STELLAR - XLM

Technology: DLT - Distributed Ledger Technology

Network: Consensus Protocol

Company: Stellar

Crypto: XLM

Total Supply: 50 Billion

Founders: Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim

Transaction Cost: 0.00001 XLM

Target Market: SME

About: Stellar is a non-profit open-source decentralized protocol for cross-border payments between any pair of currencies using the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) and is hosted on GitHub. There are various organizations that host validator nodes and these servers store a ledger of all the accounts on the network and communicate with each in 2-5 seconds intervals. Whenever an order is placed, the Stellar protocol finds the best exchange rate for the transaction even if that means it has to cycle through multiple different currencies in order to achieve the best result.

Even though Stellar aims to help the unbanked in certain countries, it has also partnered with IBM to create IBM World Wire to create a cross-border blockchain-based payment system for large banks.

This consensus approach to confirming transactions means that XLM uses far less energy than Bitcoin and transactions are confirmed in seconds with very little cost.