Stellar is an open-source, decentralized network co-founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim to facilitate the fast and low-cost transfer of value across different currencies and assets globally. Managed by the non-profit Stellar Development Foundation, the project serves as a global infrastructure that connects banks, payment systems, and individuals to expand financial access to underserved populations. Its main value proposition lies in providing a bridge between traditional money and digital networks through the use of Anchors, which are trusted entities that hold deposits and issue credits on the ledger.

The network operates using the Stellar Consensus Protocol and a Federated Byzantine Agreement, where nodes choose trusted sets of other nodes to agree on the state of the ledger. This system ensures high throughput and fast finality, where transactions are considered permanent and irreversible within seconds. Key features include a built-in distributed exchange for trading assets without intermediaries and the Soroban platform for developing smart contracts. Users can also utilize the network for tokenizing real-world assets or accessing decentralized finance services like peer-to-peer lending.

Stellar's native token, XLM, is essential for maintaining network integrity by acting as an intermediary to find efficient exchange paths and preventing spam through small transaction fees and minimum account balance requirements. Unlike many other digital assets, the network has no inflation because the community voted to disable the automatic creation of new tokens. While the project received early funding from the payments company Stripe, it is now sustained by a global community of validators and developers rather than traditional venture capital.