Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S1W1 - Favorite Blockchain Network by @iamchukwudi

This is undoubted, my first post in the Steemit Crypto Academy, a long-anticipated endeavour. Thanks to the Steemit Blog for removing most barriers to entry into the SCA through this series of contests. In this post, we will be exploring my favourite blockchain, that that is:

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Let's talk about Stellar.

THE STELLAR BLOCKCHAIN: About, History & Reasons for Choosing

About Stellar

Stellar blockchain is an open-source blockchain technology designed to facilitate money transfer across borders. It is a payment technology for cross-body financial transactions, aimed at boycotting financial limitations placed by traditional payment systems.
Stellar is a financial technology that intends to unify financial institutions and cut the cost and time of cross-border transactions in half.

According to Leewayhertz, the Stellar blockchain has the following features shown in this infographic:

Stellar is a decentralized payment network and protocol using stellar as its native currency which is currently valued at $0.1807 according to Coinmarketcap.

The Stellar blockchain has a lot of useful projects in the financial space, here are some of the most popular that you may have used without knowing that it was built on Stellar.

History of Stellar

The Stellar blockchain has gone through different stages of growth and development. From Just Stellar in 2014 which was a not-for-profit organization to Interstellar, their new for-profit division.

Jed McCaleb, the founder of Mt. Gox and co-founder of Ripple, and a former lawyer Joyce Kim launched the Stellar network system in 2014. In the seventh month of that year, the charity Stellar Development Foundation was established in partnership with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. Stripe provided $3 million in startup funding to Stellar.

The Stellar blockchain was launched with a 100 billion Stellar. Twenty-five per cent (25%) of the funds would be distributed to other non-profits promoting financial inclusion. Stripe received 2% of the first Stellars, or 2 billion, in exchange for its startup investment.
The cryptocurrency, which was formerly known as stellar, was renamed Lumens or XLM later on.

The Brazilian bitcoin exchange - Mercado Bitcoin, was one of the early adopters of the Stellar blockchain, announcing as early as 2014 that it will be using the Stellar network. Stellar has over 3 million enrolled user profiles on its network by January 2015, and its market capitalization was nearly $15 million.

In April 2015, the Stellar Development Foundation announced an improved protocol with a new consensus method, which went live in November of that year. SCP, a cryptocurrency system established by Stanford professor David Mazières, was utilised in the new algorithm.

Stellar's commercial branch, Lightyear.io, was established in May 2017 as a for-profit organization. Stellar established a perks package as part of its Stellar Partnership Grant Program in September 2017, in which partners could get up to $2 million in Lumens for project development. Lightyear Corporation purchased Chain, Inc in September 2018, and the united firm was renamed Interstellar.

Reasons for Choosing Stellar

I am attracted to the Stellar blockchain because it is solving a real-world issue, and I only hope we will see more adoption in the commercial space.

Right from the invention of advanced financial systems and structures, third world countries and underdeveloped and developing countries have always been left in the dark, and payment systems such as the famous Swift system and associated systems like Visa and Mastercard have done very little or nothing to facilitate intercontinental transactions.

Stellar through its blockchain technology has provided a solution to this problem and removed some barriers to universal transactions, at least, for most institutions.

EARLIEST SHORTCOMINGS AND SOLUTION

Like every other invention by man, Stellar blockchain has its shortcomings as it is not close to perfection by any means. Stellar blockchain has been hit with many issues, a very recent one (on the 6th of April, 2021) was the issue with the "Stellar's Horizon Service" which led to some transaction issues on the blockchain as the validator nodes temporarily stopped validating transactions.

^Source

Bitfinex exchange even announced that they are temporarily stopping all activities on the Stellar blockchain on their network as a result of this.

However, thanks to the Stellar Development Team and her team of engineers, this issue was quickly investigated and a resolution was provided within a few hours.

CHANGES THAT WILL MAKE THE NETWORK BETTER

Despite having the 9th market capitalization among all cryptocurrencies and having been around for a long time, Stellar has failed to acquire value in comparison to bitcoin or Ethereum. In reality, as compared to bitcoin, Stellar coin have lost almost 80% of its worth since its high in 2018. This is connected to a variety of problems, including structural ones.
But, most importantly, DeFi and Ethereum 2.0 pose a competitive threat to Stellar's long-term success. To boost Stellar's significance in the crypto ecosystem and increase price, the company should integrate new crypto-based technologies and innovations. We'd want to see more DeFi systems created on the Stellar blockchain.

A STELLAR BLOCKCHAIN PROJECT: Flutterwave

It is till this post that I came to realize that the Nigerian-based fintech company - Flutterwave - has Stellar a blockchain technology under its hood. With this, I can strongly say that the Stellar blockchain has really impacted lives.

Flutterwave is a Nigerian-based financial technology (fintech) company that allows both individuals and institutions to collect money and make transactions in more than a hundred and fifty (150) countries around the world.

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Olugbenga Agboola, and Adeleke Adekoya formed the company in 2016, and it is based in San Francisco, California, with operations in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and seven other African nations.

Flutterwave was formed in 2016 and earned a US$170 million Series C financing round by 2021. This was the greatest amount ever raised by an African technology firm at the time, valuing it at more than $1 billion. Y-Combinator, Visa Ventures, Mastercard, and others are among Flutterwave's investors.

In December 2021, Flutterwave introduced Send, an African-focused transfers business, and instantly named Nigerian Grammy Award-winning worldwide musician Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, better known by his stage name Wizkid, as its global ambassador.

CONCLUSION

The Stellar blockchain is an interesting blockchain project that has shaped a lot of projects in the world today. If you are carrying out a financial transaction over the internet, there is a 10-20% chance that you are doing so over the Stellar blockchain or one of its sub-projects.