Stellar is the cryptocurrency designed for cross-border transactions, that’s also being used by IBM. Yesterday, Stellar announced its new logo. And people are in love with it.

The new logo replaces the cartoon rocketship, which wouldn’t have been out of place in a children’s storybook. It attempts to bring the Stellar brand in line with symbols used for real-world money and other, more professional looking, crypto symbols.

“Could you see a cartoon rocket ship in use at some central bank or in a press release from a national monetary authority? We couldn’t either,” said Stellar Org’s announcement.

The new logo is refined and sleek. Photo Credit: Stellar Org

The new logo looks like a circle with two lines cut through it, similar to the line cut through the dollar or the two lines which partially cut through the Bitcoin symbol. If you look carefully, it also looks vaguely like an “S,” (for Stellar, of course) and it even evokes the planet Saturn, in keeping with Stellar’s extraterrestrial branding.

Stellar Org—the foundation supporting the cryptocurrency—hired Stockholm-based design agency, Kurppa Hosk to create the new logo. There were just three guiding principles: the logo had to be versatile, relate to outer space and work as a currency symbol.

Kurppa Hosk has changed the typeface of the word “Stellar” too, it’s more streamlined, simpler and, best of all, black—gone are the childish colors.

And it’s all gone down well within the community. While a few people on social media expressed sadness about the change, many see it as a welcome step towards Stellar as a more mature cryptocurrency, one that can be used by businesses across the world.

But as often happens with logo redesigns, people also started pointing out what the new logo looked similar to. First up was the energy company Repsol’s logo which looks like a rotated version of Stellar's effort. Secondly, someone pointed out it is very closely related to the mathematical symbol for “null” meaning zero. The null symbol can also be seen on Kurppa Hosk’s website (as the letter “o.”) Perhaps this was, in fact, the inspiration?

Or perhaps, and more controversially, it was the SpaceChain logo? Stellar’s new logo looks almost identical, with just one extra line. SpaceChain is focused on building a blockchain-based satellite network and has Tim Draper as an advisor. Fortunately, SpaceChain is ranked 457 on CoinMarketCap, while Stellar is ninth, so there should be a minimum of confusion.

Is Stellar hoping its new logo will propel it into the big time? Last month, Google added the bitcoin symbol to its iOS keyboard. With its sharp new logo, perhaps Stellar is angling for a piece of the keyboard pie.