The Stellar network is an open-source, distributed payments infrastructure. It is designed to connect banks, payment systems, and people to quickly, reliably, and securely send and receive money anywhere in the world. Stellar was founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb, the co-founder of Ripple and the creator of Mt. Gox. The Stellar team includes former employees of Google, Stripe, and PayPal.
The Stellar network has a built-in decentralized exchange (DEX) that allows users to trade any two assets on the network without having to go through a third party. Stellar also offers a lending program called AnchorUSD, which allows users to take out loans in USD that are backed by its tokens.
The native currency of the Stellar network is Lumens (XLM). XLM can be used to pay for goods and services or sent between users on the network. XLM can also be traded on cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance or Kraken.