What is Stellar Lumens?

Stellar Lumens (XLM) is an open source protocol with the aim of providing a connection between banks, payment systems and people. It was founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim, the Stellar protocol launched being based on the Ripple protocol but has since evolved and has since been separated from Ripple. With entirely new code, a new network came live for Stellar on November 2015. Since then, several other use cases have been realized other than the original aspects of settlements, remittance and microtransactions. As of 2017, Stellar took on competing with Ethereum in providing a platform for the development of ICOs and Crowdfunding projects.