Why we’re betting on Stellar for our token

When we were first developing our platform, we did what 99% of cryptocurrency startups do and deployed a smart contract to the Ethereum blockchain. However, we soon found that Ethereum was not the optimal choice. Take a look at the average transaction fee on Ethereum, which as of this post is around $0.75. It is our mission to build a microtransaction platform for creators that is faster and cheaper, with more features than current fiat options. A 75-cent fee would remove our #1 selling point. In addition to low fees, we found that Stellar has a few more killer features that drew us to use its blockchain:

Speedy Confirmations

From the Stellar FAQ:

Stellar is based on a consensus algorithm rather than mining. This means transactions confirm in a few seconds.

We’re planning on integrating real-time alerts into our platform, so it was imperative that transactions would resolve in a few seconds. Although cryptocurrency enthusiasts may forgive confirmation times of a few minutes or more, the average user would be understandably frustrated by a long wait. Thankfully, Stellar’s transaction times are just as quick as credit cards or paypal, while still delivering the benefits of a distributed blockchain.

2. The DEX

The Stellar Distributed Exchange (DEX) is accessible through a myriad of websites, including Stellarterm (pictured)

The concept of a decentralized exchange is not wholly unique to Stellar; Ethereum has services such as Etherdelta that implement a decentralized exchange through smart contracts. However, Stellar does put this into practice in a noteworthy way. Stellar has baked its “distributed exchange” into the blockchain protocol itself. In essence, the Stellar DEX can be used to trade assets on Stellar (including tokens) instantly, without the need to trust a third party. This will allow us to provide instant trading potential to those who purchase tokens in Bounti’s public token sale.

3. Developer Resources

The Stellar Developer Documentation is incredibly well-developed. Stellar also supports all of the most popular programming languages: Javascript, Java, Go, Ruby, Python, and C#. A REST API is also available, so functionality can be extended to other languages as well.

We see that the vast amounts of developer resources enables the Stellar community to build quickly and easily. We hope that these developers are interested in developing extensions to the Bounti Platform in the future.

Conclusion

Stellar is by far not a one-size-fits-all solution. For example, Stellar is not turing complete and does not natively support fully programmable smart contracts (ie Ethereum contracts). However, for our own project, we find that Stellar’s benefits significantly outweigh its drawbacks.

Thanks for reading! If you’re interested in our project, feel free to check out these links:

Website: https://bounti.tech

Whitepaper: https://www.docdroid.net/rtbv6WN/whitepaperdoc.pdf

Telegram: http://t.me/getbounti

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GetBounti