What you need to know about Stellar, the altcoin that’s out of this world

When investing in the crypto market, the more exciting opportunities actually come from altcoins, with plenty of gains to be made for traders who spot the next rising star. With a blast-off rocket ship logo and a name that invokes a sci-fi future, Stellar is an altcoin that wants us to know that it’s going places. But is Stellar (XLM) a good investment? No need for an astrologer… we’ll tell you everything you need to know.What is Stellar (XLM)?The Stellar blockchain network is an open-source distributed payment infrastructure that facilitates transactions between banks, payment services, and individuals. The project was launched in 2014 by Jed McCaleb, the founder of Mt. Gox and co-founder of Ripple, in partnership with former lawyer Joyce Kim.Jed McCaleb, the founder of Mt. Gox and co-founder of Ripple, StellarIn practice, Stellar works similarly to an online payment platform such as PayPal, but its distributed ecosystem and native cryptocurrency make cross-asset, cross-border transactions easier, faster, and more cost-effective.At the time of writing, Stellar’s price is $0.102602 (up 0.46% in the last 24 hours) with a 24-hour trading volume of $691,733,206. Stellar is ranked 16th in terms of global market cap, coming in at $2,156,921,785 (via CoinMarketCap). Its circulating supply is 21,022,140,434 XLM coins.How does Stellar’s blockchain work?Transactions on the Stellar network are added to a shared, distributed public ledger, which is a database that anyone in the world can access. Stellar uses its own unique method to reach consensus on transactions quickly and accurately.Stellar has 4 key aspects when it comes to adding transactions to the ledger, or blockchain:Freedom of participation: Anyone can join the consensus process, and no one has all or a majority of the decision-making power.Low latency: Fast and cheap transactions are confirmed within a few seconds.Freedom of trust: Nodes (those participating in the…