Stellar Transaction-Cost Comparison Cited in Bullish XRP, XLM Post

A Franklin Templeton side-by-side pilot reported $1.13 in processing costs for 50,000 transactions on Stellar, versus $75,000 through traditional systems.

Those figures underpinned crypto commentator X Finance Bull’s Nov. 5 post bullish on XRP and Stellar Lumens (XLM), which cited Franklin Templeton’s “older Stellar transaction-cost comparison.” The post used a historical infrastructure test to frame a bullish view of the two tokens, rather than publishing a new cost benchmark or measuring token demand.

The comparison had surfaced months earlier. Sandy Kaul, Franklin Templeton’s head of innovation, discussed it at a May 14, 2026 panel. The cited material did not include a corresponding XRP Ledger transaction-cost figure, so the post could not establish the cost of running the same 50,000 transactions on either chain.

What does the $1.13 figure show?

The side-by-side pilot put the reported processing cost for 50,000 transactions at $75,000 through traditional systems and $1.13 on Stellar. The source did not identify the precise cost components included in the test, limiting how far finance teams or issuers can generalize the result. The numbers describe that pilot’s processing-cost outcome; they do not set a current cost benchmark for every Stellar transaction.

The test also says nothing by itself about asset demand. It did not quantify an increase in demand or fee revenue for XRP or XLM. Accordingly, the post’s bullish framing cannot be read as proof that greater Stellar activity would produce sustained XLM purchases or that Stellar offers a measurable advantage over XRP Ledger for this particular workload.

The missing XRP Ledger figure matters. A dollar-for-dollar comparison would require a matching test with the same processing assumptions, which the cited material did not provide. Without that counterpart, the $1.13 amount cannot establish relative network economics for the two assets.

What does Franklin Templeton’s Stellar activity show?

Franklin Templeton launched its Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund on Stellar in 2021, with shares represented by BENJI tokens. The fund provides a live institutional setting for Franklin Templeton’s Stellar deployment, but the source did not say the 50,000-transaction pilot measured the fund’s transfers or produced its reported activity.

The disclosed operating scale is material:

• Cumulative peer-to-peer transfers topped $211 million through March 31, 2026.
• The BENJI suite held $1.98 billion in assets under management as of April 29, 2026.

Those figures document transaction and asset-management scale on Stellar and in Franklin Templeton’s tokenized-fund business. They do not amount to a direct measure of XLM demand.

XLM pays network fees and satisfies account requirements on Stellar, but tokenized asset values do not translate one-for-one into XLM purchases. A larger transfer base or asset pool therefore cannot be treated as equivalent to token buying or fee revenue.

What can the post establish?

The evidence supports an infrastructure conclusion: Franklin Templeton reported a $1.13 processing cost for 50,000 Stellar transactions, against $75,000 through traditional systems, and its BENJI deployment has recorded more than $211 million in cumulative peer-to-peer transfers.

The post does not support a token-economics conclusion. It establishes neither XRP Ledger costs nor increased demand or fee revenue for XRP or XLM, and it does not specify how its pilot transactions mapped to the fund’s transfer activity.

For investors and issuers, the $1.13 result is best treated as a historical operating-cost datapoint from a May 2026 panel discussion, not as a current network-wide cost benchmark or an implied valuation input for either token. Separating infrastructure economics from token demand is the central analytical requirement.

The next market-structure milestone is a comparable XRP Ledger cost test with disclosed fee and demand measures; without those, the $1.13 Stellar figure cannot establish relative economics for XRP or XLM.