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What is Stellar?
Stellar is a blockchain project focusing on incorporating the distributed ledger invention into the prevailing financial system. Stellar was conceived by Jed McCaleb (the co-founder and ex-CTO of Ripple) and Joyce Kim (a former lawyer) in 2014 with the development of a platform 'SecretBitcoinProject' that acted to hire alpha testers for the project.
Lumens (formerly 'Stellar') is the native cryptocurrency of the Stellar blockchain. It is denoted by the 'XLM' ticker on the crypto market. XLM can be applied in various ways across the Stellar blockchain. Users must retain a minimum of 0.5 XLM in their accounts to support the blockchain and are required to pay a minimum transaction cost of 0.00001 Lumens.
The project's tactic of developing a mutual global financial network is egalitarian - rather than concentrating on either one side of the centralization/decentralization discussion, Stellar embraces a bipartisan stance, which simultaneously offers solutions to the centralized financial system and enhances access to cost-effective services to both the unbanked and underbanked.