Stellar

Stellar is an open-source protocol for value exchange founded in early 2014 by Jed McCaleb (creator of Ripple and eDonkey) and Joyce Kim, supported by a nonprofit, the Stellar Development Foundation. Being a completely decentralized consensus platform, Stellar, in simple words, is an open-source protocol for exchanging money, which connects people, payment systems, and banks, allowing to not only buy and sell currencies in a foreign exchange, but also to convert currencies seamlessly during transactions.

The network consists of peers that run independently of each other, meaning that Stellar does not depend on any single entity, any of which, by the way, can run a Stellar server. The idea is to have as many independent servers in the network as possible, so that it will run successfully even in case some of servers fail. The consensus process happens at a regular interval of every 2 to 4 seconds.

Like any traditional ledger, Stellar’s one records all the balances and transactions of every single account on the network. A complete copy of the global Stellar ledger is hosted on each server running correspondent software.

Stellar network’s native asset is Lumen. The standard token contributes to the ability to move money around the world and to conduct transactions between different currencies quickly and securely.

Stellar boasts quite a starry board’s and advisory board’s crew, which include Keith Rabois, Patrick Collison, Matt Mullenweg, Greg Stein, Joi Ito, Sam Altman, Naval Ravikant and others.