Stellar

Stellar is an open-source, decentralized payments network designed to move value between currencies, financial institutions and individuals at low cost and with rapid settlement. The protocol was launched in 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim and is maintained by the Stellar Development Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports development of the network and ecosystem.

The network uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol, a federated Byzantine agreement system that finalizes transactions in a few seconds without relying on proof-of-work mining or staking. Validators are organized into trusted quorums rather than competing for block rewards, which keeps energy use and per-transaction costs low. The protocol natively supports issued assets, allowing institutions to represent fiat currencies, stablecoins or other tokens directly on the network without bridging.

The native Lumen, ticker XLM, serves as the network's reserve asset and as a bridge currency for converting between issued assets in payment routes. XLM is also used to pay transaction fees and to satisfy minimum account balance requirements that protect the network from spam.

Within the broader crypto landscape, Stellar is positioned among the payment-focused networks, with a particular emphasis on cross-border value transfer, remittance corridors and tokenized representations of traditional financial assets.

Payment-oriented blockchains target the inefficiencies of cross-border money movement by providing fast settlement, low fees and direct issuance of fiat-backed assets on the network. Tokenized currencies and stablecoins increasingly route through these networks as institutions look for alternatives to legacy correspondent banking. For broader context on this segment, explore trends in tokenization.