How to evaluate activity on Stellar
Reading Stellar's public ledger shows how an account or an asset is used. Compare transaction counts with unique addresses and check the asset issuer.
Vahe HakobyanEditor-in-chief
Updated Oct 6, 20263 min readFact-checked
On this page
- Bots can inflate transaction counts on Stellar.
- An issuer can freeze a trustline.
- Keep keys offline and save records for taxes.
Stellar settles payments and asset issuance on one public ledger. Every trustline change and trade is recorded there.
What you need before you start
Block explorers let you search any Stellar account, transaction, or asset without signing in. Decide your scope first: the whole network, one account, or one asset, because the same numbers answer different questions for each.
How to evaluate Stellar activity
Work from the outside in: transaction history, then the operations inside it, then the issuer, trustlines, and trades.
- 1Read the transaction historyOpen the account in a block explorer. Note how often it sends and receives, and who its counterparties are.
- 2Open the operations insideA transaction can hold several operations, such as payments or trustline changes. Read them to see what the account does.
- 3Check the asset issuerLook up the issuing account and its flags. An issuer can freeze or revoke a trustline.
- 4Review trustlines and tradesRead how many accounts hold the asset and how much trade happens on Stellar's built in exchange, where thin trade can mean few users.
- 5Compare unique addressesCompare the number of addresses that send or receive with the total transaction count. A few addresses can make most of the traffic.
After you evaluate activity
The IRS treats cryptocurrency as property. Buying XLM with US dollars is not taxable, but selling it for dollars, trading it for another crypto, or paying with it is. Save dates and transaction hashes, and keep secret keys offline. A public address is a pseudonym, not full anonymity.
Frequently asked questions
A transaction is the signed package that pays one fee. The operations inside it are the actions, such as a payment.
Yes. Reading Stellar's public ledger needs no account, signature, or secret key.
Horizon is Stellar's HTTP interface for ledger data. You need it to pull transactions into your own code.
Check the issuer address and its home domain against the project's own website. Stellar does not check a name.
