There are different cryptocurrencies, some are needed to replace fiat money and oust all competitors from the market, others help to carry out multi-currency transactions everywhere. For example, the XLM cryptocurrency of the Stellar platform is used as a “bridge” between digital coins when direct exchange is not available.
Stellar lumens cryptocurrency provides the opportunity to make instant transactions with low fees. The project is popular in business circles; its main sponsor is the American company Stripe.
Stellar cryptocurrency - history of creation
- The project was developed in 2014 by a non-profit foundation managed by Joyce Kim and Jed McCaleb, the former co-founder of the Ripple platform and owner of the notorious Mt. Gox, whose leadership he abandoned before security problems began.
- Stellar was originally created as a fork of Ripple, whose protocol formed the basis of the platform, but then the project completely switched to its own blockchain.
The main difference between Ripple and Stellar is that the first cryptocurrency is partially decentralized, which leaves the right to founders and companies to control the operation of the network by appointing validators.
Stellar (XLM) Development Team
The founder of Stellar is Jed McCaleb, a very famous person in the world of cryptocurrencies. In 2010, he created the very famous MtGox exchange. For several years, this platform was the largest Bitcoin trading platform in the world.
Jed McCaleb. Creator of Stellar Lumens
Since 2011, he worked in the Ripple team on the development of an internal trading exchange for the exchange of goods and services. After creating his Blockchain project, he stopped being a member of the Ripple Labs development team.
At the moment, the project team consists of: board of directors - Keith Rabua, Joyce Kim, Shivani Siroya, Greek Brockman. Advisors: Patrick Collison, Greg Stein, Matt Mullenweg, Romandu Lemos. Developers: Bortek Nowotarski, Boris Reznikov, Brian Gale, Davidl Mazier.
How does Stellar work?
- The work is based on the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), which is similar in mechanism to the BFT protocol of the Ripple platform, but with one fundamental difference: in the SCP protocol, all validators in the network are equal and can deploy nodes to form new blocks.
- They decided to make the mechanism of the protocol a compromise: there are no central control nodes in the blockchain, but for security, in the event of the accumulation of many nodes and suspicious activity, the entire Stellar network is frozen, which makes it impossible to conduct transactions and attack the network.
- This makes the coin more decentralized than Ripple, but not decentralized enough compared to Proof-Of-Work (PoW) cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
- The project developers have created software for exchanging XLM coins and fiat currencies. Funds can be converted with a low commission and at the current exchange rate with the help of anchors - financial institutions that provide deposit and lending services. Here anchors act as a bridge connecting digital assets and currencies.
- The network has developed a smart contract, Stellar Smart Contract (SSC), which is more primitive than the Ethereum smart contract and does not have Turing completeness. A smart contract allows you to develop simple decentralized applications (DApps) and conduct ICOs. Several ICO campaigns have been conducted on the platform, the most notable of which are the Kin and Mobius projects.
What are Stellar Lumens?
So, what is the Stellar system? Stellar Lumens is a completely decentralized consensus platform that supports absolutely any type of currency (digital and fiat). The platform system is equipped with an internal decentralized exchange that can be used by any interested user.
The Stellar Lumens network consists of peer-to-peer nodes located around the world. At the same time, the “anchors” do not depend on each other, thereby ensuring complete decentralization. Synchronization occurs between them every few seconds, which ensures the consensus of the SCP network.
Initially, Stellar was conceived as a special system that would allow, using smart contract technology, to transfer finance between people and various companies as simply and very quickly as possible. That is, the XLM cryptocurrency is an excellent alternative to the current banking system, more convenient and cheaper.
Another advantage of the XLM blockchain is the ability to create new tokens that can be used to launch ICO companies. Moreover, writing code using Stellar is much simpler than Ethereum, which uses a little-known programming language. This, in turn, creates problems for many users. That is why the XLM developers took this important point into account, making it possible to create tokens using the well-known C++.
