Stellar review: Beginners guide
Stellar (XLM) – Cross-border asset transfer network
Industry type: International internet banking
Stellar XLM is a decentralised network developed and operated by the Stellar.org none-for-profit organization, designed to aid financial institutions and unbanked countries with international transfers via the XLM network using its native tokens (lumens) as a bridging-currency.
What Gives it value?:
- Decentralised
- Low fees
- High Speeds
- International
- Works with the banking industry.
Interesting Technology:
- The term ‘anchor’ refers to a trusted party that acts as a bridge between an established currency and the XLM network, so clients can deposit their money to the anchor who issues a credit that is ready to be exchanged on the XLM network.
- XLM lumens (XLM) are the bridging cryptocurrency that is native to the XLM network for the use of the desired inter-currency and international transactions.
- Decentralised application tokens can be created on the XLM network similar to Ethereum.
Notable team:
- Jed McCaleb is an American programmer and entrepreneur who is the co-founder of XLM. McCaleb was originally the chief technology officer for Ripple but left in 2013 to create XLM due to opposing ideologies. McCaleb is also the renowned creator of the Mt.Gox crypto exchange.
- Joyce Kim is an international Lawyer and co-founder of XLM. Kim was the CEO of the K-Pop website Soompi, as well as the co-founder of mobile commerce startup SimpleHoney.
Notable partnerships:
- French remittance provider Tempo money transfer, services over 43 countries and is a XLM anchor.
- Coins.ph, a top South East Asian mobile financial service provider and XLM anchor.
- Ripple Fox, a Chinese based XLM anchor servicing financial transactions for financial clients.
- Since October 2017, IBM has been building enterprise-level products upon the XLM network.
Stellar Review: The Good
- Stellar.org is a non-for-profit organisation that relies on the funds raised from its ICO and donations.
- XLM promotes a vision creating banking access to the previously unbanked and for the XLM services to provide more from the bottom up rather than the top down.
- XLM receives World-class expert support from the founders of WordPress, Angellist, and the CEO of Irish online payment platform Stripe.
Stellar Review: The Bad
- Although the XLM network is decentralised, anchors are centralised entities that clients will need to trust to use the network.
- Jed McCaleb has a rocky reputation in the cryptocurrency community as the founder of Mt.Gox, the exchange that was hacked in the greatest Bitcoin heist in history, although McCaleb had already sold the company prior.
Future Roadmap:
- SDEX is a prototype decentralised exchange built specifically for XLM based tokens to be finished by the end of 2018.
- The Lightning network is planned to be integrated alongside the XLM blockchain in 2018.
Conclusion:
In my opinion, at the time of writing this review XLM has working technology backed by world-class partnerships and an experienced team. XLM’s mission to focus on helping smaller countries that get the short end of international transfers, namely countries in the Pacific Islands, appears to be a worthy endeavour that brings real-world solutions to those in need. Although XLM shares many similarities with Ripple, it has enough significant points of difference to fill a particular niche in the market without losing to its competitor.
Stellar Price :
The current Stellar Price, market cap and charts.
Local exchanges:
Coinspot: www.coinspot.com.au
Overseas exchanges:
Bitfinex: www.bitfinex.com
CEX.io: https://cex.io/
Indacoin: https://indacoin.com/
Kraken: www.kraken.com
Changelly: https://changelly.com/
Where to store this crypto:
Hardware wallet: www.bitgear.com.au
Desktop wallet: https://www.https://www.stellar.org/lumens/wallets/
Online wallet: https://stronghold.co/
Mobile wallet: https://lobstr.co/
Similar coins:
Ripple (XRP) – Platform and exchange for inter-bank transactions
IOTA (MIOTA) – Next-generation public ledger
Bloom (BLT) – Blockchain leveraging solution.
Tether (USDT) – A stable coin tied to the US dollar.
Further information:
Litecoin Whitepaper: www.https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/XLM/
Website: https://www.https://www.stellar.org/