Stellar
Jed McCaleb's open-source payment network and its native token, Lumens (XLM).
via Wikipedia: Stellar (payment network) · see source
Stellar, also called Stellar Lumens (XLM), is a cryptocurrency protocol built to move value between any pair of currencies. It is an open-source system for exchanging money or tokens, and its code lives on GitHub. Instead of mining, it settles transactions through the Stellar Consensus Protocol, where agreement is reached among accounts inside a quorum slice. The nonprofit Stellar Development Foundation, set up in 2014, backs the protocol, and a for-profit arm, Lightyear.io, followed in 2017. Much of its adoption has come from remittances and cross-border payments.
Quick Facts
- Author
- Jed McCaleb, Joyce Kim
- Developer
- Stellar Development Foundation
- Released
- 31 July 2014
- Programming language
- C++
- Rust
- Go
- Java
- JavaScript
- Python
- Ruby
- Operating system
- Cross-platform
- Genre
- Blockchain
- License
- Apache License 2.0
Facts from the source article.
Background
Jed McCaleb, founder of Mt. Gox and co-founder of Ripple, started Stellar in 2014 together with former lawyer Joyce Kim, after first recruiting alpha testers through a site called "Secret Bitcoin Project". Stripe CEO Patrick Collison helped create the foundation, and the project went live that July with $3 million in seed money from Stripe. The network began with 100 billion stellars; 25 percent were set aside for nonprofits focused on financial inclusion, and Stripe took 2 percent for its investment. The token was later renamed Lumens. By January 2015 there were about 3 million registered accounts. A new consensus algorithm, SCP, designed by Stanford professor David Mazières, was released in April 2015 and went live that November.
Did You Know?
- Mercado Bitcoin, the first Brazilian bitcoin exchange, adopted Stellar in August 2014.
- Its Partnership Grant Program offered partners up to $2 million in Lumens.
- Lumens ranked 13th by market capitalization at the time of the IBM deal.
- Vumi used cellphone talk time as currency over the Stellar protocol.
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