XLM Characteristics
Since the launch of the protocol, 100 billion XLM coins have been generated. The tokens are designed to pay a fixed fee for each transaction, which is 0.00001 XLM (~0.0000005 USD), which makes the transfer practically free.
When the Stellar network launched in 2014, 100 billion lumens were issued with annual inflation of 1%. However, in October 2019, a community vote ended the inflation mechanism, and the total number of Lumens was reduced in November 2022, to around 50 billion. While about 20 billion Lumens are held on the open market, the Stellar Development Foundation owns the remaining 30 billion. They are used to support the Stellar ecosystem and will gradually be released to the open market.
Cryptocurrency rate Stellar to dollar (USD)
The Stellar price on July 23, 2022 is $0.25915.
Stellar cryptocurrency rate to ruble
Stellar price today, July 23, 2022, is ₽18.87 RUB with a daily trading volume of ₽74,901,203,192 RUB.
Advantages
- the ability to create a large number of micropayments in the Stellar system;
- loyal commissions for concluding transactions and conducting operations on the Stellar network;
- compatibility of the Stellar Lumens platform with other financial market products;
- the ability to work with any type of currency within the Stellar Lumens platform;
- work in real time;
- use of cryptographic encryption to improve security;
- automation of the token exchange procedure;
- the ability to build clients and plugins based on the Stellar Lumens protocol.
Mining XLM (stellar lumens)?
You cannot mine Stellar, but there is an opportunity to passively earn network coins. Users can get a certain amount of Lumens for free. The distribution to Bitcoin owners is 1% of the balance.
XLMpool is an account that receives lumens inflation coins.
What do you need to do to receive passive payouts if you are a Stellar user with Lumen coins?
- Vote for XLMpool account. You can agitate your friends to get more votes.
- The system identifies XLMpool as a user with a sufficient number of votes (0.05%) and awards him coins that appeared during inflation (1% per annum). Accruals occur every month.
- XLMpool distributes the received amount among all users who voted for it.
How to buy Stellar?
Since mining Stellar Lumens is not possible, the only way to get the Stellar cryptocurrency is to buy it.
This can be done on most major cryptocurrency exchanges.
- On Binance the coin can be purchased with Bitcoin, Ethereum and Binance Coin
- On Bittrex - for Bitcoin, Ethereum.
- On Kraken - for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- On Poloniex - for Bitcoin.
Orange Exchange Pro recently provides the opportunity to purchase the Stellar cryptocurrency for fiat funds - dollars and rubles. This exchanger works with bank cards and various popular payment systems - Qiwi, Payeer, Perfect Money.
Features of cryptocurrency, technical implementation
Many applications interact with Stellar through the Horizon API server. This provides a simple technique for submitting transactions, checking balances, and subscribing to specific events. Because it's based on simple HTTP, Horizon can be accessed through a web browser and command line using your favorite programming language.
To communicate with Horizon, Stellar supports JavaScript and Java, as well as a number of SDKs for different programming languages. Each Horizon server connects to the Stellar Core network backbone, and this software verifies and reconciles every transaction through the Stellar Consensus protocol. The Stellar Network itself is a collection of interconnected Stellar Cores that are operated by organizations and individuals. Some are available for interaction, while others are needed only to support the network.
Distributed technology makes the network reliable and secure.
Each transaction of the Stellar cryptocurrency costs 0.00001 XLM - this is protection against network spam.
Historical reference
The year 2014 became the starting point of the consensus platform. The author of the idea is Jed McCaleb, who is a co-founder of the virtual structure Ripple, which confidently ranks third in the ranking of the best electronic payment systems (EPS) in terms of asset capitalization. However, at the time of the hard fork (cloning), Ripple was going through hard times. The platform was subjected to severe criticism mainly because of its centralization - the structure was managed by a private company, actively promoting its own coin (coin), speculating on exchanges in order to realize its interests. As a result, the author of the project decided to create a Ripple “killer” - that is, an EPS that would absorb all the best characteristics of its “close relative”, eliminating the disadvantages.
