Stellar (XLM) Is Going Through A Metamorphosis, Launching Its Own Exchange & Integrating Lightning

According to an up to date official announcement from Stellar (XLM), previously known as Stellar Lumens (STR), written by an author signing as ‘Christian‘ and his / (slash) on the stellar blog being ‘crudder‘, a URL alias used by Christian Rudder, Co-Founder of OkCupid (@christianrudder), who is apparently now working for the Stellar Foundation ‘behind the scenes’.

In the announcement, after greeting the community showing the XLM chart for the past year, Christian addresses some really interesting and exciting topics around the Stellar Network and discusses future plans and the planned roadmap for 2018.

In their previous official announcement, Stellar (XLM) discussed and presented charts regarding scalability, security, and credit-card-like transactions.

“Right now, we can handle a thousand operations a second. Stellar’s consensus protocol is provably safe. (See Mazières, 2015—a paper so good it still makes the front page of hackernews.) Our last transaction settled in 4.96 seconds. When it comes to (cost × lag) for the largest platforms, we are more than happy to have the bottom left-hand corner of the plot all to ourselves:”

As more developers become aware of Stellar, we can anticipate a fair at least Stellar standalone ICO ecosystem in this year. Mobius and Smartlands were the first companies to move in the Stellar Network, launching their ICOs on Stellar in late 2017. KIN and SatoshiPay also announced officially their decisions to move their blockchain infrastructure onto the Stellar Network, citing their ‘superior performance’.

The Ethereum Network currently supports more than half of the ICOs launching this year resulting in its recent sudden price pump while everything else was ‘bleeding’ as 2018 ‘stepped in’. Could Stellar ‘steal’ gently a piece of the pie from the Ethereum ‘raid boss’ this year? Let’s find out digging deeper in the recent official statement.

Stellar’s first goal for 2018 is the SDEX or the Stellar Decentralized Exchange. At the end of 2017, Stellar Foundation recruited a veteran team, with a substantial track record of product and marketing success, to build a front-end for Stellar’s inherent decentralized exchange. SDEX is the working name for the project, and internal prototypes are underway. Further details on SDEX’s specific roadmap, brand, and leadership to be revealed in the near future.

SDEX will be the world-class front-end that Stellar Network’s underlying technology has long deserved. It will enable on-chain, protocol-level trades for any Stellar token, and they will create liquidity to minimize spreads and maximize choice of assets. Specific niceties the SDEX implies:

– Day One trading for any Stellar ICO token
– atomic pathfinding to discover the cheapest rates between any two assets
– very low trading fees
– end-user control of secret keys

For SDEX to compete with other major exchanges they will increase the quality and number of anchors and market-makers on their network. The Stellar Foundation will continue to offer grants of up to $2M for partners in these areas.

The Exchange also promotes their vision of moving more real-world assets on the blockchain. ICOs are already coming to Stellar because they’re cheap, scalable, and fast.

“In 2018, we will put significant energy into bringing a wider variety of financial instruments on to the network. SDEX will be the exchange of first resort for all Stellar tokens, and we foresee a future where, say, carbon credits, oil futures, and the latest digital asset are all traded together—cheaply and quickly.”

The second goal of Stellar for 2018 is implementing Lighting Network on Stellar. Technology has always been the strongest part of the Stellar story, and they plan to make it even stronger in 2018. Stellar have noted the market demand for more private channel transactions on Stellar, and they will integrate the Lightning Network in 2018.

“For those of you unfamiliar with Lightning, this Vice piece is a decent introduction: WTF is the Lightning Network and Will It Save Bitcoin? Of course, unlike Bitcoin, Stellar doesn’t need “saving” . . . we’re just going from a good place to an even better one.”

Lightning will have a huge positive effect on Stellar’s long-term scalability and security. Stellar has been aware of Lightning’s potential for the network for a while, and they’ve recently collaborated with Stellar advisor and Bitcoin Core developer Jeremy Rubin to optimize their implementation. We are expecting a detailed technical post on this soon.

So do you think Stellar is going through a metamorphosis, where we will be able to experience a totally new product, platform, and exchange protocol in 2018? Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments below.

Reporting for The Independent Republic, Ross Peili