I cringe every time I have to step into a bank. I dislike every aspect of the experience from the polluted lighting, long queues, lack of privacy, to their demeanor of probing why I want to access my money. It’s a nightmare, but that’s only a small part of the problem. The world’s current financial infrastructure is littered with inefficiencies that contribute to high transaction costs, slow money velocity, and lack of global inclusion. These gaps have curtailed growth of communities and leaves billions of people financially underserved. One of my favorite projects that is solving these problems is the Stellar Foundation. They realize that society needs a worldwide financial network that is open to anyone, has internet like speed and cost for money transfers, and ensures integrity of transactions. I believe that they are offering new elements that can augment or enhance existing financial systems to modernize the global financial infrastructure. Basics: The Stellar project based out of started in July 2014 San Francisco. The Stellar is an open-source, decentralized protocol for digital currency to fiat currency transfers which allows cross-border transactions between any pair of currencies. A unit of digital currency on their blockchain is referred to as Lumens. Price: $.10Ranking by Market Cap: 7Market Capitalization: $2,026,558,238 Circulating Supply: 19,127,012,671 XLMMax Supply: 104,642,624,134 XLM24hr Trading Volume: $90,391,551 Ticker: XLM Team: The Stellar team is lead by legendary . His previous work includes creating the first bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, and cofounding Ripple. Jed McCaleb The Stellar’s CTO is . Previous to Stellar, he helped build large scale systems at Microsoft and Salesforce. Nicolas Barry The Stellar core team has an additional 7 blockchain developers and engineers. Rounding out the Stellar core team are 4 business developers, strategists, and marketers. to the Stellar project include: Advisors CEO of Stripe Patrick Collison: Founder of AngelList Naval Ravikant: President of Y Combinator Sam Altman: Drivers of Growth: Stellar uses a new consensus model called . FBA is able to overcome adverse conditions through , which means consensus can be reached if an adequate number of nodes conclude that a transaction is valid. , similar to the way individual networks’ peering and transit decisions now unify the Internet. Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) quorum slices Slices bind the system together FBA sets the stage for the to confirm and validate transactions, which allows it to enjoy Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) four key properties simultaneously: — . Anyone is able to participate and no central authority dictates whose approval is required for consensus. Decentralized control — In practice, nodes can reach consensus at timescales humans expect for web or payment transactions — i.e., a few seconds at most. Low latency. — Users have the freedom to trust any combination of parties they see fit. For example, a small non-profit may play a key role in keeping much larger institutions honest. Flexible trust. — Safety rests on digital signatures and hash families whose parameters can realistically be tuned to protect against adversaries with unimaginably vast computing power. Asymptotic security. 4. The Stellar network can handle more than 1,000 transactions per second compared to Ethereum’s 25 TPS. 5. Stellar has , that is helping them develop their . has also as a unit of account for their payments infrastructure. established a strong partnership with IBM Blockchain World Wire product or Universal Payment System IBM’s blockchain division confirmed that they will be using the Stellar Lumens (XLM) 6. The Stellar foundation has recently had the , which means that New York Financial Regulators approve trading for Lumens Lumens is not considered a security. 7. , has fully launched in September for public use. StellarX positions itself as a fiat onramp, which allows individuals to deposit U.S. dollars directly from a U.S. bank account. They are marketing themselves StellarX similar to Robinhood, as StellarX, a Stellar-based zero-fee decentralized crypto exchange Stellar promises to refund all network fees for their users. 8. Through the Stellar/IBM collaboration, , especially in the Asia-Pacific region. IBM’s head of Blockchain Solutions, claims that they are . There is a fair chance that the IBM has already partnered with dozens of private and central banks very close to helping a central bank move fiat currency onto the Stellar blockchain IBM/Stellar partnership could replace the decrepit SWIFT/IBAN payments infrastructure. 9. A renewal energy startup, is partnering with Veridium is working on integrating their native token, VERDE, with oil and gas trading platforms to automate the process of offsetting carbon emissions. Veridium, IBM and Stellar to tokenize the global carbon credits market. 10. Stellar based project, , is helping develop a . Stronghold accepts deposits in the form of USD, and can issue tokens of any kind on the Stellar network, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USD. Stronghold is also to secure the funds, which helps legitimize the project. Stronghold USD stable coin for the network partnering with PrimeTrust 11. , a European money transfer company, successfully transitioned to the Stellar network. This means that anyone who owns XLM can send money throughout the Tempo network directly from a Stellar wallet. The service is being Tempo tested in the Philippines, which is one of the biggest remittance markets in the world. Also, Tempo has where lumens are now for sale with their network currently active in Tempo’s partnership with Stellar may mean that Stellar is now the cryptocurrency with the largest real-world network. 300 locations across Europe 120 countries and utilized by 195,000 affiliates. 12. Other notable blockchain projects based on the Stellar Network: All doing cool things to expand the Stellar network. Open Garden, TillBilly, Slice, Sure Remit, Smartlands, Chynge, Modius. 13. Stellar executed a , now referred to as Interstellar. Chain allows the Stellar network to have payment channels that enable two parties to carry out transactions between themselves privately, instantly, and securely. These transfers are not charged a fee as they are not executed on the main chain. clever acquisition by purchasing Chain 15. Stellar has also entered into a , a top banking and financial service provider in India. India offers Stellar a very tactical advantage as they have one of the world’s largest populations, most of which are unbanked. formal collaboration with The Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI) Lumens could very well be the vital bridge currency for transactions involving banking the unbanked in India. Headwinds: Stellar does face real competition from another blockchain based startup, Ripple. However, it’s still very early in the space so both of these project can coexist and thrive. The success of this project will not only be determined by how good Stellar’s product is but also whether it will be user friendly. In other words, will they be able to reduce the barriers to entry enough to bring in less technical people. Since regulation will always trail innovation, the digital currency space can be subject to new regulations in the future. Conclusion: The Stellar project is transforming the way cross border payments work, by modernizing the global financial rails. This allows financial institutions to send and settle payments in a matter of seconds, while eliminating the inefficiencies that have hampered the growth of so many global communities. By leveraging Lumens, Stellar is able to integrate payment instruction messages, settle proposed transactions, and exchange value in near real-time at a fraction of the cost of traditional banking. For more insights be sure to check out my website: www.MasiDigitalVentures.com
