Stellar's Niche in the Crypto Ecosystem

TidesNetwork

Hi GalacticTalk members,

I have been thinking a lot about the role that Stellar fills in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and as my knowledge of Stellar grows, I am getting more excited about what it can be.

The objective of this post is to throw my thoughts out there, and have it it audited by the Stellar community.

Stellar and Ethereum; Non-competitive platforms that do similar things

Stellar and Ethereum both allow for DApps, Smart Contracts, and ICOs. A basic level of knowledge about cryptocurrency might cause you to think that these platforms are therefore competing with each other, because they do the same things. However, this is more false than it is true. The KEY difference that makes Stellar and Ethereum WHOLLY different is that Ethereum is a Turing-Complete platform, and Stellar is not.

For those who don't know what Turing-Completeness is, a Turing Complete computer is a computer that has no limitations on what kind of program is able to run on-top of it. A Turing Complete computer goes all the way down to 1's and 0's at its core. The difference between an flip-phone and a smartphone is that a smartphone is Turing Complete, and a flip-phone isn't.

Ethereum being Turing-Complete is what allows it to boast so many cool tokens and DApp designs; the possibilities are literally endless. However, being Turing-Complete naturally has drawbacks
- Heavy computational loads (high gas-costs),
- Slow transaction times,
- BUGS.

Stellar excels at what it does because it is NOT Turing-Complete. Stellar keeps things simple, and because of that, is rewarded with enormous features.
NOT being Turing-Complete allows for
- Super-fast transaction times
- No gas costs
- Simplicity in DApp design

So when a company or startup comes up with a viable blockchain token model, they have to ask themselves if they need to have a Turing-Complete platform to run their DApp, or if something more simple is required.

Here's where my punchline comes.

Any industry that has a SPREADSHEET at its foundation, can be ported onto Stellar. Stellar is the spreadsheet-platform.
- Banking
- Insurance
- Subscriptions
- Derivative markets
- please help me expand this list

All these industries can be put into the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and Stellar seems to me as the best platform to get that done. These industries have
- High transaction volumes
- High transaction value
- Require instant transaction times
Ethereum simply is not the platform to get that done. BUT, cryptocurrency doesn't mean that these industries don't have the option to innovate. Stellar is how these industries are going to become more modern, and move away from their paper-based accounting system.

Please, help me continue my thoughts and tell me if I am missing something, or went to far with anything else. Stellar is quickly catching my attention due to the reasons listed. The fact that it is also open-source only furthers my belief in the project.

Stellar: "bringing the old-world into the cryptocurrency ecosystem"

Torkus

Talking about tokens there is nothing simpler than "gimme one million tokens with this symbol" and that's it, Stellar excels at that. Assets are sent, received, traded, and there is no need for Turing completeness in this particular scenario. Now dApps are different beasts and for that you need Turing completeness. Stellar can easily allow dApps with a few simple changes to the core but they have no intention to do that for now (I hope they reconsider).

Also winning points in my opinion are almost instant transactions with the lowest fees necessary to keep the network healthy and protected from attacks, and the decentralized exchange SDEX is killer, now recent coins are adopting that strategy like Nano, Komodo, etc.

There are so many things that can be improved like privacy, federation, storage, dApps, marketplace, etc but I guess things move slowly for my taste, still Stellar is one of the best platforms out there and deserves its place in the top ten.