Stellar (payment network)

Stellar

Original author(s)|

* Jed McCaleb
* Joyce Kim

Developer(s)| Stellar Development Foundation
Initial release| July 31, 2014; 12 years ago (2014-07-31)
Written in| C++, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby
Operating system| Cross-platform
Type| Blockchain
License| Apache License 2.0
Website| stellar.org
Lumen

Denominations
Plural| lumens
Symbol|

Ticker symbol| XLM
Precision| 10−7
Subunits|
​1⁄10000000| stroop
Development
White paper| The Stellar Consensus Protocol: A Federated Model for Internet-level Consensus[1]
Initial release| July 31, 2014; 12 years ago (2014-07-31)
Development status| Active
Website| stellar.org
Ledger
Supply limit| 50 billion

Stellar, or Stellar Lumens, is an open-source, decentralized protocol for digital currency to fiat money low-cost transfers which allows cross-border transactions between any pair of currencies.[2] The Stellar protocol is supported by a Delaware nonprofit corporation, the Stellar Development Foundation, though this organization does not enjoy 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status with the IRS.[3][4]

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 Usage
* 3 Ecosystem
* 4 Overview
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 External links

## History

In 2014, Jed McCaleb, founder of Mt. Gox and co-founder of Ripple, launched the network system Stellar with former lawyer Joyce Kim. Before the official launch, McCaleb formed a website called "Secret Bitcoin Project" seeking alpha testers.[5] The nonprofit Stellar Development Foundation was created in collaboration with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and the project officially launched that July. Stellar received $3 million in seed funding from Stripe.[6][7] Stellar was released as a decentralized payment network and protocol with a native currency, stellar. At its launch, the network had 100 billion stellars. 25 percent of those would be given to other non-profits working toward financial inclusion.[8][9] Stripe received 2 percent or 2 billion of the initial stellar in return for its seed investment.[10] The cryptocurrency, originally known as stellar, was later called Lumens or XLM.[11] In August 2014, Mercado Bitcoin, the first Brazilian bitcoin exchange, announced it would be using the Stellar network.[12] By January 2015, Stellar had approximately 3 million registered user accounts on its platform and its market cap was almost $15 million.[13]

The Stellar Development Foundation released an upgraded protocol with a new consensus algorithm in April 2015 which went live in November 2015.[14] The new algorithm used SCP, a cryptocurrency protocol created by Stanford professor David Mazières.[15]

Lightyear.io, a for-profit entity of Stellar, was launched in May 2017 as the commercial arm of the company.[16] In September 2017, Stellar announced a benefits program, part of its Stellar Partnership Grant Program, which would award partners up to $2 million worth of Lumens for project development. In September 2018, Lightyear Corporation acquired Chain, Inc and the combined company was named Interstellar.[17]

In 2021, Franklin Templeton launched the first “tokenised” US mutual fund using Stellar.[18]

## Usage

In 2015, it was announced that Stellar was releasing an integration into Vumi, the open-sourced messaging platform of the Praekelt Foundation in South Africa .[19] Vumi uses cellphone talk time as currency using the Stellar protocol.[20] Stellar partnered with cloud-based banking software company Oradian in April 2015 to integrate Stellar into Oradian's banking platform to add microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Nigeria.[21][22]

Deloitte announced its integration with Stellar in 2016 to build a cross-border payments application, Deloitte Digital Bank.[23] In December 2016, it was announced that Stellar's payment network had expanded to include Coins.ph, a mobile payments startup in the Philippines, ICICI Bank in India, African mobile payments firm Flutterwave, and French remittances company Tempo Money Transfer.[24]

In October 2017, Stellar partnered with IBM and KlickEx to facilitate cross-border transactions in the South Pacific region. The cross-border payment system developed by IBM includes partnerships with banks in the area.[25][26] The Lumens digital currency was ranked 13th in market capitalization at the time of the IBM partnership.[27]

In December 2017, TechCrunch announced Stellar's partnership with SureRemit, a Nigerian-based non-cash remittances platform.[28]

On January 6, 2021, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine announced cooperation and partnership with Stellar in development of Ukraine digital infrastructure, after which Stellar value increased by 40%.[29]

## Ecosystem

Stellar has an active community ecosystem and supports projects that utilize the Stellar Network with the Stellar Community Fund.[30]

## Overview

Stellar is an open-source protocol for exchanging money or tokens using the Stellar Consensus Protocol.[1] The platform's source code is hosted on GitHub.

