	1 Jan 2026
Blend V2 pools	Lending	$162.8M	$76.7M
Aquarius	DEX	$39.5M	$36.0M
Stellar DEX (order book)	DEX	$17.7M	$18.4M
Sushi	DEX	$15.2M	Not live
Stellar classic AMM	DEX	$14.1M	Not listed
Templar	Lending	$13.3M	$2.9M
Defa (InvoiceMate)	RWA	$4.0M	Not listed
Huma	RWA	$2.7M	Not listed
Soroswap	DEX	$1.2M	$4.8M

Not in that table, because DefiLlama does not add them to the chain figure: Stellar DeFi Hub ($57.5M), Upshift with Gami Labs as curator ($29.4M) and DeFindex ($19.4M). These are vaults that deposit into Blend, Aquarius and others; the protocol figures above sum to the chain total only if the vaults are left out. They are where the growth is, though: Stellar DeFi Hub went from $13.9M on 22 August to $57.5M on 6 October. Newer listings include XOXNO Lending ($131K, from September) and Spectra ($751K, from 19 September). We rank the platforms by use case in the best DeFi platforms on Stellar.

The losers are worth noting too. FxDAO, a stablecoin protocol, held $11.2M on 1 January and has shown $0 since June; Phoenix fell from $4.1M to $47.5K; Soroswap from $4.8M to $1.2M.

Where the 2026 growth came from

Between 1 January and 6 October 2026 Stellar DeFi added about $116M. Blend's V2 pools account for roughly $86M of that, Templar about $10M, and new listings such as Sushi and the classic AMM pools about $29M; Aquarius was broadly flat at $36–40M.

Three things stand out. First, lending grew far faster than trading: Blend and Templar together added about $96M, while Aquarius, the largest DEX, ended the period about where it started despite record volume months in June and September. Second, much of the new money arrived through curated products. Upshift came to Stellar in June, Sentora's vaults through Stellar DeFi Hub in July, and DeFindex grew from $1.4M on 1 June to $19.4M; those vaults deposit into Blend and Aquarius, so part of Blend's growth is vault money. Third, a set of RWA protocols appeared with modest balances: Defa ($4.0M), Huma ($2.7M) and tokenised-credit collateral on Templar and Sushi.

The concentration is the risk worth watching. If one curator rebalances, or one large holder exits, the chain total can move by tens of millions in a day, as the SolvBTC exit from Aquarius in August showed.

Blend, and why XLM drives the total

About $151M of Blend's $162.8M on 6 October 2026 was XLM, some 699M tokens; USDC was $11.5M. Because Blend is 60% of the chain total, the XLM price explains much of Stellar DeFi's day-to-day movement. Blend's V2 pools roughly doubled from $76.7M on 1 January.

This shapes how to read the headline. A 10% XLM move shifts Stellar DeFi TVL by roughly 5–6% through Blend alone, with no deposits or withdrawals at all. Borrowing is a better gauge of activity: $43.8M was borrowed from Blend on 6 October. Blend's design is covered in what is Blend.

The August 2026 drop, and what drove it

DefiLlama's chain series fell from $264.9M on 22 August to $225.3M on 2 September, about 15%. XLM fell about 13% over the same days, Blend's XLM holdings barely changed, and Aquarius lost about $7.4M when roughly 95 SolvBTC left on 28 August. The Comet exploit itself was not in the TVL figure.

The detail, from DefiLlama's protocol data:

• Price. XLM went from $0.2018 to $0.1757 between 22 August and 2 September. Blend held 769.1M XLM on the first date and 765.0M on the second, yet its XLM was worth $22M less.
• Stablecoin outflows. USDC in Blend fell from $14.7M to $9.8M over the same days, a real withdrawal of about $5M.
• One large exit from Aquarius. Aquarius's SolvBTC holdings dropped from about 145 to about 50 between 27 and 28 August, taking its TVL from about $45M toward $37M.
• The Comet exploit. On 25 August the Comet BLND:USDC pool that holds Blend's backstop lost about $717K through a same-asset swap bug. DefiLlama's Blend backstop entry reads $0 before and after, so the loss does not appear in chain TVL.

Several outlets reported at the time that Stellar DeFi TVL fell from $270M to $98M, a 60% drop, and that Blend went "to near zero", citing DefiLlama. DefiLlama's series as published on 6 October shows neither; Blend's lowest close in the period was $143.8M. We cannot tell whether the early reports caught a temporary data error that was later corrected, but the current data does not support a collapse. By 1 October the chain had set a new record. The incident analysis is in Blend's 2026 incidents.

Stablecoins and RWAs: the money outside DeFi

DefiLlama counted about $919M of dollar stablecoins on Stellar on 6 October 2026, and rwa.xyz $3.51B of tokenised real-world assets across 72 assets. Both dwarf Stellar's $271.6M of DeFi. Only a small slice of either is deposited in DeFi protocols.

The stablecoin figure rose from $225.1M on 1 January to $729.9M on 1 June. Of today's total, $537M is Ondo's USDY, a yield-bearing token DefiLlama counts as a stablecoin, and $355M is Circle's USDC. Against that, DefiLlama showed about $11.5M of USDC in Blend, $12.9M in Aquarius, $19.4M in DeFindex and $37.1M in Stellar DeFi Hub. On the RWA side, rwa.xyz lists Spiko ($1.7B), Franklin Templeton's Benji ($605.2M), Ondo ($537.0M) and Realiz ($500.0M) as the largest Stellar issuers.

That gap is the opportunity most Stellar DeFi pitches point to, and also a reminder that Stellar's main use is payments and tokenised funds, not leverage. Some RWA tokens are now entering DeFi as collateral, such as Templar's tokenised credit and Etherfuse bonds on Aquarius, and that is where it can go wrong: the February YieldBlox exploit began with a thinly traded tokenised Treasury token. Wider context: stablecoins in 2026, why RWA demand is growing and stablecoins on Stellar.

How to read Stellar TVL

• Check the asset mix. A TVL that is mostly XLM moves with XLM; a USDC-heavy one is a cleaner signal of deposits.
• Do not add vaults to protocols. Vault TVL is money already counted elsewhere.
• Look at borrowing and volume. Blend's $43.8M of borrowing and Aquarius's $98.1M of 30-day swap volume say more about use than deposits do.
• Check dated sources. The August reports show how quickly a misleading figure spreads.

What to watch next

• Blend's backstop. Blend paused the backstop after the Comet exploit; when and how it resumes affects how much first-loss cover its pools have.
• Vault flows. Stellar DeFi Hub, Upshift and DeFindex now hold over $100M between them, all of it able to move on a curator's decision.
• Stablecoin deposits. Whether more of the $355M of USDC on Stellar moves into lending or liquidity, rather than sitting in wallets and payment flows.
• Data revisions. DefiLlama adds and reclassifies protocols; the classic AMM pools and Sushi only appeared in its Stellar data in May 2026.

The takeaway

Stellar DeFi is at a record, roughly 26 times its size two years ago, but concentrated: one lending protocol, mostly in one asset. The August dip was smaller than reported and mostly price-driven. The bigger story is outside DeFi, in nearly a billion dollars of stablecoins and $3.5B of RWAs that Stellar DeFi has barely tapped.

Sources: DefiLlama API (v2/chains, v2/historicalChainTvl/Stellar, protocols, protocol endpoints incl. token breakdowns), coins.llama.fi historical XLM prices, stablecoins.llama.fi (chain chart and asset list), all read 6 October 2026; rwa.xyz Stellar network page (6 October 2026); CoinTurk News, 28 August 2026, for the reported $98M figure; Blend backstop documentation.