Before we delve into the procedure that allows one to add a trustline on Stellar, you must understand what anchors are all about. In simplest words possible, anchors on stellar are authorities that can issue assets. If you have ever wondered as to what turns a real-world deposit into a token balance on Stellar, you have your answer now. Not only that, anchors allow withdrawals for the tokens they issue as well. Skipping the many nitty-gritty that will only bore you, a key thing to remember about anchors is that there can be more than one anchors for the same entity e.g. USD. The choice is yours!
What are trustlines?
We now come towards the point around which this discussion has been orchestrated. What ARE trustlines? Well, trustlines are equivalent to your expectations from a service provider (we are talking about payment services here of course). Only, the difference here is that trustlines are added to a user’s Stellar account. These let a user hold a token, and not only that, they allow a user to specify the token amount as well. It is imperative to note here that without establishing a trustline an anchor’s account on Stellar, you cannot trade/hold/receive any assets on the platform.
What are some of the key features of trustlines?
A notable feature of trustlines is that they make sure a user doesn’t become a recipient of any assets that he or she did not want in the first place. Now coming towards the more technical side of things, we know some of you have been worrying about the fee and everything. Well, users need to maintain an account balance of 0.5 lumens, each time they are setting up a trustline. So, you can think of that as a reserve fee, one that cannot be spent. It is important to mention here that trustlines are setup using the Change Trust operation.
How to set up a trustline on stellar?
Let us break it down into simpler points for better understanding. We don’t want you to be confused!
1- First, go to the setting tab in your wallet, and click on the option Manage Trustlines.
2- A search window will open up, one that allows one to search through every single Stellar asset.
3- Once you have found the asset that you were after, click accept.
4- Your asset will show up in your wallet balance, 0.5 lumens will be added to the reserve.
5- Trustline has been added on Stellar.
Summary
That was easy, won’t you agree? Once you have added the desired trustline, you can do everything related and allowed to that on Stellar. Whether it is trading or storing, sending or receiving, you should be able to deal with the asset that you added. One key thing that we would like to highlight here is that even though an asset, say USD for example, is added this way if you opt for another anchor, you will have to go through all of these steps again.
