Welcome to the beginning of your Stellar journey. Stellar, founded in 2014, was created by Ripple co-founder, Jed McCaleb, who left due to philosophical differences with the rest of the board.

Thus, Stellar was originally a Fork of Ripple. Later, Stellar completely changed its protocol (how it works behind the scenes), and the team wrote completely new code.

This is a beginner-friendly syllabus. If you would like to understand how Cryptocurrencies work in general, it would be in your best interest to learn how Blockchains work and what a decentralized network is.

Due to the abundance of Stellar documentation, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Don’t worry! Our information and resources will help you stay safe and secure if you choose to invest or develop with it.

Great job getting this far! Now that you understand the problem Stellar wants to solve, We’re ready to dive into the technology behind Stellar.

That’s right. Before reading anymore of this syllabus, there are two parts of Stellar you must read start-to-end. No, it’s definitely not Reddit or news headlines, it’s the official How the Stellar Network Operates and Stellar Basics Explained.

To value a cryptocurrency, you cannot rely solely on its white paper. Like early startups, based companies face similar challenges as early startups, and you must look at the market, team, technology, working products. With any new space, it’s a risky journey and you can expect to get either 100x your investment back, or lose everything.

Daniel Jeffries, a medium author who writes about crypto, wrote a very compelling essay explaining why it is important to think like a Micro VC when investing in cryptocurrency … you can read it here.

Along with the hundreds of smaller developers working on building applications on top of the Stellar Platform, Stellar has a series of strategic partnerships.

Founded in 1911, IBM is a public-listed American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. Now valued at $151Billion in Market Cap, IBM chose Stellar to be their strategic partner in developing blockchain technology for their internal payment processor and also for their big-bank client. IBM also has been added to the validator list of Stellar Network.

In 2008, a paper was released by an unknown writer, who went by the fake identity, Satoshi Nakamoto. Later, in 2009, a software called Bitcoin was released to the world. It is the first cryptocurrency in history to revolutionize the way our financial system works.

It operates with no central authority or banks, nobody owns or controls Bitcoin. Managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network.

Lumens (XLM) are the digital currency of the Stellar Network.

You’ve probably noticed one of the main purposes of Stellar is to exchange currencies between countries. So why are Lumens necessary? Well, sometimes they are not. For example, you can use the Distributed Exchange, a place where people can submit offers to the network if they want to buy or sell currencies at a specific rate.

Once you buy Lumens, it is recommended you don’t keep them on an exchange, unless you plan to sell within the next week or so.

A wallet is usually a mobile, desktop or web application that allows you to store your lumens securely, and off of an exchange. They are commonly password protected, and can be setup for two-step verification too!

Stellar has a built-in inflation system, where lumens are created and distributed at a rate of 1% each year.

Although transaction fees on the Stellar Network are extremely cheap, thousands of them per second do eventually add up. These Lumens from transaction fees are thrown together into an inflation pool.

One of the best ways to support Stellar is to be active in the community. As Stellar grows, we see hundreds of people flock to it’s subreddit, forums, and social media daily.

Now that you’re more educated about Stellar, it’s up to you to pass on your knowledge to new members joining the community. It’s important that we maintain our maturity and professionalism (and a few memes).

Stellar has been praised for it’s clean and organized documentation. Perhaps that is influenced by Stripe, a company known for easy-to-use APIs, who has team members invested in Stellar.

Perhaps you are a developer but do not necessarily want to get coding immediately. You can check out the Use Cases on their website.

Not every company is perfect, especially startups. Stellar has been blessed to make very few errors, but we would still like to cover the challenges they have had, and will face. We want you to leave you as well-rounded as possible with your new Stellar knowledge.

The founder of Stellar is known for getting a lot of bad press. It almost feels like I’m reading a teenage gossip magazine when reading about his past. Nonetheless, it’s important to read about him from multiple sources, as he is leading the company. We’ll post stories from many different sides in the resources.