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…