Stellar currently tokenizes and stores approximately $490 million worth of non-US government debt — more than any other public blockchain — according to the latest on-chain data. The network has led the market in this category since February. The development reveals that the tokenization of real-world assets is no longer confined merely to US government debt and US dollar stablecoins, extending instead to sovereign debt denominated in other currencies.

The niche remains comparatively small: tokenized US Treasury products already form a multi-billion-dollar market across public chains, while non-dollar sovereign debt is a far thinner slice of the tokenization boom.

Background

The Stellar network is serving as the main platform for the issuance of non-US sovereign debt in tokenized format. The roughly $490 million worth of instruments is held by institutional custodians and fund platforms using Stellar, and is expressed in multiple currencies such as euros, pounds, and other local currencies.

Institutional issuers are not new to the chain: Stellar, co-founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb — who earlier co-founded Ripple — and backed by the non-profit Stellar Development Foundation, has hosted regulated asset products before, including Franklin Templeton's OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, which has used Stellar to record shares since 2021 and later expanded to additional networks.

Stellar highlighted the milestone in a post on X:

Most of the world's governments and businesses don't operate in dollars. Their debt is coming onchain anyway. Stellar now holds roughly $490M in tokenized non-US government debt, more than any other network. It has led the category since February. pic.twitter.com/m0WGeIVRAp

— Stellar (@StellarOrg), August 21, 2026

The growth rate has also been strong since February, with new issuances on the network far outstripping those recorded on competing Layer-1 chains in this particular area of specialization, per the data.

24/7 Programmable Settlement

According to Stellar, on-chain debt, through which US-foreign correspondence is removed, offers settlement around the clock, is programmable and compliant, and provides direct access to the funds. In this arrangement, asset managers can obtain atomic settlement of their positions in stablecoins, while issuers can lower their issuance costs.

The programmability toolkit is relatively recent: Stellar activated its Soroban smart-contract engine on mainnet in February 2024, extending the toolset available to issuers of regulated on-chain instruments.

Exchanges and custodians are meanwhile expanding their service offerings to cater to funds from the European, Latin American, and Asian regions, according to the report. For developers, Stellar's low fees plus compliance features out of the box have made the network a first choice for regulated securities rails.

Dollar Alternatives Emerge

The movement shows a macroeconomic shift toward diversifying reserve and settlement rails away from dollar dominance. Regulations have been getting clearer about DLT securities in the EU and the UK, a development that is expected to further trigger more issuance, according to an X post by MSB Intel. Those regimes are concrete: the EU's DLT Pilot Regime has been in operation since March 2023, and the UK launched its Digital Securities Sandbox in 2024, formalizing how DLT-based securities can be issued and traded under supervision.

Other smart contract platforms like Ethereum — home to BlackRock's tokenized dollar fund BUIDL since March 2024 — and Polygon are also courting RWA issuers, but XLM, the network's native token, has so far built up a lead over them, the data shows. Important steps ahead for the broader tokenized-debt market, as outlined in the report, include verification of reserves, liquidity in the secondary market, and cross-chain interoperability standards.