Stellar's Quiet Rise: A Key Player in Cross-Border Payments
Stellar (XLM) has been quietly settling real-money transfers between 180 countries every day, at a fraction of a cent per transaction. This gap between attention and adoption is exactly what makes Stellar worth understanding right now, as XLM jumps over 10% in 24 hours and edges back into the top-22 assets by market cap.
The network was founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb, who also co-founded Ripple, and Joyce Kim. The nonprofit Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) manages the open-source protocol, keeping a clear separation between the foundation and the commercial product layer built on top of it.
Stellar uses a consensus model called Federated Byzantine Agreement, which eliminates the need for miners and allows transactions to be confirmed in 3 to 5 seconds. This is different from Ethereum's proof-of-stake system, as validators are known entities, giving the network a semi-federated character.