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The Stellar network is a decentralized, fast, scalable, and uniquely sustainable blockchain built for financial products and services. The network launched in 2014 with the purpose of connecting the world's financial systems by offering a protocol for payment providers and financial institutions that facilitates near-instant global payments and currency exchanges. In 2024, Stellar released protocol 20, enabling full-featured smart contracts to the network. The network is transforming international payments and remittances through safer, faster, and more affordable solutions, and connecting real-world assets to DeFi to enable comprehensive everyday financial services.
The Stellar network’s native digital currency - Lumens (“XLM”) - is used to pay the network’s transaction fees. (XLM can also be used as an intermediate currency for operations. How it works: the protocol converts money in a few seconds, first into XLM, and then into the requested currency.)
Stellar's unique Proof-of-Agreement (PoA) consensus mechanism – the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) – differs from both Proof of Stake and Proof of Work. SCP is designed to secure the network through reputation rather than through computing resources or staked crypto tokens. All Stellar validators are required to have a publicly-accessible and verifiable record identifying themselves, building trust within the network. By design, Stellar does not provide onchain financial incentives to run validators, nor does it rely on stake or hash power to secure the network. Instead organizations run nodes for network benefit and collaborate to reach a network-wide agreement about the validity of transactions.
Stellar is a proven platform for asset issuance; many well-known institutions select Stellar as their preferred network for bringing real-world assets (RWAs) onchain. The network's speed and low fees, robust asset issuance framework, compliance tools, and anchor network provide financial institutions the infrastructure needed to tokenize assets while maintaining regulatory compliance. This approach has attracted significant RWA volume, with hundreds of millions of dollars in stablecoins, tokenized funds, and other real-world assets flowing through the network daily. It has also led to groundbreaking implementations like Franklin Templeton's BENJI fund, the first U.S. registered money market fund on a public blockchain.
Stellar's smart contract platform extends the network's capabilities to support sophisticated financial applications while maintaining Stellar's core principles of efficiency and accessibility. Built with Rust and WebAssembly, Soroban prioritizes performance through features like deterministic concurrency and multi-dimensional fees, enabling complex operations with predictable costs and sub-five-second finality. Security is foundational, with Rust's memory safety guarantees, no-reentrancy design, and an authorization-required framework that makes it difficult to introduce vulnerabilities. Unlike general-purpose platforms, Soroban is purpose-built for financial applications, supporting everything from decentralized exchanges and lending protocols to tokenized assets. This aligns with Stellar's purpose to connect traditional finance with blockchain technology, providing developers the tools to build real-world everyday financial services that are scalable, secure, and accessible to users worldwide.
What Is Soroban and How Does It Enhance Stellar's Capabilities?
Soroban is Stellar's smart contract platform released in 2024 with Protocol 20. Built with Rust and WebAssembly, it enables sophisticated financial applications while maintaining Stellar's efficiency and accessibility. Soroban prioritizes performance with features like deterministic concurrency and multi-dimensional fees, allowing complex operations with predictable costs and sub-five-second finality. Unlike general-purpose platforms, it's specifically designed for financial applications.
How Does Stellar Support Cross-Border Payments?
Stellar's network is amongst the best blockchains for cross-border payments through its multi-currency transaction support. The protocol converts money in seconds by first converting it to XLM and then to the requested currency. This process, combined with ultra-fast consensus and low transaction costs, makes Stellar ideal for remittance applications and international payments, offering significant advantages over traditional methods.
How Is Stellar Addressing DeFi Adoption?
With its smart contract capabilities, Stellar now supports a full range of DeFi applications from decentralized exchanges and lending protocols to tokenized assets, all while maintaining its core principles of efficiency and accessibility. Soroban's purpose-built financial focus allows developers to create scalable, secure, and accessible financial services that connect traditional finance with blockchain technology.
Is XLM the same as XRP?
No, XLM and XRP are different cryptocurrencies built on different networks.
XLM (Stellar Lumens) is the native cryptocurrency of the Stellar network, it's a separate project with different founding principles, technology, and governance than Ripple/XRP.
How is the Stellar network secured?
The network maintains a very high level of security. Unlike other Proof-of-Stake mechanisms, network validators are not financially incentivized to process transactions. The Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) is also resilient to attacks by allowing nodes to agree on something safely and preventing double-spend attacks, which is a construction of the Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA). FBA differs from other well-known consensus mechanisms like Proof of Work (which relies on a node’s computational power) and Proof of Stake (which relies on a node’s staking power) by instead relying on the agreement of trusted nodes. Additionally, XLM holders must have at least one token in order to remain active on the network. This nuance performs a global goal - the execution of network transactions efficiently and with minimal time costs. Plus, Lumens offers protection against flood attacks by making microtransactions too expensive for hackers with no chance of profit, which keeps Stellar network safer from malicious attacks on the network.
Security is also a key pillar of the network's smart contract platform. Soroban's approach to security starts with its foundation in Rust, a language endorsed by cybersecurity experts. It has strong memory safety guarantees – eliminating entire classes of vulnerabilities – and extensive tooling and compiler checks to catch potential issues early in development. The platform strategically disallows reentrancy, preventing a common attack vector responsible for some of blockchain's largest hacks while implementing an authorization-required framework that replaces traditional blanket permissions with specific, limited authorizations. This granular approach significantly reduces the attack surface, protecting users from potential exploits while requiring minimal code implementation—making Soroban secure by design.
Who Are the Founders of Stellar?
Jed McCaleb founded Stellar with the lawyer Joyce Kim after leaving Ripple in 2013 over disagreements about the company’s future direction.
In explaining the rationale behind Stellar in September 2020, McCaleb told CoinMarketCap: “The whole original design of Stellar is that you can have fiat currencies and other kinds of forms of value run in parallel with each other and with crypto assets. This is super important to drive this stuff mainstream.”