Servers run a software implementation of the protocol, and use the Internet to connect to and communicate with other Stellar servers. Each server stores a ledger of all the accounts in the network. 3 nodes are operated by the Stellar Development Foundation, in conjunction with 21 other organizations, providing for a total of 66 validator nodes.[31] Transactions among accounts occur not through mining but rather through a consensus process among accounts in a quorum slice.[32] The current network fee is 100 stroops, equivalent to 0.00001 XLM.[33]

## See also

* Blockchain-based remittances companies

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Mazieres, David (25 February 2016). "The Stellar Consensus Protocol: A Federated Model for Internet-level Consensus". https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf.
2. ↑ Ben Dickson (January 30, 2018). "Can blockchain democratize education? This startup seems to think so". The Next Web. https://thenextweb.com/insider/2018/01/30/can-blockchain-democratize-education-this-startup-seems-to-think-so/.
3. ↑ "Stellar FAQ". https://www.stellar.org/community/faq.
4. ↑ Jillian D’onfro (31 July 2014). "PayPal's Cofounder Is Supporting A New Non-Profit That Will Tackle The Vision PayPal 'Never Accomplished'". Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/keith-rabois-stellar-foundation-2014-7.
5. ↑ "Mt. Gox, Ripple Founder Unveils Stellar, a New Digital Currency Project". Wall Street Journal. 31 July 2014. https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/07/31/mt-gox-ripple-founder-unveils-stellar-a-new-digital-currency-project/.
6. ↑ "New Bitcoin challenger launches". https://fortune.com/2014/07/31/stripe-launches-bitcoin-challenger-gives-it-away-for-free/.
7. ↑ Michael del Castillo (5 August 2014). "Stripe takes on bitcoin with rival digital currency Stellar". The Irish Times. http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/stripe-takes-on-bitcoin-with-rival-digital-currency-stellar-1.1887360.
8. ↑ "Payment processor Stripe helps launch a new currency, the Stellar". 31 July 2014. https://venturebeat.com/2014/07/31/payment-processor-stripe-launches-a-new-currency-the-stellar/.
9. ↑ "PayPal's Cofounder Is Supporting A New Non-Profit That Will Tackle The Vision PayPal 'Never Accomplished'". http://www.businessinsider.com/keith-rabois-stellar-foundation-2014-7.
10. ↑ "Stripe Backs Non-Profit Decentralized Payment Network Stellar, From Mt. Gox's Original Creator". 31 July 2014. https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/31/stripe-backs-non-profit-decentralized-payment-network-stellar-from-mt-goxs-original-creator/.
11. ↑ "2 Game-Changing New Cryptocurrencies With Serious Backing". http://www.nasdaq.com/article/2-game-changing-new-cryptocurrencies-with-serious-backing-cm907959.
12. ↑ Metz, Cade. "New Digital Currency Aims to Unite Every Money System on Earth". Wired. https://www.wired.com/2014/08/new-digital-currency-aims-to-unite-every-money-system-on-earth/.
13. ↑ "Tech in Asia - Connecting Asia's startup ecosystem". https://www.techinasia.com/stellar-asia-growth.
14. ↑ Cade Metz (8 April 2015). "An Algorithm to Make Online Currency as Trustworthy as Cash". WIRED (Condé Nast). https://www.wired.com/2015/04/stanford-prof-builds-algorithm-internet-money/. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
15. ↑ Tom Simonite (April 15, 2015). "A New Competitor for Bitcoin Aims to Be Faster and Safer". https://www.technologyreview.com/s/536641/a-new-competitor-for-bitcoin-aims-to-be-faster-and-safer/.
