What is the secret of Stellar’s popularity?

Against the background of ten-year-old bitcoin, Stellar is a young project. In 2014, it was launched by Jed McCaleb (short history of stellar), known as the creator of the scandalous Mt.Gox exchange and the Ripple payment system. As is customary in the cryptocurrency world, the Ripple and McCaleb teams had different views on project development, which led to the emergence of Stellar.

The new payment system is faster than its predecessor and has a more mainstream purpose. If Ripple is exclusively for financial organizations, Stellar, with its support of smart contracts and DApps, can be said to be for everyone. As a result, we got a cryptocurrency that is in the twenty leaders of the world in terms of capitalization.

As with any blockchain, Stellar has its own cryptocurrency, Lumens, which trades under the ticker XLM and trades well. And it has a capitalization of $4 billion and a daily trading volume of 50 million. Inside the blockchain is the Stellar Consensus Protocol, which solves the problem of the Byzantine Generals – a fast and reliable solution that allows the movement of cryptocurrency assets to be realized.

To the distribution of XLM and decentralization of Stellar, as always, there are claims. Something is kept by Stellar Development Foundation, something is distributed to users every week. Time will tell whether the claims are justified or not, but in the meantime, wallet holders rush to join the pools that distribute this cryptocurrency.

Despite its youth, a number of large projects based on Stellar have already been implemented. IBM has shown interest in the topic of cross-border payments – a partnership with a large company opened the doors of Stellar to the big world. The StellarX exchange appeared.

Is it worth paying attention to StellarX

Or, for example, the Slice project, which promises the tokenization of U.S. real estate and, consequently, easy access for international investors to the old market – cryptocurrencies have no borders. A separate example is the Veridium project, which intends to capitalize on natural assets like carbon dioxide emissions volumes, which have become a big international market.

When you hear the word ICO, the first association is Ethereum. Most of the projects have been issuing tokens on this particular blockchain. It cannot be said that Stellar is breathing down Ethereum’s neck, but a market share of a few percent, firstly, removes it from its closest competitors, and secondly, offers an alternative. Something new is always more interesting. It can be assumed that soon, given the problems of the former and the successful cases of the latter, the coin will be chosen as a platform more often, which will inevitably affect the price of the token.

Other interesting facts worth mentioning: XLM is the first cryptocurrency that complies with Shariah rules. The conservatism of the Arab market is compensated by the boundless loyalty of its users and great prospects. The Gulf countries are actively mastering cryptocurrencies and blockchain, the rain of oil money will inevitably hit here as well. A fact from another category is the gender distribution of employees.

The Stellar Foundation is very proud of the fact that half of its employees are women. We live in a strange world; who knows, maybe it is these factors that will play a key role. As with any project, interest in XLM is generated by internal events and external ones. It is not clear which is more important. Internally, we will see the implementation of Spotlight, the equivalent of Lighting Network in bitcoin, and there are rumors that Stellar Foundation will launch its own decentralized exchange.

Despite the fact that XLM is successfully traded on major platforms, most of the turnover is provided by Binance – a cryptocurrency monster, which is slowly but surely becoming a benchmark for altcoins due to compliance with U.S. legislation. Wherever the tokens are traded, their appearance on Coinbase Pro is anticipated by the market. Just as the BAT token has begun to appreciate in anticipation of trading, so have Stellar Lumens holders frozen. Coinbase can be considered representative of institutional investors.

Despite the clear listing procedure, whether or not the currency will end up on Coinbase is a guessing game on coffee grounds, which is now Twitter: several top Coinbase executives have followed Stellar’s Twitter account. The community took this as a sign. There is a constant battle for speed, reliability, capitalization, big clients and beautiful solutions among the many blockchains. Next year promises many surprises and likely a shift in the cryptocurrency rankings. If things keep moving at this pace – Stellar has every chance to pull ahead.