How to Monitor Stellar Network Health: Ledgers, TPS, Latency, and RPC Availability

Whether you run a Stellar validator, operate a business on the network, or just depend on the infrastructure, monitoring network health is essential. Here is what to watch and how.

Key Metrics

1. Ledger Close Time

Stellar ledgers close every 5-6 seconds under normal conditions.

Value	Meaning
5-6 seconds	Normal
7-8 seconds	Slight congestion
10+ seconds	Significant issue

2. Transactions Per Second (TPS)

TPS = successful_transaction_count / ledger_close_time

TPS Range	Context
10-30	Light activity
30-60	Normal load
60-100+	High activity (Stellar regularly sustains this)

The network handled 14.1 million transactions in a single day in April 2026.

3. Transaction Success Rate

Success Rate = successful / (successful + failed) * 100

95-100% is healthy. Below 85% warrants investigation — usually fee-related during congestion.

4. Fee Distribution

curl -s https://horizon.stellar.org/fee_stats | \
  python3 -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); \
  print('P50:', d['fee_charged']['p50'], 'P95:', d['fee_charged']['p95'])"

If P95 is much higher than the base fee, the network is congested.

5. Protocol Version

Track upgrades through validator voting:

curl -s https://horizon.stellar.org/ | python3 -c "import sys,json; print(json.load(sys.stdin)['current_protocol_version'])"

6. Horizon API Health

Metric	Target
Response time (`/ledgers?limit=1`)	<500ms
Availability	200 OK
Ingestion lag	<5 ledgers
Error rate	<1%

7. Soroban RPC Health

curl -s -X POST https://mainnet.sorobanrpc.com \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"getHealth"}' | python3 -m json.tool

Alert Thresholds

Alert	Condition	Action
Ledger stall	No new ledger in 30s	Check SDF status
Success rate	Below 85% for 10 min	Check fee market
Fee spike	P95 fee 10x base	Adjust fee strategy
Horizon lag	>10 ledgers behind	Check server health
RPC unhealthy	getHealth returns unhealthy	Failover to backup

Data Collection Script

import requests, time

def collect_metrics():
    ledger = requests.get("https://horizon.stellar.org/ledgers?limit=1&order=desc").json()
    latest = ledger["_embedded"]["records"][0]
    fees = requests.get("https://horizon.stellar.org/fee_stats").json()

    return {
        "ledger": latest["sequence"],
        "closed_at": latest["closed_at"],
        "tx_count": latest["successful_transaction_count"],
        "failed_tx": latest["failed_transaction_count"],
        "fee_p50": fees["fee_charged"]["p50"],
        "fee_p95": fees["fee_charged"]["p95"],
    }

LumenQuery Network Analytics

LumenQuery provides a pre-built dashboard at /analytics — public, no auth required:

Real-time metrics: Ledger sequence, TPS, success rate, protocol version

Historical charts: 24-hour trends

Fee tracking: Current fee distribution

Soroban metrics: Contract invocation counts and gas usage

*Monitor Stellar network health without building your own dashboard. LumenQuery provides real-time analytics — free and public.*