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2018 is just beginning, however, the top 10 of cryptocurrencies already looks very different from last year. Gone are options such as Dash, replaced by coins that had never before reached these vertiginous heights: Tron and Stellar . The latter reached number six earlier this week , after tripling its value in seven days from a minimum of 32 cents. Stellar now has a market capitalization of 10 billion dollars. After remaining inactive for the first three years of its existence, Stellar is growing and attracting media attention.

What is Stellar?

Stellar is described as an open source project with a “distributed hybrid blockchain”. “It exists to facilitate transfers of value between assets, including payments. The Stellar Network forms “an open and global financial network where all the actors, whether people, payment networks or banks, have the same access”. If that looks a lot like Ripple, it’s because it is: Stellar is Ripple’s “brother” , having been created by Ripple’s co-founder Jed McCaleb after he left the company. McCaleb is also famous for having sold Mt Gox to Mark Karpeles in 2011. Stellar was initially a bifurcation of the Ripple protocol, before being widely rewritten.
Lumens (XLM) are the currency that drives the Stellar network , which has transaction times of less than five seconds. The network has a fixed inflation rate of 1% per year. Like Ripple, Stellar’s objectives are financial institutions and corporations, and the company has already signed agreements with IBM and Deloitte ; the latter is classified as a partner. Stellar’s goal, like that of many cryptocurrencies, is to become the web’s payment solution. Low commissions and fast transaction times are its two biggest advantages, although the same can be said of many other altcoins.

Unprecedented growth

In 2017, 29 cryptocurrencies exceeded earnings of 1,600% of bitcoin, and Stellar was one of them. Its value has grown an amazing 28,000% in the space of a year . In the last 24 hours, $ 211 million of lumens were exchanged in exchanges. The token hit an all-time high of 90 cents this week and is currently trading at around 60 cents.

Some commentators see Ripple and Stellar as engaged in a fierce battle for supremacy, representing their own version of Bitcoin vs. Bitcoin Cash. Given the similarities between Ripple and Stellar, including their shared code base, involved people and target audience, these comparisons are unavoidable. In terms of developing relationships with banks and other financial institutions, Ripple is at the forefront, but Stellar has an advantage in other areas.

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On the one hand, Stellar is not accumulating 60% of the total supply for itself. Ripple, on the other hand, still has 55 billion XRP. However, the total number of currencies in each network is very similar, with 100 billion Ripple and 103 billion Stellar. Nearly 18 billion Stellar are in circulation at this time , two billion of which were awarded to Stripe in 2014 in exchange for a loan of 3 million dollars. If Stripe still has them, those lumens are now worth billions.

However, despite Stellar’s interstellar rise, not everyone is convinced by the cryptocurrency.

How centralized is Stellar?

Like Ripple, Stellar uses a network of trusted validator nodes. While anyone can host one, Red Stellar depends on approved nodes that have close links with Stellar itself. As a result, Stellar is not a true decentralized currency. In general terms, the closer a cryptocurrency of institutional investors is, the more centralized it is by design. Still, Stellar is less centralized than Ripple.

It is debatable whether Stellar is worth its $ 10 billion market capitalization, but the same could be said of many cryptocurrencies lurking among the top 10, including Ripple, Tron and Cardano. In an irrational market, the assets are worth whatever the next buyer is willing to pay for them, and at this moment that figure is higher than the previous one. If Ripple can become a 3 dollar coin, there is no reason why Stellar can not continue his rocket journey to infinity and beyond. After months of bitcoin domination, the altcoins season has returned, and it is the actions of little value within the crypto-active market that are shining the brightest.

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