Stellar 

XLM Price

What is Stellar cryptocurrency?

Stellar is an open-source, decentralized payments blockchain launched in 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim, operated by the non-profit Stellar Development Foundation (SDF). The network targets cross-border payments, remittances, and asset tokenization. USDC is issued natively on Stellar, and any account can issue tokenized fiat or stablecoins. XLM — the native asset, called the lumen — pays transaction fees and serves as a bridge asset between currency pairs that lack direct liquidity.

Is Stellar the same as XLM?

No. Stellar is the network; XLM — the lumen — is the native asset that runs on it. XLM pays the minimum transaction fee of 0.00001 XLM, meets the 1 XLM minimum account balance, and acts as the bridge asset in cross-currency payments. Exchanges and price feeds quote the asset as XLM under the name Stellar.

What is the difference between Stellar (XLM) and Ripple (XRP)?

Stellar and Ripple share an origin: Jed McCaleb co-founded Ripple before launching Stellar in 2014. Stellar targets individual senders and financial inclusion — remittances, anchors, and fintech access — while XRP focuses on institutional cross-border settlement for banks. The non-profit Stellar Development Foundation runs Stellar; Ripple is a for-profit company. XLM and XRP compete directly in payments.

How does the Stellar Consensus Protocol work?

Stellar uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), a federated Byzantine agreement model — not proof-of-work or proof-of-stake. Nodes reach agreement through quorum slices rather than mining or staking. Settlement takes roughly 3–5 seconds. Fees stay sub-cent: the minimum transaction fee is 0.00001 XLM, and every account must hold a minimum balance of 1 XLM.

What is XLM's maximum supply?

XLM has a fixed maximum supply of 50,001,806,812 XLM (per DropsTab data). 100 billion lumens were created at the 2014–2015 launch, and supply grew 1% annually until the community voted to end inflation in October 2019. In November 2019, the SDF burned roughly 55 billion XLM — one of the largest burns in crypto history — cutting supply to about 50 billion. Per the SDF, no more lumens will be created.

Does XLM have a vesting schedule?

XLM has no contract-based vesting schedule or cliff dates — the lumen is a native L1 asset with no token contract. The only recorded lockup was the 2014 seed allocation, locked until June 2019. The ongoing supply overhang is the SDF treasury: roughly 30 billion XLM, about 60% of total supply, released gradually to public markets rather than on a published unlock calendar.

Who backed Stellar?

Stellar raised $5,015,000 across two rounds, per DropsTab fundraising data. Stripe invested $3 million in the September 2014 seed round at ~$0.0015 per token, receiving 2 billion XLM (2% of supply) locked until June 2019. A March 2015 public auction raised $2,015,000, selling 650 million XLM at $0.0031 with no lockup. Early Stellar board members included Keith Rabois, Sam Altman, Matt Mullenweg, and Naval Ravikant.

Can you stake XLM?

No. Stellar has no staking — the network uses neither proof-of-stake nor proof-of-work. The Stellar Consensus Protocol secures the ledger through quorum-based agreement among nodes, a design that requires no token lockup and pays no staking yield. XLM holders earn nothing by delegating or locking lumens; offers promising XLM staking rewards are not Stellar network features.

Is there an active XLM airdrop?

No legitimate active XLM airdrop exists. Stellar ran lumen giveaway programs during its early distribution phase, and those programs concluded years ago. "Claim your XLM airdrop" websites surfaced under this search query are typically phishing or scam vectors. The defining 2019 supply event — the 55 billion XLM burn — was executed by the SDF directly, not distributed as a user campaign.

Where can you buy and trade XLM?

XLM trades on 100+ spot markets across centralized exchanges, with direct fiat pairs in USD, EUR, KRW, GBP, JPY, TRY and other currencies — including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Upbit, and Bitstamp (per DropsTab data). XLM has no DEX markets: as a native L1 asset, it has no token contract to list on automated market makers. 15+ perpetual futures markets cover XLM on Binance Futures, Bybit, OKX, and other venues.