01 / THE PURPOSE
What is Stellar for?
Stellar connects token transfers, exchange operations and financial on/off ramps. Anchors link the ledger to outside payment or asset systems, which remain separate counterparties.
02 / THE ARCHITECTURE
Three questions about the machinery.
How does it agree?
Consensus & securityThe Stellar Consensus Protocol uses federated agreement. Validators choose trusted quorum sets rather than competing with mining power or purchasing voting weight through XLM staking.
Where do instructions run?
Execution modelNative operations handle payments and issued assets. The Soroban smart-contract environment adds programmable applications; contracts and traditional asset operations have different resource requirements.
What is the token for?
XLM in the systemXLM pays network fees and supports minimum balances and contract storage costs. Stellar validators do not receive ordinary protocol staking rewards for holding XLM.
03 / THE DESIGN CHOICES
What comes with the design?
Each architecture makes choices about security, performance, coordination, and who can participate.
Poor quorum choices or unavailable trusted validators can stop progress.
An anchor-issued asset retains redemption and compliance dependencies outside the ledger.
04 / IN PRACTICE
Follow one use.
Illustrative: a tokenized euro can settle on Stellar while its cash redemption still requires the issuing anchor. The network’s consensus verifies the transfer, not the issuer’s bank balance.
05 / CHECK THE EXPLANATION
Sources & snapshot.
Network descriptions use the references below. The CoinMarketCap snapshot determines which assets are in scope and their captured rank; it does not assess the quality of a network.
- Stellar · Fundamentals Stellar
- Stellar · Consensus protocol Stellar
- CoinMarketCap top 100 snapshot Captured 14 Nov 2026 · See the complete scope audit
- Stellar (XLM) on CoinMarketCap Captured asset rank #16
Profile checked 14 Nov 2026. Network designs and ranked positions can change.