Q1 2026 was a quarter of firsts for the Liquid Network. Post-quantum signatures went live on mainnet. A hardware wallet sent Lightning payments from cold storage (yes, really). The Federation grew to 87 members. And the network processed more transactions in three months than it did in all of 2024. Pull up a chair.

Liquid by the Numbers

The growth chart keeps doing the thing where it goes up and to the right.

Liquid transactions' exponential growth in Q1 2026

Liquid processed 1,163,119 transactions in Q1 2026. That's nearly 5x the same quarter last year (233,670 in Q1 2025) and a 72% jump over Q4 2025's already-record 675,157. To put that in perspective: Q1 2026 alone accounted for 68% of Liquid's entire 2025 transaction volume. The network has now posted 15 consecutive months of growth, with no sign of slowing down.

Monthly breakdown:

  • January: 317,296 transactions
  • February: 367,143 transactions
  • March: 478,680 transactions — a new all-time monthly high that nearly doubled December 2025's previous record of 242,623

Peak single-day volume hit 20,798 transactions on February 5. For the curious: that's one transaction roughly every four seconds, all day.

Peg activity stayed healthy. Q1 saw 14,063 peg-ins totaling 1,252 BTC flowing onto the network and 1,201 peg-outs totaling 1,144 BTC heading back to mainnet, a net inflow of +108 BTC. The network also recorded 18,857 new asset issuances across the quarter.

What's driving all this? A lot of it is DePix. The BRL-denominated stablecoin on Liquid now accounts for roughly half of the network's transaction volume, powering remittance and merchant payment flows across Brazil and bringing Liquid directly into everyday commerce. Beyond DePix, the forces that powered Q4's record numbers keep accelerating: Boltz as the connective tissue between Bitcoin layers, with swap volume climbing alongside Lightning and Liquid adoption; SideSwap's growing app integrations pulling stablecoin activity onto the network; Changelly's full LBTC swap support giving traders another on-ramp; and the Breez SDK's expanding partner base (75+ apps and counting) generating Liquid-adjacent transaction volume.

Here's one more stat to sit with: Liquid processed 501,358 transactions in all of 2024. At the current pace, 2026 is on track to surpass that in a single month.

Post-Quantum Signatures Hit Production

In Q1, Liquid became the first production Bitcoin sidechain to verify post-quantum signatures.

Blockstream Research deployed SHRINCS, a compact hash-based post-quantum signature scheme, as a Simplicity smart contract on Liquid mainnet. Two production transactions proved the system works: one using a stateful signature and one using the stateless fallback. No consensus changes required. No fork needed. Just Simplicity doing what it was designed to do. (And in a nod to cypherpunk tradition, the team filled the extra transaction space with the Bitcoin whitepaper.)

The open-source verifier is on GitHub for any wallet developer to integrate. LBTC, stablecoins, and tokenized securities on Liquid can all opt into quantum-resistant protection today. If you want the full technical deep dive, read the breakdown here.

Visit blockstream.com/quantum for a detailed overview of the latest in post-quantum Bitcoin development.

Federation Growth

In January, the Liquid Federation welcomed seven new members: Cowbolt, Eulen, illuminodes, Mooze, OrderMoon, Sorted Wallet, and SOUSTA. That brings the total to 87 members across six continents. The new cohort spans self-custody wallets, cross-border remittances, Bitcoin infrastructure, and real estate tokenization. The Federation keeps getting more global and more diverse.

Protocol upgrades previewed at the end of 2025 remain on track: multi-asset fee payments, 0-conf capabilities, and the planned hard fork modifying the 21M issuance limit. More details to come as we move through 2026.

Want to get involved?

Blockstream: Three Layers, One Wallet

Blockstream shipped the update that makes "Bitcoin's Financial Layer" more than a tagline. The Blockstream app 5.2.0 pairs with Jade to deliver something no other Bitcoin wallet has pulled off: Lightning payments secured by hardware wallet cold storage. You can now receive Lightning payments that settle directly to Jade, or send Lightning invoices funded from cold storage. Every transaction is signed on the device.