McCaleb’s goal is to ensure that Stellar can give people a way of moving their fiat into crypto — and eliminate the friction that people normally experience when they are sending money around the world.
He currently serves as the CTO of Stellar, as well as the co-founder of the Stellar Development Foundation. This not-for-profit organization aims to “unlock the world’s economic potential by making money more fluid, markets more open, and people more empowered.”
In summary, the benefits of the Stellar network include:
Ultra fast low-cost blockchain optimized for scalable payment solutions
A global ramp network that connects digital assets to regulated financial institutions and existing payment rails
Enterprise grade security and features optimized for RWA tokenization
A smart contract platform to build scalable DeFi applications
What Makes Stellar Unique
Stellar distinguishes itself from other blockchain networks through several key features designed for everyday financial use. At its core, Stellar offers exceptional transaction speed and efficiency, with confirmation times below 6 seconds and transaction costs of 0.00001 XLM (fractions of a penny). Making it the cheapest network to send payments at scale - and considerably more cost-effective than traditional financial services.
Stellar bridges traditional finance and digital assets through the industry’s most extensive on and off-ramp infrastructure (also known as the Anchor Network). Early on, SDF recognized mainstream adoption will require seamless movement between physical cash and crypto assets. This insight led to the development of the Stellar Anchor Network, an unmatched system of over 450,000 cash-to-crypto ramp locations worldwide that connects blockchain technology with existing banking systems and payment rails. This vast network—spanning 180+ countries—creates a critical infrastructure layer that traditional financial institutions can leverage to offer blockchain-based services on a single, seamless platform. By focusing on this fundamental requirement for mass adoption, Stellar is at the intersection of traditional and digital finance, enabling users globally to access blockchain-based financial services regardless of their banking status or technical expertise.
The network's consensus mechanism differs significantly from energy-intensive and financial driven consensus mechanisms. Stellar uses a Federated Byzantine Agreement or Proof-of-Agreement (PoA) approach where each node selects trustworthy validators rather than requiring the entire network to validate transactions. This design not only increases speed but dramatically reduces energy consumption compared to proof-of-work systems.
Strategic partnerships with companies like Moneygram International, Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, PayPal and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have made Stellar the go-to network for global real-world adoption for everyday financial services.
How Does Stellar Support RWA Tokenization
The Stellar network is one of the best blockchains for tokenization. Here are a couple reasons why institutions like WisdomTree and Franklin Templeton have selected to issue assets on Stellar:
Native Asset Support and Stellar Asset Contracts (SAC)
One of Stellar's most powerful features is its first-class support for asset tokenization. Unlike many blockchains that require complex smart contract development, Stellar allows you to issue assets using simple built-in transactions. This native functionality means you can create tokens without writing any smart contract code, significantly reducing development time and potential security vulnerabilities. The Stellar Asset Contract (SAC) is compiled directly into the protocol layer, providing a standardized interface for smart contracts to interact with any Stellar asset. This means every asset automatically benefits from smart contract compatibility without additional development work.
Comprehensive Issuer Controls and Compliance Features
Stellar provides granular control mechanisms that are essential for regulated asset tokenization. Issuers can implement authorization requirements, meaning they must approve which accounts can hold their assets - perfect for KYC/AML compliance. The platform also supports freeze functionality, allowing issuers to freeze assets in specific accounts if needed for regulatory reasons. Additionally, Stellar offers clawback capabilities, enabling issuers to reverse transactions when required by law. These features make Stellar particularly attractive for tokenizing traditional financial assets like securities, bonds, or regulated stablecoins, as they provide the compliance tools necessary to meet regulatory requirements across different jurisdictions.
Efficient Cross-Border Payments and Asset Exchange
Stellar's built-in decentralized exchange (DEX) and path payment functionality make it ideal for tokenized assets that need liquidity and exchangeability. The network can automatically find the best exchange path between any two assets, enabling seamless cross-border transactions. This is particularly valuable for stablecoins and fiat-backed tokens, as users can easily convert between different currencies without leaving the Stellar ecosystem. The network's fast transaction times (3-5 seconds) and low fees (fractions of a cent) make it practical for both large institutional transfers and micropayments.
Strong Anchor Ecosystem and Real-World Integration
Stellar's anchor system provides crucial bridges between the blockchain and traditional financial systems. Anchors are regulated financial institutions that issue tokens backed by real-world assets and handle the on/off ramps for fiat currencies. This established infrastructure means that tokenized assets on Stellar can easily connect to existing banking rails and payment systems. The global Stellar anchor directory showcases numerous institutions already providing these services, creating a ready-made ecosystem for new tokenization projects. This integration with traditional finance, combined with Stellar's technical capabilities, makes it an ideal platform for projects looking to tokenize real-world assets while maintaining regulatory compliance and operational efficiency.
What role does XLM play in Stellar’s Ecosystem
Unlike some cryptocurrencies, XLM's primary purpose is to facilitate operations within the Stellar ecosystem rather than solely serving as a speculative asset. XLM (Lumens) serves as the native digital currency of the Stellar network with multiple crucial functions. It acts as an intermediary currency for multi-currency transactions, facilitating seamless conversions between different currencies. XLM is also used to pay transaction fees on the network, helping prevent spam transactions. Additionally, users must maintain a minimum balance of XLM to remain active on the network, which helps with network security and efficiency.
The live Stellar price today is $0.437060 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $412,321,248 USD. We update our XLM to USD price in real-time. Stellar is down 0.54% in the last 24 hours. The current CoinMarketCap ranking is #13, with a live market cap of $13,617,918,075 USD. It has a circulating supply of 31,158,021,456 XLM coins and a max. supply of 50,001,806,812 XLM coins.