Stellar Coming after our contract and holder checks finish for this coin. See the Scorecard for every call so far.
What it is
Stellar is a payments network launched in 2014 for moving money across borders and issuing digital versions of currencies and other assets. Fintech apps and remittance companies use it to issue stablecoins such as USDC and to swap between currencies cheaply. Its coin, XLM (also called lumens), pays the network's tiny fees and covers the small minimum balance every account must keep.
Stellar does not use mining or staking rewards. Validators run the Stellar Consensus Protocol: each one chooses a set of other validators it trusts, and agreement spreads through those overlapping groups, closing a new ledger about every five seconds. The non-profit Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) maintains the core software and holds a large reserve of XLM to fund the ecosystem. Smart contracts, called Soroban, arrived in 2024.
About 50 billion XLM exist, and no new lumens are created. The network once added 1% a year through inflation, but validators voted that off in October 2019. A month later the SDF permanently destroyed about 55 billion lumens, cutting the total roughly in half. Fees collect in a pool that nobody can spend.
What can go wrong
- The Stellar Development Foundation held about 20 billion XLM for its mission as of 2024, and its spending and distributions shape the market.
- Trust is concentrated among a limited set of well-known validators, including the SDF. In May 2019 the network stopped confirming transactions for about an hour after several validators went offline.
- Heavy use of stablecoins on Stellar does not necessarily create demand for XLM itself, and Stellar competes with many other payment networks and stablecoin chains.
Exchanges usually require a memo with XLM deposits, and every Stellar account must keep at least 1 XLM that cannot be sent out. Leaving off the memo is a common way deposits go missing.
Safety checks
- Track recordGoodTrading since 2014, about 12 years. It has been through at least one full market cycle.
- Trading activityCaution$122.3 million traded in the last 24 hours, 1.9% of its market value. That's thin for its size: big holders selling could move the price more than you'd expect.
- Coins still to comeCaution35.21 billion of 50.00 billion total coins are in circulation, so about 30% are still to be released. New coins entering the market can push the price down as they're sold. There is no fixed maximum, so new coins can keep being created.
- Distance from its peakCautionDown 80% from its all-time high of $0.8756 in January 2018. Many buyers from the peak are still underwater, and they often sell into any rally.
- Past yearFor context−44.7% over the past year, against −25.3% for bitcoin. It has done worse than simply holding bitcoin.
History of trouble and big events
- 2019: The network halted for about an hour in May; inflation was voted off in October, and the SDF burned about 55 billion XLM in November.
- 2024: Soroban smart contracts launched on the main network.
Holding a token on a smaller network, or got sent one you don't recognize? Run its address through the free checker. Copycat tokens often borrow big names.