MetaMask Integrates Stellar, Launches Project Thruput for Enhanced Transaction Capacity

On October 29, MetaMask announced the integration of Stellar into its multichain accounts, enabling users to add a Stellar address. However, to receive USDC, users must fund their accounts and activate the token manually.

In a related development, the Stellar Development Foundation introduced Project Thruput on October 28. This initiative aims to enhance how blockchain execution engines manage competing transactions. Initial tests revealed that single-validator execution capacity increased from approximately 1.18 million payments per second on one machine to about 7.02 million on eight machines.

While these benchmarks demonstrate promising potential, the Foundation cautioned that they do not reflect end-to-end public network throughput. The project's design seeks to alleviate bottlenecks that occur when multiple transactions interact with shared data, a common challenge in conventional systems.

For investors, the distinction between measured potential and actual deployed capacity is crucial. Although the seven-million-per-second figure is impressive, it remains confined to an experimental setup. The Foundation emphasizes that public blockchain performance relies on various factors, including consensus and data propagation, which have yet to be tested at scale.

Project Thruput's model also proposes operating without per-transaction execution fees, instead distributing scheduling shares based on unlocked native-token balances. This alternative resource allocation raises questions about fairness and potential abuse.

As the project progresses, independent reproduction of benchmarks and integration into the public network will be critical steps for validating its capabilities.