About Stellar (XLM)

Stellar is an open network that allows any currency or asset to be digitally issued, transferred, and exchanged over the internet. The Stellar blockchain provides a decentralised database which powers a simple protocol for money issuance (issuing tokens like USD, EUR, VND, etc) and transfer (sending them to an account/address). The Stellar Network connects diverse financial systems and lets anyone build low cost financial services. The idea is to give people more access to credit for the underbanked and unbanked populations of the world. It's also designed to be faster than Bitcoin with transactions settling in 2-5 seconds instead of 10 minutes.

The network's token, lumens, serves as a bridge that makes it easy and inexpensive to transfer between any currency/asset. Lumens serve two main functions:

• To help prevent spam. Transaction fees on Stellar are measured in fractions of a lumen, so holding lumens is necessary to send transactions.

• To act as a bridge currency for making exchanges between pairs of currencies that don't have a large direct market.

The Stellar coin is a cryptocurrency and platform for decentralized transactions. It has been created by the same people who founded the Ripple, which is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies. The main difference between these two coins is that while Ripple focuses on banks and financial institutions, Stellar focuses on individual users with low-value transactions.

Stellar Background

The founders of Stellar are Jed McCaleb, and lawyer Joyce Kim, who started the network in 2014 after leaving the company Ripple in 2013. McCaelb's aim for Stellar is to ensure that people can easily transfer their fiat into crypto when sending money across borders.

The Stellar protocol is supported by a non-profit, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), and their stated mission is "to expand financial access and literacy worldwide." The SDF has been focused on making it easy for developers, entrepreneurs, researchers, and non-profits who are focused on these areas of need around the world get involved by providing them with resources.

What Makes Stellar Unique?

Stellar offers low costs when users make cross-border transactions, unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum who have higher transaction fees and fiat payment solutions such as PayPal and Stripe that are also associated with higher costs.

Stellar has many features that make it unique compared to other currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, but there are also some drawbacks to this coin. The pros of the stellar coin include cheaper transaction fees than those of Bitcoin, fast processing time, and a bright future ahead. However, one potential negative aspect is the fact that only about 100 million lumens will be made available because each new block takes approximately 1 month to generate 10% more coins, until all 100 billion have been created.

In January 2018, Stellar launched a program to create 1 billion new lumens (XLM) and distribute them to Bitcoin and XRP holders. The main reason for the airdrop was to increase interest in the Stellar platform by attracting more people from Bitcoin and Ripple communities.