Stellar (XLM) is a decentralized, peer-to-peer network established in 2014 by the Stellar Development Foundation. As a cross-border transfer and payment system that connects financial entities, Stellar aims to unite the world's financial infrastructure, connecting banks, payment systems, and individuals with near-instant and secure transfers at a minimal cost. If the Internet connected the world's computers to enable the free global flow of information, Stellar aims to do the same for money. To accomplish this vision while maintaining neutrality, Stellar is not set up as a bank or a business. Instead, it's a decentralized, open network that is supported by a nonprofit foundation called the Stellar Development Foundation (or SDF, for short). The network's native digital currency, XLM or Lumens, acts as an intermediary currency for operations and is also used to pay transaction fees.

Stellar operates on distributed ledger technology, which is open-source, community-owned, and distributed by the community. Its token, the XLM (or Lumens), fuels activity on the Stellar network — a system designed to help payments (and currencies) cross borders faster and cheaper than with traditional financial-system networks. The Stellar payment protocol achieves this by converting financial resources into XLM and then into the requested currency within a few seconds. For example, a bank in Japan might use Stellar to send money to a bank in Mexico. Stellar would automatically convert yen to XLM, send the payment via blockchain, and reconvert XLM to pesos at the current exchange rate. Stellar was intended to work alongside existing assets and cryptocurrencies, allowing users to create digital representations of any asset as a Stellar token. These can then be used to transact on the blockchain and can be redeemed at any time for the base asset. The network aims to maintain a level of security, with XLM holders required to have at least one token to remain active on the network. This feature aims to execute network transactions efficiently and with minimal time costs. As a decentralized financial network, no single entity can process transactions or stop someone from onboarding or offboarding into Stellar, and the network can still run successfully even if some servers are turned off or fail.

Stellar's potential use cases are vast, particularly in the realm of cross-border transactions. The platform aims to overcome the challenges of high fees and slow procedures associated with traditional financial systems, support multi-currency transactions, and enhance processes with foreign operations. The network also uses a development called Anchors, which simplifies the exchange within the network and accelerates the entire process.

Stellar was founded by Jed McCaleb and lawyer Joyce Kim after McCaleb left Ripple in 2013 due to disagreements about the company's future direction. McCaleb's goal was to ensure that Stellar could provide people a way of moving their fiat (governement backed money), into crypto and eliminate the friction that people normally experience when sending financial resources around the world. Jed McCaleb currently serves as Stellar's CTO. This not-for-profit organization aims to "unlock the world's economic potential by making financial transactions more fluid, markets more open, and people more empowered." Stellar was initially based on the Ripple Labs protocol, but the blockchain was created as a result of a hard fork, and the code was subsequently rewritten.

Unlike many popular cryptocurrencies, XLM cannot be mined or staked to receive rewards and increase the asset's supply. While Stellar works like technologies like Bitcoin, its key distinguishing feature is its consensus protocol. The present-day Stellar is a result of a 2014 fork that created the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), following which Stellar became an open-source system. Under this protocol, the transaction authentication process is confined to a select set of trustworthy nodes rather than being left open to the whole network of nodes. Instead of being mined by "proof of work," Stellar is secured by a unique blockchain mechanism called the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP).

You can buy, sell, send, and receive XLM by creating an account on Coinbase — or a number of other financial technology companies. Coinbase Wallet is another option for storing, sending, and receiving XLM.