Moderate risk — 10+ years of clean core operation and best-in-class institutional partnerships for payments, balanced by SDF's concentrated token holdings and the emerging Soroban smart contract attack surface.
Top Risks
1
The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) holds approximately 23 billion XLM of the 50 billion total supply (46%), creating significant single-entity concentration. While SDF is a non-profit and distributions fund ecosystem development, this level of concentration gives one entity outsized influence over supply dynamics and ecosystem direction.
2
Soroban smart contracts (launched February 2024) are relatively new, with only 2 years of mainnet production. While they expand Stellar's capability beyond payments, the WASM-based contract platform adds new attack surface that has less battle-testing than Stellar's core payment functionality.
3
A critical exploit in 2019 allowed an attacker to mint over 2 billion XLM without detection. The vulnerability was patched and the network has operated cleanly since, but it demonstrated that even well-reviewed consensus implementations can harbor critical bugs.
4
The SCP (Stellar Consensus Protocol) federated trust model relies on validators choosing their own quorum slices. If tier-1 validator diversity narrows or trust graph topology shifts, the network's fault tolerance could degrade below the current 2-organization tolerance (expanding to 4 in 2025).
Risk Breakdown
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Stellar safe to use?
Stellar receives a B+ risk grade (18/100) from Hindenrank, where lower scores indicate lower risk. Moderate risk — 10+ years of clean core operation and best-in-class institutional partnerships for payments, balanced by SDF's concentrated token holdings and the emerging Soroban smart contract attack surface. Stellar is a Layer 1 blockchain focused on cross-border payments and asset tokenization, operating since 2015 using the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) — a Federated Byzantine Agreement model. With major institutional partnerships including MoneyGram (170+ country cash network), PayPal (PYUSD stablecoin on Stellar), Franklin Templeton (tokenized money market fund), and US Bank (stablecoin testing), Stellar has one of the strongest institutional adoption profiles in crypto. The network's DeFi TVL recently reached an all-time high of $163 million following the launch of Soroban smart contracts in February 2024, expanding capabilities beyond simple payments to lending (Blend) and AMM (Aquarius) protocols. Its B+ grade reflects 10+ years of clean core operation, strong institutional partnerships, and growing DeFi adoption, balanced against the Stellar Development Foundation's concentrated XLM holdings (46% of total supply) and the relatively new Soroban smart contract attack surface.
What are the main risks of using Stellar?
The key risks identified for Stellar are: (1) The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) holds approximately 23 billion XLM (46% of total supply). While SDF is a non-profit distributing tokens for ecosystem development, this concentration gives one entity significant control over supply dynamics and creates counterparty risk if SDF's priorities change. (2) Soroban smart contracts launched on mainnet in February 2024, adding programmable DeFi capabilities but also new attack surface. With only 2 years of production, Soroban has less battle-testing than Stellar's core payment functionality, and 70% of TVL is concentrated in just two protocols (Blend and Aquarius). (3) A critical exploit in 2019 allowed an attacker to mint over 2 billion XLM before detection and patching. While the network has operated cleanly since, the incident demonstrated the possibility of critical consensus-level bugs even in formally specified systems. (4) Near-zero transaction fees by design mean XLM holders receive minimal economic benefit from network usage. The token's value proposition depends more on SDF ecosystem development and institutional adoption than on direct fee accrual.
What is Stellar's risk score breakdown?
Stellar scores 18/100 across eight risk dimensions: Mechanism Novelty: 0/15, Interaction Severity: 3/20, Oracle Surface: 0/10, Documentation Gaps: 2/10, Track Record: 3/15, Scale Exposure: 5/10, Regulatory Risk: 2/10, Vitality Risk: 3/10. The highest risk area is Scale Exposure at 5/10.
How does Stellar compare to other L1 protocols?
Among 56 rated L1 protocols on Hindenrank, Stellar ranks #4 by safety (lowest risk score = safest). Its 18/100 risk score and B+ grade place it among the safer L1 protocols.
Has Stellar ever been hacked or exploited?
Stellar scores 3/15 on the Track Record risk dimension, indicating some history of security incidents or exploits. Higher scores reflect more severe or frequent incidents. Review the full risk report for details.