The biggest crypto airdrop in the history of crypto airdrops is the Stellar one. Remember, how $125,000,000 worth of Stellar Tokens (XLM), Lumens, were given away in exchange for users to sign up/log into their Blockchain.com wallet and verify their identity?
Probably, there will be more Lumens giveaway, that’s why in this blog post, AirdropAlert will simplify and deconstruct Stellar. The platform and the crypto.
First, we’ll look into Stellar as a platform – did you know that it enables cryptocurrency to fiat currency transfers across borders?
And then, you will find out about Lumens (XLM), crypto with over $1 billion market cap.
But first things first. Remember, how in the very beginning Stellar was just a Ripple’s fork?
Just a Ripple’s fork
The story of Jed McCaleb, co-founder of the Stellar Development foundation, starts in the distant past.
He started with the eDonkey2000 application, kept on going with the notorious Mt.Gox and later joined the team that created Ripple Labs before it was even called Ripple.
Due to some differences in views on the development of the project, McCaleb left Ripple (XRP) in June 2013. He cofounded Stellar Development Foundation in 2014. And this is where the story of the project began.
Initially, Stellar came along as a fork of Ripple back in 2014.
Now, there is almost no shared code, though you might find some similarities in projects’ missions.
Compare two definitions.
Stellar is an open-source, decentralized protocol for digital currency to fiat currency transfers which allows cross-border transactions between any pair of currencies.
Ripple purports to enable secure, instantly and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks.
Although,
Stellar is better?
Although those definitions might sound familiar, there are manifold differences.
First of all, Ripple is more centralized than Stellar.
Second, Ripple is creating a payments network with large financial institutions. There are over 75 big banks on its network. Bank of America, RBC, Standard Chartered etc.
In its turn, Stellar is targeting people of all income levels. Last but not least, there are fundamental technological differences.
Ripple uses a set of special nodes called “validating nodes”. Whenever 80% of them agree on the transaction, it gets transmitted to the ledger.
In Stellar, on the other hand, each node decides for itself which other nodes it trusts. The whole process is unique and called Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA).
This is what we will talk about in the next section.
Federated voting
In their blog post, the Stellar team members explain Federated voting somewhat like this.
You work at an office and have lunch every day. As a group, you try to choose the restaurant to go to.
You actually don’t need to decide if the whole group has already reached the consensus. But, say, you want to. Is there anything you can do about it?
Yes, let’s start with the fact that you remain open to the possibility of accepting McDonald’s. But you also might go with another option if enough of the group votes for something else.
When every member of a quorum, your coworkers, votes for McDonald’s, the quorum ratifies McDonald’s.
Later, nodes, or different groups, or quorums, exchange the message, and the whole network asserts McDonald’s.
This is the very basic explanation of the consensus Stellar works on.
Stellar (XLM) token
In 2018, the Stellar team announced 30 banks to use Lumens (XLM). With 60% of the South Pacific island’s retail corridor to use XLM, the price of the coin could moon.
But remember that every crypto is volatile, and you have to assess your every risk very carefully.
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How to create a Ripple (XRP) wallet? ← P R E V I O U S
N E X T → How to set up a Stellar (XLM) wallet
