- Stellar Network made a major announcement on Protocol 20.
- The mainnet transition will happen on January 20th, 2024.
- The XLM token has formed a double-top pattern on the daily chart.
Stellar Lumens price has been left behind in the recent crypto bull run that has pushed tokens like Solana and Avalanche to a multi-month high. The XLM price was trading at $0.12 on Wednesday, 38% below the highest point this year. It has also dropped by 13% below the highest level this year.
Soroban smart contracts news
Stellar’s XLM token price has moved in the same direction as Ripple’s XRP. The two coins initially jumped sharply in July when Ripple prevailed in its case against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Since then, they have been left behind by large coins like Bitcoin and Solana. They have also lagged behind other crypto tokens like Injective, Bonk, and Solend. This performance is likely because they have not made any major news since that period.
Stellar hopes to change this as the developers made an important milestone on Tuesday. In a statement, the developers said that they had released the full suite of software that supports Protocol 20.
This is a notable development since Protocol 20 will help to bring smart contracts to Stellar. After the release, the next stage will be the upgrade the mainnet to Protocol 20, which will happen on January 30th.
This process will be followed by Phase zero, which will focus on stability and rigorous testing. It will then move to phase 2, which will now help developers start building dApps in Stellar’s network.
This is a logical development since Stellar is built for the finance industry. As such, it makes sense since it will let developers take advantage of its finance features to roll out their products in decentralized finance (DeFi).
The challenge is that the industry is now extremely crowded. In addition to Ethereum, many other layer-1 and layer-2 networks like Solana and Arbitrum are seeing strong usage.
Stellar Lumens XLM price forecast
Turning to the daily chart, we see that the XLM token price has been under pressure in the past few days. The token has formed a double-top pattern at $0.1382. In price action analysis, this pattern is one of the most popular bearish signs in an asset. The coin has moved below the 50-day and 25-day moving averages.
Stellar has dropped below the 61.8% Fibonacci Retracement level. It has also moved below the lower side of the pitchfork tool. Therefore, the outlook for the XLM price is bearish, with the next point to watch being at $0.1100.