16. ↑ Jeff John Roberts (May 11, 2017). "Stripe-Backed Stellar Places a New Bet on Blockchain in the Developing World". Fortune. http://fortune.com/2017/05/11/lightyear-blockchain/.
17. ↑ "Blockchain Startup Chain Merges With Stellar to Accelerate Use". 10 September 2018. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-10/blockchain-startup-chain-merges-with-stellar-to-accelerate-use.
18. ↑ Noonan, Laura (2021-12-10). "Blockchain-powered breakthrough on mutual fund". Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/fd57521c-a2e9-415b-9c4f-4f74b4587f9e.
19. ↑ Biz Carson (5 February 2015). "Stellar, South African nonprofit to bring digital savings to young girls". GigaOm. https://gigaom.com/2015/02/05/stellar-south-african-nonprofit-to-bring-digital-savings-to-young-girls/.
20. ↑ Tom Simonite (20 February 2015). "Bitcoin-Inspired Digital Currency to Power Mobile Savings App". MIT Technology Review. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/535271/bitcoin-inspired-digital-currency-to-power-mobile-savings-app/.
21. ↑ Karen Webster (2 March 2015). "Stellar and Solving the Unexpected Tragedy of the Financial System". PYMENTS.com. http://www.pymnts.com/exclusive-series/2015/stellar-and-solving-the-unexpected-tragedy-of-the-financial-system/#.VTmJ7pR4pBD.
22. ↑ Paul Vigna (28 February 2015). "Stellar Takes a Step Into the Microfinance World". Wall Street Journal. https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/02/28/bitbeat-stellar-takes-a-step-into-the-microfinance-world/.
23. ↑ Diana Asatryan (May 3, 2016). "Deloitte Taps Blockchain Startups to Build New Core Banking System". Bank Innovation. https://bankinnovation.net/2016/05/deloitte-taps-blockchain-startups-to-build-new-core-banking-system/.
24. ↑ FORTUNE. "Stripe-Backed Stellar Kicks Off Worldwide Money Transfers". http://fortune.com/2016/12/06/fintech-stellar-blockchain-stripe-remittances/.
25. ↑ "Stellar jumps 20% after Stripe says it may add support for the digital coin". 24 January 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/24/stellar-jumps-20-percent-after-stripe-says-it-may-add-support-for-the-digital-coin.html.
26. ↑ "IBM and Stellar Launch Blockchain Banking Across Multiple Countries". https://fortune.com/crypto/2017/10/16/ibm-blockchain-stellar/.
27. ↑ IBM has a new blockchain for banks to speed up cross-border payments Ryan Browne, CNBC , 18 October 2017
28. ↑ Jake, Bright. "Africa's SureRemit joins the tokenized race to win the global remittance market". https://techcrunch.com/.
29. ↑ "Мінцифра співпрацюватиме зі Stellar Development Foundation над розвитком ринку віртуальних активів". https://thedigital.gov.ua/news/mintsifra-spivpratsyuvatime-zi-stellar-development-foundation-nad-rozvitkom-rinku-virtualnikh-aktiviv.
30. ↑ "Stellar Community Fund". https://communityfund.stellar.org/.
31. ↑ "Stellarbeat.io - Stellar network visibility". https://stellarbeat.io/.
32. ↑ Tom Simonite (15 April 2015). "A New Competitor for Bitcoin Aims to Be Faster and Safer". MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/04/15/110663/a-new-competitor-for-bitcoin-aims-to-be-faster-and-safer/.
33. ↑ contributors, Stellar org and. "Transaction Fees, Minimum Balances, and Surge Pricing | Stellar Developers" (in en). https://www.stellar.org/developers/guides/concepts/fees.html.

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