Thomas Byrd 
What if there is a cryptocurrency in the market which makes it possible to send money across countries for a fraction of a cent? Would you not want to invest in that?
Steller is one such cryptocurrency that comes with a similar goal. It has become popular lately because of being backed by well-known people.
What is Stellar (XLM)?
Steller is a decentralized payment infrastructure where several cryptocurrencies can be created, sent, or traded. The platform was founded by the non-profit Stellar development foundation in 2015. The foundation’s goal was to create a boundaryless blockchain payment network to help underdeveloped and emerging countries.
The cryptocurrency of the platform or network is called lumens (XLM). Since the launch of XLM in 2015, it has attracted a huge crowd of investors. Lumens serve as a bridge that helps make trading assets between different countries less expensive. This platform is created to challenge the existing, high fee charging payment providers.
Crypto and other fiat currencies and value assets can run in parallel to cryptocurrencies. Using this platform, money sent across the globe would become frictionless.
History of Stellar Price
In 2014, Jed McCaleb left Ripple and co-founded this new platform cum financial system. Soon after the launch, CEO of Stripe also collaborated with McCaleb, and a stellar foundation organization was born.
At inception, Stellar raised $35 million through the sale of a native token called XLM. About 100 billion lumens were created when the Stellar Foundation was set up. Even an annual inflation rate of 1 percent was also set up for the token, which was later removed.
The foundation burned 50% of token in 2019, hence limiting the lumens supply to 50 billion. Post this move, XLM prices surged as the supply of tokens became scarcer.
The coin was launched at the price of $ 0.189. Since then, XLM’s price reached the highest peak of $0.86 during a crypto bull run in the year 2017. Post that, the prices plummeted to a low of $0.03. But then it again picked up and touched $0.73 in May 2021.
How Does Stellar (XLM) Work?
The stellar network has their in-house “Stellar Consensus Protocol” (SCP) designed by Stellar chief scientist. Under this, the responsibility of validating transactions lies on a group of “trustworthy” nodes, and they make sure that no one is minting free money.
These nodes are periodically voted for. Hence anyone from the network can participate. Winners with maximum votes get the responsibility of validating transactions.
Because SCP doesn’t use costly mining machines to run heavy calculations, it is more eco-friendly than other blockchains. And that is how Stellar supports cheaper and faster transactions.
Things to Consider Before Investing in Stellar
Steller lumens use blockchain to process transactions. Hence the network uses a shared public ledger, accessible from anywhere worldwide. This has made investing in Stellar lucrative in recent years.
But apart from this, a few more things to be looked at before investing are:
- Democratic and Transparent Management
In the Steller network, voting is used among members to move ahead with any business decision. Hence democracy and transparency is unique feature possessed by the Stellar network.
- Minimum Transaction Fee
While sending crypto money cross-borders, generally, high prices are charged as transaction fees. But Stellar Lumens charges a negligible or a minimum amount of 0.00001 XLM. This is as good as no fee at all and hence provides a good competitive edge.
- Good Community Following
Having a strong and dedicated community is another advantage Stellar network has. Financial brokers, engineers, and many other influential people are part of Steller’s strong community. This community helps and backs the rise of Stellar Lumens in the crypto market space.
Future of Stellar Price
The price prediction of XLM done by wallet investor estimate the currency to trade around $0.44 by next year and maybe touch $1.18 in the next 5 years.
Similarly, other XLM price prediction platforms have forecasted XLM prices to rise to $ 0.37 by 2022. And over the longer term, the price could also cross the $1 mark by 2025 and the $5 mark by 2030.
Conclusion
Stellar presents a compelling business case. It has brought new opportunity markets where customer transactions are either extremely difficult, prohibitive, or impossible. With such customers, Stellar can accommodate micropayments between customers and businesses.
Steller, with its expertise, brings forward a unique approach to the market. That is why their native currency XLM is popular today. And this popularity is expected to rise further. And hence is a prospect and potential investment currency for any investor in the crypto space.