Validators process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Stellar is a distributed ledger for transfer and store of value (a blockchain). Stellar was founded by Jed McCaleb launched in 2014.

XLM holders own and govern the protocol. They currently take all of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue).

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Blockchains (L1)

Stellar

# Stellar Median transaction fee Methodology

## 1. Overview

The Stellar transaction fee median metric measures the middle value of all transaction fees paid on the Stellar blockchain on a daily basis. This metric provides insight into typical transaction costs users experience when interacting with the Stellar network. The calculation aggregates all transaction fees for each day, converts them to USD, and calculates the median value to represent the typical fee amount paid by users.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on the following raw data sources:

- **Stellar blockchain transaction records**: Raw transaction data from the Stellar blockchain containing fee information, transaction hashes, timestamps, and success status
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: Price data for XLM (Stellar's native token) to convert fee amounts from native units to USD
- **Stellar network metadata**: Basic network information for proper chain identification and categorization

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Transaction fee extraction
- **Purpose**: Extracts all transaction fees from Stellar blockchain transactions and prepares them for analysis
- **Logic**: Queries all Stellar transactions and extracts the `fee_charged` field, which represents the fee paid for each transaction. Transactions are grouped by daily boundaries using timestamp truncation. Each record includes the timestamp (truncated to day), chain identifier as 'stellar', token address as 'native' (representing XLM), and the raw fee amount. Only processes data for incremental updates when running incrementally
- **Key fields**: `fee_charged` (transaction fee in native XLM units), `block_timestamp` (transaction timestamp), `transaction_hash` (unique transaction identifier)

### Component B: USD conversion
- **Purpose**: Converts native XLM fee amounts to USD values for standardized reporting
- **Logic**: Uses the convert_to_usd_and_correct_decimals macro to transform native XLM fee amounts to USD. The macro joins transaction fee data with end-of-day price feeds for XLM, multiplying the native fee amount by the corresponding USD price. Decimal correction is disabled for this metric since fee amounts are already in the correct format. The conversion ensures all fee values are expressed in a common USD denomination for consistent analysis
- **Key fields**: `fees` (USD-denominated fee amounts), price feed data for XLM/USD conversion rates

### Component C: Median calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculates the median (50th percentile) transaction fee for each day
- **Logic**: Groups all USD-converted transaction fees by day and applies the approximate quantiles function with 100 buckets. Selects the 50th percentile value (offset 50) to determine the median fee amount. This statistical approach provides a robust measure of typical transaction costs that is less sensitive to outliers than average fees. Results are grouped by timestamp, timestamp grain ('day'), product identifier, and chain identifier
- **Key fields**: `transaction_fee_median` (calculated median fee value in USD)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The median calculation result flows directly into the finalization step without additional joining or combining
- **Currency conversion**: All fee amounts are converted to USD using end-of-day XLM price feeds before median calculation
- **Time aggregation**: Daily boundaries are established by truncating timestamps to day level, ensuring consistent 24-hour periods for fee aggregation
- **Final calculation**: The finalize_metric_transaction_fee_median macro applies standardized formatting, implements a fill_zeros strategy for days with missing data, and applies chain availability filtering to ensure data quality and completeness

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

StellarXLM

Median transaction fee

Median transaction fee

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