Stellar is an open source network, that makes it possible to create, send, and trade digital presentations of all types of money. Stellar launched in 2014 since then it’s processed more than 150 million transactions. Stellar Lumens is a hard fork of the XRP blockchain and it's mission is to make it possible for all the worlds financial systems to work together on a single network. Transparency is an important tenet of the network. The code is open-source and available for anyone to audit or contribute to. There is no centralized control, instead, stellar software runs across a decentralized open network and can handle millions of transactions daily. Stellar technology is guided and maintained by the Stellar Development Foundation, a non-profit company based in the United States. The foundation maintains Stellar's codebase, supports the engineering, and business communities around the Stellar network. There are no shareholders in the foundation which allows it to remain neutral, equitable, and public.
The Lumen Token
Stellar wanted to make a network that was centered around a digital asset and not any one particular currency, so they created the lumen. It's the utility token of the network and allows the exchange between different types of currency. In order to set up an XLM wallet the network requires each wallet keep a minimum balance of lumen in their wallet, which is currently set at 1 lumen. This is a way to deter large scale bad actors from messing around with the network. There was originally 100 billion lumens minted at first but in 2019 the supply was cut to 50 billion and no more lumens will be minted.
Buy lumens (XLM) on Coinbase
Three Main Features of Stellar Lumens
The Network's Distributed Order Books
Stella works as LEDGER for accounting, it's constantly tracking transactions and ownership of money, but the thing that makes stellar so interesting is that there’s no accountant. Instead a network of computers are constantly checking and rechecking transactions, to accomplish this Stellar uses an algorithm called a Stellar Consensus Protocol. The protocol makes sure that every transaction will end up at it's intended address. For every account the ledger stores two pieces of information; what assets they own and what they would like to do with what they own. Every five seconds the balances and all the operations are then broadcast throughout the entire network and resolved. There are hundreds of nodes that are checking these operations throughout the world, and all this is public information so anyone can install the software and join the consensus process. So instead of having just one accountant verify all the different transactions, it’s like having hundreds of accountants all around the globe there to verify and come to a consensus about the transactions on the network.
Asset Issuance
Stellar Lumens is a open sourced financial infrastructure, so anyone can access it and use some of the tokens that are already available on the network (dollars, euros, bitcoin, pesos, yuan, etc.). You can issue your own assets you can trade tokens peer to peer can you can transfer digital currency as you send it. The way our banking system works now is there a bunch of different payment schemes for each region, each one is different in its own way which makes it difficult for them to interact with one another. What Stellar does is uses the same financial banking rails but it enables them all to work within one network. A company called AnchorUSD is doing just that on Stellar right now. Thousands of dollars of value is moved through their USDx token each day! This one to one relationship essentially makes money borderless and makes verifying transactions fast and easy.
Path-payments System
It's an innovative way to making and receiving international payments. It allows a user to send one currency and have the recipient receive another, maintaining the 1:1 ratio and all in one quick transaction.
According to stellar.org, this is how it works:
The sender in the U.S. holds dollar tokens and signals to the network they want to send peso tokens to the vendor.
The network searches through the decentralized exchange described above and finds the best price for the sender.
The network locks in the prices and amounts.
The sender confirms the transaction and the dollar tokens leave their account.
The transaction executes and the recipient gets the peso tokens. The payment is atomic and submitted to the network as a single transaction. Neither side can get “caught in the middle” and hold tokens they don’t want.
Why I like XLM
Stellar is decentralized, owner-less, scale-able and has already seen some institutional adoption, which I think are all the important things to look for when investing in crypto. It is a great project, the fees are incredibly low and transacting on the network is lightning fast, what more could you ask for in an asset!? The thing I like the most is that the price isn't very volatile. Sure, it's in the crypto-space so the price will fluctuate 5-10% in a day or two, but that's nothing compared to the rises and falls of Bitcoin, and some of the other cryptocurrencies. XLM is a way to lock in profits and shield yourself from the big price drops that happen during a bear market. Stellar actually says on it's website that “the platform was designed for stablecoins before stablecoin was even a word”
The future price of stellar lumens (XLM) looks as if it’s on the rise, some people predicting that it’s going to go to around $.50, others say a dollar, never even seen one article claiming that stellar will moon to five dollars! Check out this article for a more in depth look at the price of XLM
**This isn’t financial advice, and always do your own research before investing. Invest thing is a risky thing before just listening to me blindly check it out on your own see how you feel about it and make your own decisions.**
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