STELLAR LUMENS XLM REVIEW

Introduction:

Stellar is a decentralized protocol for sending and receiving money in any pair of currencies. This means users can, for example, send a transaction from their Yen balance and have it arrive in Euros, Yen, or even bitcoin. It is expecting to support the usual categories of transactions: payments to a merchant, remittances back home, or rent splits with a roommate.
It hopes that people will build applications on top of Stellar to help bridge the gap between digital and traditional currencies.
Lumens are the native asset of the Stellar network.
One lumen is a unit of digital currency, like a bitcoin.
They are essential to the Stellar network—they contribute to the ability to move money around the world and to conduct transactions between different currencies quickly and securely.

Coin Rating: 6,8

Stellar is a great project with a lot of potential to grow.
It has potential to be a leading currency of the future.
What sets it back is that it is mostly dependent on an organization that still has around 85% of the coins.

Network Value: 4/10

Lumens is dependent on the Stellar platform which is run by a private company called SDF.
It does not have much adoption yet.
The distribution of Stellar was by giveaway to people who owned Bitcoin, individuals who wanted lumens and nonprofits.
85% of Lumens are still held by the SDF - https://dashboard.stellar.org/. This increases the risk due to the problem of centralization.
Stellar is like Ripple, used to convert foreign currencies. However, unlike Ripple, Stellar wants to target the general population and not just banks.
It already allows people to host ICOs.

Potential Growth: 7 / 10

It already is in the top 10 coins in terms of market cap. It has a yearly inflation-rate of 1%.
Stellar wants to be a vehicle to cross border cross currency transfers like Ripple. But it is not limited to banks and anyone can exchange using Stellar.
Stellar could be used as a cryptocurrency-exchange.
It already started hosting ICOs. It is easier to program and cheaper than in Ethereum.
It could also be used to buy a simple coffee.

Developers Value: 9/10

They have a great team working on github.
The founder of Stellar is the same as the founder of Mt. Gox (he sold it before it got hacked) and Ripple. He left Ripple due to disagreements with the vision of the project.

Partnerships: 7/10

IBM announced it would use Stellar to partner with banks to provide cross-country payments in the South Pacific. This will allow someone in Australia to conduct business with someone in Indonesia, and pay via lumens, for example.
Also partnered with Stripe. No vision set yet but the possibilities are endless.

Utility 7/10:

Payment method with very low fees.
ICO platform (not much adoption yet)
FIAT exchange platform (not much adoption yet)
Crypto exchange platform (not much adoption yet)

https://www.stellar.org/blog/category/ico/
https://stripe.com/blog/stellar
https://www.stellar.org/blog/category/partnerships/
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/stellar/
https://www.stellar.org/how-it-works/use-cases/
https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/
https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/