Liquid<>on-chain swaps also went live on iOS, Android, and desktop. Move LBTC to bitcoin on the base layer, sign the swap with Jade, and settle to mainnet cold storage whenever fees are favorable. Powered by the same Boltz atomic swap infrastructure behind Q4's Liquid<>Lightning integration.

On-chain, Lightning, Liquid. All hardware-secured. All from one app. If you haven't tried it yet, grab the Blockstream app.

Breez: 75 Apps and Counting

Breez’s Q1 headline: passkey-based authentication for the Breez SDK. Developers can add non-custodial bitcoin where users authenticate with Face ID or fingerprint instead of staring down a 12-word seed phrase. Self-custody, minus the cold sweat.

On the Liquid side of the SDK, a new cohort of apps shipped integrations in Q1 including SwapTrade, who went live bringing Lightning-fast bitcoin to their users without the compromises.

The </time2build> developer challenge awarded $25K across winners including BTCPay Server, Primal, and Portal. Under the hood, the SDK gained a ~10x transactions-per-second improvement, HODL invoice support, and a Buy Bitcoin API via MoonPay.

75+ apps and services are now building with the Breez SDK.

JAN3: AQUA Gets a Fresh Coat

JAN3 shipped a full redesign of AQUA wallet (v0.4.0) in February, and it's more than cosmetic: multi-wallet support, a new home screen with price charts, revamped send/receive flows, color-coded address numerals for readability, and seven new languages. A follow-up release in March added Arabic and Chinese. 

The company also launched A1 Lab, a new AI division focused on open-source, privacy-first tools. First product out the door: Echos, a fully offline transcription app supporting 65+ languages. No accounts, no subscriptions, no servers. All processing and storage stays on your device. (We like that energy.)

Sorted Wallet: Dollars That Travel

Sorted became one of the first wallets to support USAT, Tether's GENIUS Act-compliant token, marking its re-entry into the U.S. market. The wallet earned a spot on the official Tether USDT Directory and expanded to the Vivo Appstore, adding to its lineup on Google Play, Palm Store, Indus Store, and KaiStore. That's a lot of app stores, and that's the point: meeting users where they already are.

Sorted also co-published "Savings Culture with Stablecoins in Africa" with Tether, exploring how stablecoins are reshaping savings and cross-border finance across African markets.

STOKR: Scaling the Institutional Pipeline

After crossing $1.5 billion in tokenized asset volume on Liquid in 2025, STOKR used Q1 to deepen both its institutional bench and its product lineup.

In March, the company appointed Subhankar Sinha as Senior Advisor. Sinha previously led blockchain at BNY, the world's largest custody bank, and co-founded PwC's U.S. blockchain consulting practice. His focus at STOKR: money market fund tokenization and expanding the platform's institutional presence in the U.S.

On the product side, two new digital securities went live. CH100 and CALCPB give eligible investors 24/7 exposure to shares of H100 Group AB (NGM:H100) and Capital B SA (EPA:ALCPB) respectively – both tradable against LBTC, and transferable peer-to-peer on SideSwap. 

STOKR also launched the Goldstream Fund (GSTR), a Luxembourg-registered tokenized AIF pairing gold exposure with Bitcoin-backed fixed-income yields. Borrowers can draw stablecoin liquidity against BTC collateral held in segregated custody with no rehypothecation.

Next milestone on the board: $10 billion in assets on-platform.

NexBridge & NexPlace: Regulated Assets, Emerging Markets

NexBridge is another piece of the institutional tokenization story on Liquid, coming at it from a different angle. The company operates as a regulated digital asset issuer, issuing on-chain digital assets with published terms, embedded compliance controls, and distribution through authorized venues and partners.

In Q1, NexBridge continued to build its position within the institutional tokenization stack on Liquid, focusing on regulated issuance.

