Stellar Lumens (XLM) is Creating an Entire Ecosystem, Complete With Exchanges and Lightning Network

Improving the SDEX, the Stellar Decentralized Exchange…

If we look away from the price of digital assets for a moment, Stellar Lumens (XLM) has been one of the most active projects in the cryptocurrency sector this year.

At the start of the year, the Stellar Foundation released their road map for 2018, including plans for a decentralized exchange to run on the Stellar protocol.

The new user interface of the Stellar Decentralized Exchange (SDEX), built by the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), is rumored to be in its final phases of development, with further rumors of the launch being this month (December 2018).

The key points to highlight with this are that the SDEX is part of Stellar network, there are exchanges running on top of the Stellar protocol (such as StellarTerm) but are not part of the base protocol, and the Stellar Development Foundation is building the front-end interface to communicate and work with the SDEX/Stellar network itself.

“To build a front-end for Stellar’s inherent decentralized exchange. SDEX is the working name for the project, and internal prototypes are underway. We’ll reveal further details on SDEX’s specific roadmap, brand, and leadership in the near future.

SDEX will be the world-class front-end that our underlying technology has long deserved. It will enable on-chain, protocol-level trades for any Stellar token, and we will create liquidity to minimize spreads and maximize choice of assets.” – Stellar Road Map 2018

ICOs and New Digital Assets Launching on Stellar?

As we saw with Ethereum and EOS in 2017, we could see a similar trend of ICOs and digital assets moving towards Stellar in the future. Payment app Mobius was the first major token sale to take place on Stellar.

With the innovations surrounding the SDEX, future projects could benefit from greater liquidity and a smoother user interface to work on: “the Exchange also promotes our vision of moving more real-world assets on the blockchain. ICOs are already coming to Stellar because we’re cheap, scalable, and fast.”

Source: https://mobius.network/about

Approved and Making Payments Great Again!

Also on the road map and covered by us earlier this year is Stellar’s integration of the Lightning Network and similar technologies. An ETA on a live net launch is also due for December 2018.

Source: https://www.stellar.org/blog/lightning-on-stellar-roadmap/

Ending on another positive note, Stellar’s native digital asset, XLM, was approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) for listing on the itBit exchange.

While XLM is a hot favorite for being listed on Coinbase, we are still yet to see it become a reality at the time of writing.

Rival XRP and Ripple share an interesting history with XLM and Stellar Lumens, both on a technological and business level; Stellar founder Jed McCaleb was one of the original founders of Ripple and started the now-closed Mt Gox exchange in late 2010.

This is not investment advice; please always do thorough research and only invest what you are willing to lose, especially in times of uncertainty.