Welcome to our community!
Stellar is a decentralized protocol that enables you to send money to anyone in the world, for free, instantly and in any currency.
If you are new to Stellar you can be easily overwhelmed with information while trying to understand how everything fits together. This guide tries to break down and explain the Stellar ecosystem. And give you pointers where to look if you need additional information about some topics.
Stellar platform
Stellar is also the name of the technology and network developed by the Stellar Development Foundation. At its core the Stellar platform is a distributed ledger, which is maintained by a consensus algorithm rather than mining. You can read more about the Stellar Consensus Protocol here.
The Stellar ledger is not limited to one currency/asset. It allows anyone to create their own. Lumens (XLM) are the currency that is native to the network and not created by anyone, similar to bitcoin. Stellar.org will give away 95% of all Lumens.
The first codebase of Stellar was based on Ripple and didn't scale well in a decentralised environment. At one point this caused the Stellar network to fail. Because of this Stellar.org decided to write a new implementation from scratch with security and scalability in mind. Nowadays, Stellar is a battle tested network carrying thousands of transactions daily and used by many orgranizations around the world.
The Stellar network has many additional features. It's also a completely distributed exchange:
"This means users can, for example, send a transaction from their Yen balance and have it arrive in Euros, Yen, or even bitcoin. We’re expecting to support the usual categories of transactions: payments to a merchant, remittances back home, or rent splits with a roommate." - Joyce Kim
It supports thousands of transactions per second with a confirmation time that is less than 5 seconds.
A nice read is also Patrick's story Harry Potter And The Cryptocurrency of Stars, where he tries to explain the Stellar network set inside the Harry Potter universe.
A short history of Stellar
The first blog post announcing Stellar was written in July 2014 by Joyce Kim, one of the co-founders of the Stellar Development Foundation.
The Stellar Development Foundation (Stellar.org) incorporated itself as a not-for-profit organization with the main goal to expand financial access and literacy worldwide. More information about the mission of Stellar.org can be found in the mandate.
Initially Stellar.org got an $3M investment from the Silicon Valley giant Stripe in exchange for 2B Lumens.
In May 2016 Joyce stepped down as Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation and passed her role on Jed McCaleb.
Jed wrote a blog post in May 2016 explaining Stellar.org's roadmap.
He puts a lot of weight into Nigeria's financial ecosystem, while continuously improving the technology.
In the meantime stellar announced many other partnerships across the globe, including ICICI Bank in India.
On the 11th of May 2017 Stellar.org announced Lightyear.io, a for-profit company that will focus on providing services and support for new and existing partners, developing tools that make integration easier and providing functions above the low level Stellar protocol.
In late 2017 IBM announced a partnership with Stellar.org to move money across borders throughout the South Pacific.
The banking network includes "12 currency corridors" that encompass Australia and New Zealand, as well as smaller countries like Fiji and Tonga. It will reportedly process up to 60 percent of all cross-border payments in the South Pacific's retail foreign exchange corridors by early next year.
In their 2018 roadmap Stellar.org said their main focus are going to be 2 things:
- Building a front-end for the Stellar Decentralised Exchange (SDEX).
- Integrating private channel transactions in form of the Lightning network.
In March 2019, Denelle Dixon joined as CEO, bringing experience from Mozilla, while Jed McCaleb moved to Chief Architect.
In October 2021, MoneyGram partnered with Stellar to enable blockchain-powered cross-border payments using USDC, launching a global crypto-to-cash service in 2022.
Stellar announced Soroban smart contracts in March 2022, which launched on mainnet in March 2024 with a $100M adoption fund.
Franklin Templeton launched the first US-registered tokenized money market fund on Stellar in 2021, growing to over $780M by 2024, with peer-to-peer transfers enabled in April 2024.
In December 2022, Stellar partnered with UNHCR to deliver blockchain-based cash assistance to Ukrainian refugees using USDC.
UNDP and Stellar announced a partnership in January 2025 to advance blockchain solutions for financial inclusion worldwide.
And there are many other great things yet to come. The future looks bright for Stellar!
Technology behind Stellar
Stellar.org's website has many great resources to better understand the Stellar platform.
On the Into to Stellar page you can find links to almost everything you need to know about Stellar.
To learn more about smart contracts on Stellar check out the Soroban page.
If you are a developer and wish to integrate your product with the Stellar platform the developer docs is full of great resources.
The official Stellar Github account can be a good starting point for developers too.
The Stellar Community Fund
Would you like to build something on Stellar? The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) is an open-application program that provides funding and support for projects building on the Stellar network. Whether you're integrating Stellar into an existing product or building something completely new. The SCF can help bring your ideas to life!
The fund offers two main pathways: the SCF Kickstart (formerly Startup Camp), a 5-day bootcamp for early-stage ideas that awards up to $15,000 in XLM, and the SCF Build Award, which provides up to $150,000 in XLM for more developed projects ready to launch. Since 2019, the SCF has awarded over $25 million to more than 400 projects, making it one of the most active blockchain grant programs in the space.
Applications are reviewed every 4 weeks, and the community plays a crucial role in the selection process through an innovative voting mechanism. Projects building with Soroban can also access free security audits through the Soroban Audit Bank. To get started, check out the SCF Handbook for complete guidelines, join the discussions on Discord, and submit your application at communityfund.stellar.org.
After launching on mainnet, successful projects can pursue additional growth opportunities through the SDF Marketing Fund, Matching Fund, and connections to accelerator programs. The SCF truly supports projects from ideation all the way to sustainable growth!
How can I get some Lumens (XLM)?
If you wish to acquire Lumens you can buy them on a cryptocurrency exchanges, like Kraken or Coinbase.
