What is Stellar?
Stellar is an open-source, distributed payments infrastructure.
It is a platform that connects banks, payment systems, and people to facilitate low-cost, cross-border transactions. Stellar’s distributed ledger records every transaction that takes place on the network. The Stellar network was created in 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim as a fork of the Ripple protocol.
The main difference between the two protocols is that Stellar does not require users to trust any third party or central authority to use its services. Instead, it relies on a consensus algorithm called the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) to ensure that all transactions are valid and secure. The Stellar network also has its own native cryptocurrency called Lumens (XLM).
Lumens are used to pay for transaction fees on the network and can also be used as a store of value or traded on exchanges for other cryptocurrencies or fiat currencies. Stellar has been designed with scalability in mind and can process up to 1,000 transactions per second. It also supports smart contracts, allowing developers to create decentralized applications (dApps) on top of the platform.
These dApps can be used for a variety of purposes such as creating digital wallets, issuing tokens, tracking assets, and more.
