History of Stellar

Stellar is a blockchain-based payments network, built with the vision of connecting traditional and decentralized financial systems from around the world.

Jed McCaleb—MtGox’s founder and Ripple’s co-founder —introduced the Stellar project in 2014 with Joyce Kim, a former lawyer. The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization, was established in July 2014, with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, as a collaborator. Before Stellar’s official launch in 2015, McCaleb sought alpha testers through his ‘Secret Bitcoin Project’ website.

Stripe led Stellar’s seed funding round, investing $3 million. Out of the initial release of 100 billion Lumens (then called stellar), 25% was allotted for the ecosystem’s contemporary non-profit contributors. In 2017, the SDF founded Lightyear—Stellar’s commercial wing and announced a $2 million (in Lumens) grant. As a part of the Stellar Partnership Grant Program, the award was meant to incentivize Stellar-based project development.

What are Lumens used for?

Initially, the XLM token was “intended solely” for the network’s internal transactions, primarily as a security mechanism. While Stellar account holders have to maintain a minimum balance of 1 Lumen, every transaction costs a minimal fee in XLM. The amount is insignificant from the perspective of overhead end-user cost but is an adequate deterrent to large-scale, malicious activities.

However, Lumen’s usability has diversified over time, and it’s now usable for transactional purposes outside the Stellar network. XLM holders can use their tokens for global payments and transfers, as well as for trading of centralized and decentralized crypto-exchanges. Especially, the minimal fee makes XLM a preferable asset for making micro and cross-border transactions.

Lumens can also be leveraged as the intermediary asset for conversions between otherwise illiquid assets and between fiat. Combining these factors, Lumens emerge as a significant driving force behind Stellar’s market capitalization of $3 billion. According to CoinMarketCap, Lumen (XLM) is ranked 11 in the ever-expanding crowd of 3000+ cryptocurrencies.

How do Lumens work?

Lumens are secured using the underlying blockchain’s Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) alternative to Proof-of-Work (PoW). The underlying concept is known as the Federated Byzantine Agreement and was conceived before Bitcoin’s release.

Apart from incentivizing the network to use standard software for optimum interoperability, Lumen-based transactions do not involve mining. Instead, a transaction is considered valid if it achieves the predefined quorum of votes from the network’s validator nodes (Basic or Full).

Advantages

The XLM token inherits Stellar’s speed and can settle transactions in about 3 to 5 seconds.

Lumens are divisible into Stroops, thus being a highly feasible and useful asset for conducting microtransactions.

It doesn't involve resource-intensive crypto mining and is a cleaner, greener, and more sustainable alternative to PoW-based coins.

XLM has a finite supply of 50,001,806,812 and is also Stellar’s ‘fuel,’ which assigns it a consistent and tangible value for the long term.

The ownership of Lumens allows project owners to launch ICOs on the Stellar blockchain, which widens their scope for customization and scalability.

How to Get Lumens (XLM)?

How do I buy Stellar Lumen in Canada (XLM to CAD)?

Buying Stellar Luman (XLM) in Canada can be done through a cryptocurrency exchange such as NDAX, a peer-to-peer trade, or at a cryptocurrency ATM. However, using platforms such as NDAX will allow for affordable, safe, and fast transactions.

👉 How to buy Stellar in Canada?

Convert XLM trending_flat CAD

XLM	CAD
1 XLM	0.1545  CAD
5 XLM	0.7725  CAD
10 XLM	1.545  CAD
25 XLM	3.8625  CAD
50 XLM	7.725  CAD
100 XLM	15.45  CAD
500 XLM	77.25  CAD
1000 XLM	154.5  CAD
5000 XLM	772.5  CAD
10000 XLM	1545  CAD

Convert CAD trending_flat XLM

CAD	XLM
1 CAD	6.4724  XLM
10 CAD	64.7249  XLM
20 CAD	129.4498  XLM
50 CAD	323.6245  XLM
100 CAD	647.2491  XLM
500 CAD	3236.2459  XLM
1000 CAD	6472.4919  XLM
5000 CAD	32362.4595  XLM
10000 CAD	64724.919  XLM
50000 CAD	323624.5954  XLM

How do I store Stellar?

It is highly recommended that you always store Stellar (XLM) in a cryptocurrency hardware wallet. However, at NDAX we have all the security measures in place to allow you to safely store your cryptocurrency on our platform. See NDAX Security. For cold wallets, check out Ledger or Trezor for your hardware wallet needs.