RWA surpasses $5 billion, why is XLM still being crushed by XRP?

According to Woofun AI, the total size of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) on the Stellar network has officially surpassed 5 billion US dollars (about 6.66 trillion won), yet the market performance of its native token Stellar Lumens (XLM) seriously deviates from this fundamental principle, and the price has hovered around 14 cents ($0.14) for a long time.

This inversion of “asset scale expansion” and “token price stagnation” highlights the network's structural flaws in the value capture mechanism. Despite the recent high-profile announcement of this milestone by the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), XLM has accumulated a cumulative decline of about 29% since this year, forming a huge market capitalization gap with competitor XRP — the latter's price also fell by 44.6% over the same period and is currently trading at around $1.02, but its total market value is as high as $65 billion (about 86.56 trillion won), which is about 13 times XLM's market value of about $5.2 billion (about 6.925 trillion won).

This disparity shows that the mere accumulation of network assets did not effectively translate into capital pursuit of XLM.

Judging from the underlying data, the Stellar network's growth momentum is indeed strong, but it has failed to support the token price. According to data compiled by Woofun AI, according to statistics from the analysis company Allium, as of the end of September this year, the size of tokenized RWA on the Stellar network surged 6.1 times in one year to reach 4.12 billion US dollars (about 5.487 trillion won). This growth rate far exceeds the average growth level of 2.3 times for the entire market. Among them, the size of non-US Treasury bonds marked as tokenized reached US$319 million (approximately KRW 425 billion).

Meanwhile, stablecoin supply increased 91% in one year, and adjusted stablecoin transfers increased 22%. The active participation of well-known financial institutions such as Franklin Templeton (BEN.US) and Spiko has further verified the potential of the network at the institutional level of application.

However, this booming on-chain activity has not directly boosted the XLM price; the core reason is Stellar's transaction fee mechanism: each transaction costs far less than 1 cent, and is paid in XLM. This means that even if financial institutions tokenize assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars, there is no need to hold large amounts of XLM to cover extremely low gas fees, leading to a serious disconnect between increased network usage and demand for token purchases. In contrast, XRP can directly attract capital inflows from institutional investors through spot ETFs launched by institutions such as Bitwise, thus forming direct support for token prices.

At the level of strategic cooperation, Stellar is trying to break the deadlock through cooperation with the US Securities Depository and Settlement Authority (DTCC), but the short-term results are limited. The two sides announced plans to tokenize stocks, ETFs, and US Treasury bonds on the Stellar network in May of this year, with the aim of building a reliable infrastructure for the institutional market.

However, although DTCC officially launched a tokenized securities service on October 28, the service currently mainly runs on the Canton network and its own private blockchain, and deep integration with the Stellar network is not expected until the first half of 2027.

This time difference makes it difficult for the market to see substantial favorable implementation in the short term. Dinelle Dixon, CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation, emphasized when announcing the partnership that the financial value of blockchain is to become a basic infrastructure that the institutional market can trust and rely on, but this vision is currently more at a strategic level and has not yet been translated into immediate market momentum.

Judging from technical analysis and market expectations, XLM is facing severe upward resistance. The analysis indicates that only when the XLM price can return to the level of $0.19 where the 50-day moving average is located, and DTCC's tokenized service actually starts operating on the Stellar network, can the market expect its price to surpass XRP. Conversely, if the launch of the service is delayed and the XLM price continues to fall below $0.18, XRP's market capitalization advantage is likely to continue. Thus, the core task facing Stellar today is to effectively link the growing scale of RWA to the need to invest in XLM itself. Increased network usage is not equivalent to an increase in token prices. If the breakdown of this value transmission mechanism cannot be resolved, XLM may continue to be undervalued for a long period of time, making it difficult to shake XRP's leading position in mainstream payments and institutional adoption.