Almost 10 years after splitting from Ripple, Jed McCaleb's Stellar project is drawing a sharper line between itself and its XRP-rooted past.
The release of Stellar's 2025 roadmap shows more than just some minor updates; it points to a bigger shift in ambition, positioning XLM not just as a complementary stablecoin rail but as a competitive blockchain infrastructure that puts developers first.
The roadmap introduces a wide-ranging set of upgrades. They are rolling out a new interface, Lab 3.0, to make it easier to deploy and see smart contracts. Tools like Contract Copilot and the AI-powered Stella Assistant are designed to make developers' lives easier.
At the same time, the main performance targets have been set — 5,000 transactions per second, 2.5-second block times and an expanded validator set, all signaling intent to scale well beyond Stellar's current use cases.
XLM versus XRP
McCaleb has always been more focused on how it works in the real world than on speculation. He often compares Stellar's design to the regulatory issues and centralization concerns of XRP. That distinction became clearer last November when he called XLM "one of the most underrated" crypto assets.
When Gensler left the SEC, XRP bounced back, going up almost 170%. But it was XLM that did better, soaring over 460% and hitting levels not seen since 2021.
This new roadmap is trying to build on that momentum. The Freighter wallet is going mobile, business-facing single-click payments are being introduced via SDP Hosted Mode and single-use wallets are being developed to simplify on-chain payouts.
New token standards, including for NFTs and security tokens, and full backend upgrades show Stellar's push into broader fintech and Web3 relevance.
Whether the market finally recognized Stellar as a legit platform or just a remittance tool depends on how much of this roadmap ends up becoming reality.
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team