Stellar

About Stellar (XLM)

What Is Stellar (XLM)?

Stellar is a decentralized Layer-1 blockchain built for payments, currency exchange, and financial products. It focuses on fast settlement and low fees, making it well-suited for remittances, cross-border transfers, and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).

Stellar also supports smart contracts through its Soroban platform, which targets financial use cases and emphasizes predictable execution.

XLM (Lumens) is Stellar's native token and is used to:

• Pay network transaction fees
• Maintain minimum account balances (anti-spam)
• Act as a bridge asset for multi-currency conversions in path payments (when needed)

Official resources:

• Stellar
• Soroban

How Stellar Works

Stellar is designed around payments and multi-asset movement:

1. Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP)

Stellar uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), a federated Byzantine agreement-style consensus model. Validators select trusted sets ("quorum slices") and reach agreement without proof-of-work mining.

1. Built-In Multi-Asset Support and Path Payments

Stellar supports issuing and transacting assets (for example, tokenized fiat or stablecoins). Path payments can route through multiple markets to find an efficient conversion path, sometimes using XLM as an intermediary.

1. Soroban Smart Contracts

Soroban is Stellar's smart contract platform, designed for financial applications and built around Rust and WebAssembly tooling.

What Makes Stellar Unique?

Stellar is often associated with:

• Payments-first design for fast, low-cost transfers and currency exchange
• Consensus via trust configuration (SCP) rather than mining or stake-weighted block production
• Native asset issuance plus operational controls that can support regulated asset workflows
• A finance-oriented smart contract platform (Soroban)

XLM Token Utility

XLM is primarily used for fees, minimum balances, and as a routing/bridge asset in the network's built-in exchange and path payments.

Use Cases of Stellar

Common Stellar use cases include:

• Cross-border payments and remittances
• Tokenized fiat and stablecoin issuance
• Tokenized RWAs (funds, treasuries, and other instruments)
• Smart-contract based applications on Soroban (payments automation and DeFi primitives where supported)

How Stellar Is Secured

Stellar security comes from SCP's agreement model and the network's operational constraints (fees and minimum balances) that help make spam and flooding costly.

Risks and Considerations

Key considerations include:

• Asset issuer risk for tokenized assets (depends on the issuer and redemption model)
• Validator trust assumptions (SCP depends on quorum configuration and network health)
• Smart contract risk for Soroban applications

Why Stellar Matters

Stellar's thesis is practical financial infrastructure: fast settlement, low fees, and straightforward asset issuance, with smart contracts (Soroban) expanding what can be built on top while keeping a payments focus.

Where Can You Buy Stellar (XLM)?

XLM is widely available on major centralized cryptocurrency exchanges. Availability, supported pairs, and payment methods vary by jurisdiction.

Major Centralized Exchanges (CEX)

XLM is commonly listed on exchanges such as:

• Binance
• Coinbase
• Kraken
• Bitfinex
• Upbit

Common trading pairs include XLM/USDT, XLM/USDC, XLM/USD, XLM/EUR, and XLM/BTC (availability varies).

Storage Options After Purchase

After buying XLM, it is commonly stored:

• On an exchange (custodial)
• In a non-custodial wallet for self-custody and on-chain use
• On a hardware wallet (where supported)

You can view transactions and addresses using a Stellar explorer such as StellarExpert.