Lumen (XLM) is the native cryptocurrency for Stellar, an open source blockchain payment system. The purpose of Stellar is to connect financial institutions via the blockchain and provide cheap transactions in developing markets. Jed McCaleb, a longtime cryptocurrency entrepreneur who founded bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox and co-founded blockchain-based payment system Ripple Labs, created Stellar in July of 2014. Stellar uses a federated byzantine agreement (FBA) algorithm instead of a traditional mining network to validate transactions. Since the transfer of lumens doesn’t require approval from traditional cryptocurrency miners, the Stellar network enables quicker transactions than some other blockchain-based systems.
The Stellar price page is part of The CoinDesk 20 that features price history, price ticker, market cap and live charts for the top cryptocurrencies. CoinDesk also provides a suite of institutional-grade price indexes. Find out more about them here.
