Stellar (XLM) is an open-source protocol for value exchange founded in early 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim of the Stellar Development Foundation. According to Wikipedia, “Jed McCaleb is an American programmer and entrepreneur. And the co-founder and the CTO of Stellar.org. Prior to co-founding Stellar, he founded and served as the CTO of the company Ripple until 2013. McCaleb is also known for creating the bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox and the peer-to-peer eDonkey and Overnetnetworks as well as the eDonkey2000 application. In January 2018, it was reported that McCaleb’s Ripple token ownership was worth $20 billion, which would put him at 40th place in Forbes’ list of world’s richest people.” Stellar utilises a distributed blockchain that enables cross-asset transfers as well as payments. The actual digital currency is called Lumens. Stellar is the actual network and Lumens are the actual coin although the word Stellar is used in most exchanges and is an actual confusion between the token and the platform or company.
Some of the advantages of using Lumens (called Stellar popularly) are:
Low fees. The fees for any transaction amounts to a fraction of a cent
The speed is much faster than Bitcoin, faster than Ripple in fact
It is an open sources community owned network that facilities cross-asset transfers and exchanges between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies
Unlike Ripple and other currencies, Stellar.org is non-profit making it more emotionally user friendly to the public.
Stellar was based on the Ripple protocol but is more open sourced and decentralised. As a non-profit organisation it has the mission of bringing low cost financial services to people in povety. Lumens (XLM) is the currency used to deduct fees for any transfer. Lumens were known by Stellars in its earlier avatar. In 2015 the name got changed to Lumens. In total, there are 100 Billion Lumens which will ever be distributed. The distribution is charted out as follows:
50% for the world via the direct signup educational program
25% for non-profits to reach underserved populations via the increased access program
20% for the bitcoin program
5% for operational costs
This article is for information purposes only and is not to be construed as financial information for any purposes such as investment or speculation and it is the responsibility of the reader to perform proper due diligence before acting upon any of the information provided. We recommend that you consult with a licensed, qualified investment advisor before making any investment decisions.