Stellar Activity Scorches 14%; Will XLM Price Catch Fire?

Stellar Lumens (XLM) swung higher by 10% in a weekly time-frame, bringing back hopes of a $0.20 resistance reclaim following the Yardstick (Protocol 26) upgrade earlier this month. With the stable releases for Stellar’s Yardstick upgrade kicking off on April 8, the testnet upgrade came on April 16, 2026.

Stellar’s chain validator nodes shall update their SDKs, Stellar Core, Horizon, RPC to the Protocol 26 versions before the network validator mainnet vote. There’s currently 93 active validator nodes on Stellar Lumens chain, with this figure expected to increase above 100 following the performance-focused Yardstick mainnet upgrade on Stellar.

Next month, Stellar’s (XLM) community is set to vote on the mainnet upgrade on May 6, but the big shift in network activity can be witnessed already. According to latest data from Chainspect, Stellar’s Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) chain is showcasing more real-world usage than ever before, growing to a stupendous 14.1 million transfers on April 16, 2026.

This week, XLM’s price hiked 10%, but the current $0.169 price territory doesn’t promise an easy road unless the altcoin confidently breaks through $0.179. This represents the red-label Bollinger Band (BOLL), a key trend-line that offers mathematical insight into the rally’s sustainability.

On  the bright side, big-time crypto players, popularly referred to as crypto whales, are back from the sidelines, racking up stacks of XLM on Saturday. This has also significantly boosted the MACD line, which could create bullish divergence if Stellar holds the mid-line BOLL at $0.166.

The Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) at 0.34 on the 4-hour XLM charts portrays this, but the high dependence on Bitcoin’s (BTC) price movement has prevented Stellar Lumens (XLM) from tackling the monthly highs of $0.179, last hit on March 26, 2026, according to CoinGecko.

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