XLM Surges 4.84% Amid Protocol 28 Upgrade and Crypto Market Rally
Stellar's XLM token surged by around 4.84% over the past 24 hours, following the activation of Protocol 28 on its mainnet.
The upgrade introduced new consensus tooling and enabled atomic contract-fleet upgrades for Soroban smart contracts, allowing developers to migrate groups of contracts to new code simultaneously and progressively adjust data schemas.
This improvement coincided with record network throughput of around 211 transactions per second over 100 blocks, as well as significant growth in tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) on the Stellar network, with approximately $3.3 billion now supported.
The broader crypto market also contributed to XLM's rise, with a total market cap increase of around 5.4% and an altcoin market cap rise of roughly 4.2%, driven by Bitcoin's surge towards the high-$70k to $80k area and easing rate-hike and regulatory fears.
Narratives around regulated EUR stablecoins and real-world payments on Stellar's rails also reinforced interest in XLM, solidifying its position within a generalized altcoin bid.