The Stellar network is an open source, distributed, and community owned network used to facilitate cross-asset transfers of value. Stellar aims to help facilitate cross-asset transfer of value at a fraction of a penny while aiming to be an open financial system that gives people of all income levels access to low-cost financial services. Stellar can handle exchanges between fiat-based currencies and between cryptocurrencies. Stellar.org, the organization that supports Stellar, is centralized like XRP and meant to handle cross platform transactions and micro transactions like XRP. However, unlike Ripple, Stellar.org is non-profit and their platform itself is open source and decentralized. Stellar was founded by Jed McCaleb in 2014. Jed McCaleb is also the founder of Mt. Gox and co-founder of Ripple, launched the network system Stellar with former lawyer Joyce Kim. Stellar is also a payment technology that aims to connect financial institutions and drastically reduce the cost and time required for cross-border transfers. In fact, both payment networks used the same protocol initially. Distributed Exchange Through the use of its intermediary currency Lumens (XLM), a user can send any currency that they own to anyone else in a different currency. For instance, if Joe wanted to send USD to Mary using her EUR, an offer is submitted to the distributed exchange selling USD for EUR. This submitted offer forms is known as an order book. The network will use the order book to find the best exchange rate for the transaction in-order to minimize the fee paid by a user. This multi-currency transaction is possible because of 'Anchors'. Anchors are trusted entities that hold people’s deposits and can issue credit. In essence, Anchors serves as the bridge between different currencies and the Stellar network. Lumens (XLM) Lumens are the native asset (digital currency) that exist on the Stellar network that helps to facilitate multi-currency transactions and prevent spams. For multi-currency transactions, XLM is the digital intermediary that allows for such a transaction to occur at a low cost. In-order to prevent DoS attacks (aka spams) that would inevitably occur on the Stellar network, a small fee of 0.00001 XLM is associated with every transaction that occurs on the network. This fee is small enough so it does not significantly affect the cost of transaction, but large enough so it dissuades bad actors from spamming the network. The collected fee is then redistributed and added to an inflation pool. This inflation pool releases Lumens at a rate of 1% each year.
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency based on the popular 'Doge' Internet meme and features a Shiba Inu on its logo. Dogecoin is a Litecoin fork. Introduced as a 'joke currency' on 6 December 2013, Dogecoin quickly developed its own online community and reached a capitalization of US$60 million in January 2014. Compared with other cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin had a fast initial coin production schedule: 100 billion coins were in circulation by mid-2015, with an additional 5.256 billion coins every year thereafter. As of 30 June 2015, the 100 billionth Dogecoin had been mined. Dogecoin was created by Billy Markus from Portland, Oregon and Jackson Palmer from Sydney, Australia. Both wanted to create a fun cryptocurrency that will appeal beyond the core Bitcoin audience. Dogecoin is primarily used as a tipping system on Reddit and Twitter where users tip each other for creating or sharing good content. The community is very active in organising fundraising activities for deserving causes. The developers of Dogecoin haven’t made any major changes to the coin since 2015. This means that Dogecoin could get left behind and is why Shibas are leaving Dogecoin to join more advanced platforms like Ethereum. One of Dogecoin strengths is its relaxed and fun-loving community. However, this is also a weakness because other currencies are way more professional. To purchase Dogecoin, it involves downloading a crypto wallet, setting up a crypto exchange account and then trading away for your desired crypto currency. Once we have set up an account with a DOGE currency exchange and deposited some funds, you are ready to start trading.