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3 Karma
Review on Stellar by William Boaz
Stellar Lumens Detailed Review
The main goal is the Stellar is to further improve upon the initial idea of a decentralized protocol for digital to fiat currency transfers across borders.
Some of the major partners in this endeavor include large companies such as IBM, Deloitte, Stripe, and others. What makes the Stellar coin unique is the ability to facilitate transactions between any currency pairs while minimizing time and transfer costs.
The coin’s units are called Lumens or XLM and their supply is currently at 104 billion with a 1% inflation per year.
Stellar’s blockchain was initially based on that of Ripple. While it used Proof of Stake as a consensus algorithm, in late 2015 a new, proprietary protocol was introduced. Based on the work of Stanford professor David Mazières, SCP or Stellar Consensus Protocol was born.
The network remains decentralized, with block times between 2 to 5 seconds. Having in mind, there’s no mining involved, XLM’s blockchain enables fast transactions, which allow for better interconnectivity between various entities around the globe.
To process the transaction volume in Stellar’s network, control consensus and secure the network, having nodes is mandatory.
Pros
- Stellar provides issueless transactions across countries with improved security and verification times
- Network fees of stellar is very low and it’s great for micropayments, $0.01 can pay for over 600 thousand transactions
- Using Stellar, users and institutions have access to an in-house payment system that allows them to transfer funds, no matter their currency and whether or not it has a tradeable fiat pair
Cons
- The main issue you’ll come across when deciding whether to devote yourself to the cryptocurrency Stellar is the broad competition, be that Ripple or traditional SWIFT banking.
- You need to have at least 1 XLM in your wallet to keep your account active
- Stellar’s achievements will always be compared to those of Ripple
