Could Stellar overtake Ethereum and take its place as the number one contender to Bitcoin's crown? Some cryptocurrency insiders are expecting big things from Stellar, which saw a 41,900% price jump in 2017 and is slowly pushing its way into the list of top digital currencies on the market today. Blockdaemon CEO Konstantin Richter has hinted that integration of the Stellar blockchain could be coming soon, with the multi-node platform's founder dropping strong hints about his predictions for the cryptocurrency. Stellar and Blockdaemon have already announced plans for a partnership."I cannot say enough good things about Stellar," said Richter recently. "Besides their amazing technical performance, we love that they give back 95% of gains to the community." Stellar is currently making some crucial connections, having recently announced a partnership with IBM to allow real-world transactions using crypto chips. Blockdaemon itself recently received significant investment from communications giant Comcast, which it is using to push its concept of blockchain as a service technology. Stellar is highly compatible with this node support platform. "Stellar is important for us," Richter concludes. "We believe the Stellar ecosystem will be the Ethereum of this year." Indeed, the future does look bright for Stellar . While many cryptocurrencies suffered a slide in prices during the start of 2018, the upward trend continued for Stellar and it grew by a modest 5.26%. This has contributed to a significantly raised market cap of around $7.5 billion: still some way off Ethereum's $68.07 billion, but certainly worth noting. Stellar is not just a cryptocurrency, but an open-source system for processing financial transactions. The cryptocurrency's founder Jed McCaleb told conference delegates last year that 30 banks had already signed up to use Stellar for cross-border transfers. Stellar, and similar digital currencies like Ripple, could replace wire transfers in the future and drastically reduce the transaction speed of long distance transfers. This potential is what makes Stellar a key crypto to monitor. It is highly attractive to mainstream financial institutions, who may well continue to flood it with investment - and boost its value as a currency in the process.