Alvin Lang
Feb 24, 2026 15:12
Stellar (XLM)’s Freighter browser pockets cuts preliminary load time to 1.27 seconds via aggressive caching, batch fetching, and smarter asset icon loading.
Stellar (XLM)’s Freighter browser extension pockets now hundreds in 1.27 seconds after a multi-week optimization effort that lower startup instances by 63%, in line with a technical breakdown revealed by the event workforce on February 23.
The enhancements goal a persistent ache level for crypto pockets customers: ready for balances and transaction historical past to look. For merchants who want fast entry throughout risky market situations, each second issues.
What Truly Modified
The Freighter workforce recognized exterior API calls as the first bottleneck. The pockets was beforehand fetching account balances, transaction historical past, asset icons, and a number of information streams concurrently at startup—forcing customers to attend for every thing earlier than seeing something.
The repair? Load solely account balances initially, then fetch every thing else within the background. Transaction historical past, asset lists, and icons now load asynchronously after the primary interface renders. This information will get cached, so navigating to the Historical past tab pulls from native storage somewhat than triggering recent API calls.
The Asset Icon Downside
One notably inefficient course of concerned loading asset icons. The outdated methodology required three separate community roundtrips per asset: first fetching the issuer’s account from Horizon, then loading the related TOML file, then lastly grabbing the icon URL. Multiply that by each token in a person’s pockets.
The brand new strategy checks asset lists first—since fashionable Stellar tokens are already catalogued—and solely falls again to the multi-step course of when needed. Even then, the workforce switched to Stellar RPC’s ledger entries endpoint, which returns a number of asset issuers in a single name as an alternative of iterating via them individually.
Aggressive Caching Technique
The pockets now caches primarily every thing till the person closes it, with a three-minute staleness threshold triggering automated refreshes. Actions that clearly invalidate cached information—sending funds, including trustlines—set off quick re-fetches somewhat than ready for the timer.
For transaction historical past particularly, the workforce applied batch fetching to keep away from redundant lookups. Customers incessantly work together with the identical Soroban contracts a number of instances; caching contract information through the first encounter eliminates duplicate API calls when processing subsequent transactions.
Why This Issues
Browser extension efficiency stays a aggressive differentiator as pockets choices multiply. Analysis into extension optimization via 2026 emphasizes that content material scripts operating pointless code straight affect perceived velocity—precisely what Freighter addressed by deferring non-critical hundreds.
The 1.27-second goal places Freighter in cheap territory for browser extensions, although customers on slower connections or with intensive transaction histories should expertise longer waits. The caching enhancements ought to compound over time as extra information will get saved domestically.
Stellar’s native token XLM continues buying and selling amid broader market situations, with the pockets enhancements probably decreasing friction for customers actively managing positions on the community.
Picture supply: Shutterstock
