XLM Price Faces Major Test as Stellar Joins MetaMask

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• XLM price is testing the top of a downtrend channel that has held since late September.
• Stellar is now a default network in MetaMask’s mobile app and browser extension.
• A fresh death cross keeps the broader trend tilted toward sellers.
• Wallet access on its own does not create on-chain demand for XLM.

The XLM price is holding at $0.1727 on Thursday, almost flat on the day, after MetaMask switched on Stellar as a default network across its mobile app and browser extension, a launch announced at the Stellar Development Foundation’s Meridian 2026 conference in Lisbon. The integration arrives while the token sits right at the top of a descending channel that has pushed it lower since late September, so the next few daily closes will show whether the news can attract the buying that October’s thin volume never delivered.

Stellar is now a default network on @MetaMask.

Eligible MetaMask accounts now include a Stellar address.

For the apps and assets built on Stellar, this is a new path to users worldwide, through a wallet they already use.

Announced at #Meridian2026.https://t.co/awig1fcwCU

— Stellar | Meridian Oct 28-29 (@StellarOrg) October 29, 2026

A long wick at the channel ceiling

Since buyers failed near $0.237 at the end of September, XLM has carved out a clean falling channel on the daily chart. Price is now pressing against its upper line, which lines up almost exactly with the 0.786 Fibonacci retracement at $0.1735, measured from the late-May low of $0.1395 to the spike high of $0.2982. A daily close above the $0.173-$0.176 band would mark the first break of the October downtrend.

Thursday’s candle carries the most encouraging signal on the chart, as XLM slipped to $0.1669 during the session before buyers pushed it back above $0.172, leaving a long lower wick that shows demand appearing well before the next major support. With roughly eight hours left before the daily close at the time of writing, that candle is still unconfirmed.

The RSI reads 38.5 after climbing off a low near 33 and crossing above its own average at 37.1, which tells us selling pressure has eased from levels close to oversold, although buyers have not taken over yet. Price also printed a marginally lower low while the RSI held higher, a mild divergence suggesting momentum is fading faster than price is falling. Volume has stayed light throughout October, at around 27 million XLM on Binance today, whereas the August reversal came with an obvious spike in trading activity.

Death cross builds a wall near $0.19

The larger structure still favors sellers. XLM trades below both the 50-day EMA at $0.1874 and the 200-day EMA at $0.1904, and the shorter average has just slipped under the longer one, a crossover traders call a death cross because it shows recent prices averaging weaker than the long-term trend. Both averages sit in the $0.186-$0.190 zone next to the 0.707 Fib at $0.1860, a level that flipped between support and resistance several times over the summer, which leaves any rebound facing a crowded ceiling there.

A daily close above roughly $0.176 would open a move toward $0.186, where the EMA cluster should reveal whether buyers are building a trend or only a relief bounce, and clearing $0.190 would put $0.200 back in play. A rejection at the channel top keeps the downtrend intact, with a break below $0.1669 likely sending XLM toward $0.1576, the level that held in August, while the lower channel line drifts toward about $0.150 into early November.

One seed phrase now unlocks Stellar

Existing MetaMask users now get a Stellar address derived from the same recovery phrase they already use, so no new wallet or manual network setup is needed. They can send and receive XLM, Stellar trustline assets and Soroban tokens (Soroban is Stellar’s smart contract platform), and run cross-chain swaps between Stellar and other networks. MetaMask describes itself as the first major self-custodial wallet to ship Stellar as a default network.

The reach is what makes the deal relevant. MetaMask, which became a standalone company in Consensys’s restructuring last month, says the wallet has passed 100 million cumulative downloads across about 190 countries, a figure that measures installs over its lifetime and says nothing about how many people are active today.

The 1 XLM entry fee behind every account

A Stellar address generated inside MetaMask has no on-chain presence until it receives at least 1 XLM, according to MetaMask’s support documentation. Every non-XLM asset also needs a trustline, a setting through which an account agrees to hold a specific token such as a stablecoin, and each one locks another 0.5 XLM in reserve. Transaction fees are paid in XLM as well, though they are so small that they barely register as demand.

As a rough illustration, one million newly funded accounts holding two trustlines each would lock about two million XLM, roughly $345,000 at today’s price, against a market capitalization of $6.05 billion. Reserve demand grows with real usage, which means the integration matters for XLM only if MetaMask users start moving money on Stellar.

The payment case behind the partnership rests on figures from the Stellar Development Foundation, which MetaMask cited: the network processed $55.6 billion in payment volume in 2025, up 52% year over year, with settlement in about five seconds. MetaMask also pointed to World Bank data putting the average cost of sending $200 abroad at 6.36%, more than double the United Nations’ 3% target. Gal Eldar, MetaMask’s Chief Product Officer, tied the launch to the company’s Open Money strategy, while Denelle Dixon, CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation, stressed putting Stellar’s payment rails inside wallets people already use. Neither side gave a target for users or volume.

Funded accounts will judge the MetaMask effect

None of the institutional launches above are part of the MetaMask deal, yet they give a retail wallet audience something to reach on Stellar beyond XLM itself. On the same day as the MetaMask rollout, Curve Finance launched its StableSwap stablecoin exchange on Stellar, its first native deployment outside Ethereum-compatible networks, which adds a place for newly bridged stablecoins to trade. The data worth following over the coming weeks is the growth in funded Stellar accounts, new trustlines for stablecoins such as USDT0 and USDC, and cross-chain swap volume flowing into the network. On the chart, a close above $0.176 backed by a visible volume increase would carry far more weight than a quiet breakout, which risks fading at the $0.186-$0.190 cluster.

The activation rule also shapes how new users arrive, since a fresh MetaMask Stellar account can receive only XLM until it is funded. That routes first contact through XLM, whether via the in-wallet buy option (not offered in every country), a swap or an exchange withdrawal. MetaMask’s documentation warns that bridging a non-XLM token into an account without the matching trustline can result in lost funds, so the wallet now prompts users to activate the trustline first. Users who already hold Stellar wallets elsewhere can also import those recovery phrases into MetaMask, which could move existing XLM balances into the app rather than only

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