After rebranding in 2015, Stellar completely “spun off” from Ripple, creating its own network with initially open source. By the way, Ripple made the code public only after 12 months of work (in 2013). The Stellar protocol was also improved - a number of weaknesses that allowed the possibility of double use of coins were corrected. In addition to these innovations, the Stellar Development Foundation, created to support the new digital architecture, is a non-profit, joint-stock organization.
To once again emphasize that the Stellar cryptocurrency is decentralized, the fund makes many documents public - from employee salaries to the number of users who came from social networks.
Fact! Of course, it was not possible to liquidate Ripple. However, if you consider that the developers deliberately reduced the popularity of the platform for speculators, the coin in the early stages was called Stellar with the trading ticker STR, and the material support of the new electronic design is several times less than that of Ripple, it shows impressive results.
Advantages and disadvantages
As a result of trying to correct the shortcomings of her progenitor, Stellar has the following advantages:
- Equality of all participants in the system.
- Very fast transactions (up to 1000 in one second).
- Open source, maximum decentralization.
- Security achieved through cryptographic encryption and the use of autonomous nodes.
- Support for integration with other projects and financial systems.
To make transactions, you must have at least 0.5 XLM in your account. Given the low cost of the coin, this is not yet a serious obstacle and does not discourage customers from using the system.
Decentralization of Stellar
The algorithm for the functioning of an independent platform implies the parallel operation of peer nodes (nodes) while differentiating capacities between all servers of a digital design without reference to the original source. This policy eliminates dependence on any government agency or private entity with large capacities. The functioning of each node is autonomous, which protects the structure from operational failures, even if the node is disconnected from traffic. To work with all “live” accounts, it is necessary that a minimum amount be blocked on each of them. Currently, there are at least 50 units of the XLM cryptocurrency, as Stellar is called on the exchange.
How to store XLM cryptocurrency - stellar wallet (xlm wallet)
XLM cryptocurrency can be stored on an exchange, like all other digital assets. However, this method is not secure and is not recommended if you need to purchase a large volume of XLM coins.
It is better to choose a safer and more reliable option - register yourself a web wallet, desktop wallet or cold storage hardware wallet.
Web wallets are more convenient and faster to use. If you need to frequently perform any manipulations with your crypto account, then you should consider this option. The disadvantage of such wallets is the lack of private keys.
The most convenient and fastest Stellar web wallet is “STELLAR: STRONGHOLD”. Its plus is its convenient design, the ability to store other altcoins and high speed.
A desktop wallet is a more secure option for storing your cryptocurrency than online wallets, but to use it you will need to download an application on your PC and also download the entire blockchain database, which can take a long time to load and take up a lot of hard drive space.
One of these desktop wallets is “STELLAR DESKTOP CLIENT”, which, in addition to storage, can provide the opportunity to exchange your coins within the service and send them to another address. The wallet supports three systems: Windows, Linux and MacOS.
Hardware wallets are the most secure way to store Stellar cryptocurrency. These wallets are a device that connects to your PC and through it you can directly access your crypto account. The disadvantage of hardware wallets is their slow speed and high cost. A hardware wallet costs $70 or more. The most famous companies that produce cold wallets are Ledger and Trezor.
Where to buy Stellar
You can buy the XLM cryptocurrency on many cryptocurrency exchanges; this asset is quite popular on the crypto market and the supply/demand for the coin is very high. The largest daily trading volume is on the well-known Binance exchange - about 23,000,000 US dollars. But you can also purchase this cryptocurrency on such popular trading platforms as:
- Binance
- Kraken
- Poloniex
- Upbit
- Bittrex
- CEX.IO
- Bitfinex
- Exmo
- HitBTC
- Huobi
- Kucoin
Coin of different range. All about the Stellar cryptocurrency
The developers call the altcoin platform a more reliable and decentralized version of Ripple. In December, the value of the token increased tenfold, it entered the top ten largest digital money by capitalization
Stellar is a decentralized version of the Ripple platform that runs on the Ledger protocol rather than the blockchain. The network, which was launched back in 2014, should make financial transactions more accessible and businesses more profitable.
