Stellar

Stellar (XLM) is a decentralized network with publicly available code. Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim co-founded it in 2014. It is designed to move value across currencies and assets quickly and cheaply. The Stellar Development Foundation manages the project, which aims to broaden financial access for underserved communities.

The network reaches agreement through the Stellar Consensus Protocol, a Federated Byzantine Agreement design where each node chooses which other nodes to trust. Its transactions are final within seconds. Anchors are organizations that take in deposits and put matching credits on the ledger, which connects traditional money with the network.

XLM is the native token of Stellar. It serves as a bridge asset for finding efficient conversion routes, and small fees plus minimum account balances discourage spam. The supply does not inflate, since the community voted to switch off the creation of new tokens. The network also offers an integrated distributed exchange and Soroban for smart contracts. Its listed uses include tokenized real-world assets, regulated stablecoins, cross-border payments, remittances and payroll.