During the quarter, NexBridge advanced its product suite, with a focus on digital dollar-denominated assets such as USTBL, a regulated tokenized asset providing exposure to short-term U.S. Treasury Bills through a transparent, rules-based structure, preparing for the launch of four new tokenized assets providing exposure to single stocks, an index and a high yield managed strategy.

CEO Michele Crivelli spent the quarter doing press with Diario El Salvador, DeBitcóin, TradingView, and Cointelegraph on the thesis: in markets where U.S. equities or diversified portfolios are expensive or unavailable, tokenization is solving a zero-to-one problem.

Q1 also marked a strong focus on the development of NexPlace, adding the marketplace layer to the ecosystem. NexPlace is being built as an exchange and distribution venue for tokenized assets, designed to provide simplified access to RWAs, particularly in markets where access to global financial assets remains limited. In these contexts, tokenization addresses a fundamental access gap beyond mere efficiency improvements.

Liquid's confidential transactions, UTXO-based transfer restrictions, and regulatory-friendly auditability are what make the settlement layer work here. More distribution channels and asset types are expected to go live within months.

Around the Ecosystem

The quarter's momentum extended well beyond the headline names. Here's what else was shipping:

Boltz launched atomic USDT swaps in March, bringing non-custodial swaps between Lightning sats and USDT to production. Boltz plans to expand USDT swaps across all supported Bitcoin layers, including Liquid. Already the primary bridge infrastructure powering Liquid<>Lightning swaps in the Blockstream app and other wallets, Boltz continues to be one of the most important pieces of plumbing in the ecosystem.

Alby completed its transition to full self-custody in January, replacing its shared wallet entirely with Alby Hub. Every Alby user now holds their own keys. The team also open-sourced an x402 Lightning facilitator for machine-to-machine payments and published a case study showing AI agents autonomously purchasing premium credits over Lightning. The NWC (Nostr Wallet Connect) ecosystem now spans 80+ services.

Mooze, one of the seven new Federation members, went from beta to full production in December and continued building through Q1. The Brazilian wallet integrates PIX (Brazil's instant payment system) with LBTC, letting users buy bitcoin with a QR code and receive it directly in a Liquid wallet. With built-in Breez Lightning support, Mooze is bringing the full Liquid + Lightning experience to a market where stablecoin demand and P2P culture are already thriving.

DIGTL partnered with Planet3 Technologies on Planetary Capital, a $1 billion asset-backed portfolio targeting the carbon economy, with CRBN credits purchasable on Liquid.

BSOS continued deploying its RWA SuiteX tokenization platform with Taiwan's leading financial institutions while CEO Daniel Huang served on the Federation's Membership Board.

Cowbolt, which joined the Federation in January, shipped six app updates across the quarter, improving performance, offline wallet access, and group payment features. Six updates in one quarter for a team that just walked in the door? That's how you make an entrance.

What's Ahead

Q1 set a high bar. Post-quantum cryptography in production. Fifteen straight months of transaction growth. Wallets shipping real multi-layer functionality. An ecosystem that keeps getting broader, busier, and a little more surprising every quarter.

And PSA — we’re calling all open-source developers, cryptographers and coding wizards:

Blockstream is hosting a Simplicity Bootcamp and Hackathon in Turin, Italy, at Blox Space on May 16–17. Open-source developers, cryptographers, and coding wizards can build directly with Blockstream engineers; the winning team takes home $3K in BTC and other top teams take home Jade Plus wallets. Free to attend. Apply at liquid.net/bootcamp.

The Liquid Federation will continue publishing roadmap updates throughout 2026, covering multi-asset fee payments, near-instant settlement with 0-conf, and enhancements for institutional adoption. If you're building on Liquid or want to learn more, reach out at business@liquid.net.

Follow @Liquid_BTC on X, join the Community Telegram, and subscribe to this blog to stay current. See you next quarter.