Story
In 2014, programmers Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim created the Stellar platform based on Ripple technology. Their goal was to create a more reliable and decentralized system. The developers were going to solve the problems for which the San Francisco company has been criticized. At first, the project worked on the Ripple protocol, but a year later it moved to its own open source network.
For the decentralized development of the platform, the non-profit Stellar Development Foundation was established. Reports on its work are published in the public domain.
The fund issued 100 million Stellar tokens, annual inflation is fixed at 1%, additional emission, as well as mining, are not provided. A few months after its creation, in the same 2014, the developers carried out a rebranding so that users would not confuse the name of the token and the platform. The token was called Lumen. Now on many resources the altcoin is called Stellar Lumens.
Peculiarities
Unlike Ripple, Stellar is a completely decentralized open source platform. All system participants have equal rights and can influence the development of the project. The network can process thousands of transactions per second, the transaction confirmation time does not exceed five seconds.
The Stellar platform supports any cryptocurrency and can synchronize with all financial systems, including banking. There is a certain threshold for transactions: 20 tokens on the balance. This is necessary for additional protection against hacker attacks.
The system works using smart contracts and multi-signatures. Through the platform, you can send funds all over the world, while transferring money, for example, in rubles, and the recipient can accept them in the equivalent amount in dollars, or in another currency he wants.
The Stellar cryptocurrency is not based on a blockchain, but on the Ripple Ledger system. The software is available to all users as it is open source. The platform has various types of protection against hacker attacks, for example, with each transaction, 0.00001 STR is withdrawn from the account, they simply disappear. Users are not required to use the token when working on the platform; they can use the currencies they want.
Where to buy and store
Stellar cannot be mined and is traded on most major trading platforms such as Binance, Upbit, OKEx, Kraken, Poloniex and others. The coin is in seventh place in the list of largest cryptocurrencies by capitalization. At the end of last year, its price increased 10 times in a month - from $0.09 to $0.9. Then the price decreased amid a general market correction; on June 20, 2022, the average market rate of Stellar is $0.22.
Most users prefer to store the coin in the official cryptocurrency wallet Stellar Wallet. There are several versions of the program, the desktop version is considered the most secure. To install, you need to go to the official website stellar.org, it is important to make sure that you are on the original page and not on a phishing one.
Select the “Wallets” tab; to install the computer version, you must click “Desktop Wallets”, then “Stellar Desktop Client”. You need to select the version that suits your computer, then install it and create an account.
The website lists several programs that can be used to store Stellar. Three desktop options, four mobile and several online wallets.
Where can I get XLM?
As mentioned above, classical mining is not provided for in this ecosystem; moreover, it is not planned to be introduced, since all coins were released in one fell swoop and differentiated as follows:
- the amount of 50 billion XLM is intended to be distributed among users in small parts;
- 25 billion XLM is provided for distribution to organizations and non-profit structures in order to attract potential users that the ecosystem could not reach;
- crypto capital of 20 billion XLM is planned to be distributed between the owners of BTC (Bitcoin) and XRP (Ripple) coins, while the details of the “deal” have not yet been declassified;
- the balance of 5 billion XLM is in the account of Stellar.org (a non-profit foundation).
To become the owner of XLM, you need to purchase (mine) a “cue ball”. Then, on one of the exchanges, for example, Poloniex, where the trading ticker of the Stellar crypto coin is still STR, make a deposit. After replenishing the account, we find the cryptocurrency pair STR/BTC and fill out an application (order) for purchase.
Important! Like any other crypto coin that does not have a material form, XLM also needs to be stored somewhere. Electronic wallets are designed for this - special software for storing and carrying out transactions with coins. It is advisable to register for an electronic wallet (Stellar Lumens Wallet) on the official website www.stellar.org. The interface is intelligently clear. News about updates is posted.
