Stellar is a Layer-1 blockchain co-founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim, stewarded by the non-profit Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), with David Mazières as chief scientist and designer of the Stellar Consensus Protocol. The network was designed for cross-border payments and asset issuance rather than general-purpose computation, with the native lumen (XLM) as its gas asset. Stellar reaches consensus through the Stellar Consensus Protocol, a Federated Byzantine Agreement construction, and ledgers close in roughly five seconds. As of 2026 the network hosts USDC (Circle, since 2021), EURC (Circle), YLDS (Figure), and as of June 2 2026 MGUSD (Bridge for MoneyGram, per the launch announcement). This explainer walks through how Stellar works, what runs on it today, and how it differs from Ethereum and Solana for payment rails.
​

By Eco research. Updated June 2026.
​

Stellar is a payments-first Layer-1 blockchain that supports value transfer, asset issuance, and (since 2024) Rust-based smart contracts via Soroban. Validators reach agreement through the Stellar Consensus Protocol, average transaction fees are roughly $0.0007, and ledgers close in under six seconds, with the Stellar Development Foundation publishing the reference implementation.
​

The network's design choice is structural. Stellar treats fiat-backed and crypto-backed assets as first-class objects on the ledger instead of contract balances bolted onto a general-purpose VM. That is what makes the network useful for stablecoin issuance, fiat anchors, and remittance corridors. Issuers create an asset, set authorization flags, and let users hold and transfer it the same way they hold lumens.
​

Cumulative context figures from the Stellar Development Foundation: 10.1M total addresses, 5.1B operations processed, and $33.9B in real-world asset payment volume since 2015.
​

Stellar runs accounts, assets, and operations on a shared ledger that closes every few seconds. Validators use the Stellar Consensus Protocol to agree on the next ledger. Anchors connect the on-ledger world to local banking rails. Pathfinding lets a payment quote a route through multiple assets in one operation. Soroban adds programmable contracts on top.
​

Four primitives carry most of the load:

A USDC-to-EURC transfer, or a USDC-to-anchor-cash-out, can settle in one operation. Stellar's developer documentation covers the full operation set.
​

The Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) is a Federated Byzantine Agreement system. Each validator chooses which other validators it trusts in a quorum slice, and the network reaches agreement through the overlap of those slices. There is no mining, no staking, and no fixed validator set. Ledgers close in roughly five seconds.
​

SCP differs from both Bitcoin-style Proof of Work and Ethereum-style Proof of Stake. Validators do not bid for block production by spending energy or capital. Instead, they publish their trust assumptions, and the protocol guarantees safety as long as quorum slices overlap correctly. The trade-off is that SCP relies on the social layer of validator selection rather than economic finality.
​

The protocol was specified by David Mazières, then a Stanford computer science professor and now SDF's chief scientist. The SCP whitepaper remains the canonical reference for the math and the safety proofs.
​

Lumens (XLM) is Stellar's native asset. It pays transaction fees, serves as a bridge asset in pathfinding when two assets share no direct market, and meets minimum account reserves that protect the ledger from spam. Lumens are not used to back stablecoins on Stellar; USDC, EURC, YLDS, and MGUSD are each backed by their own issuer reserves.
​

SDF set total supply at roughly 50 billion lumens after a 2019 supply burn. A USDC sender pays a fraction of a cent in lumens to broadcast the transaction; the value being moved is the USDC.
​

Stellar's stablecoin footprint in 2026 includes USDC (Circle, on Stellar since 2021), EURC (Circle, euro-pegged), YLDS (Figure, yield-bearing dollar), and MGUSD (Bridge as issuer for MoneyGram, launched June 2 2026 per the launch announcement). Each is a Stellar-native asset issued by a regulated entity, with reserves held offchain and mint-burn mechanics specific to that issuer.
​

The table summarizes the four issuers and what each piece does:

The launch announcement frames MGUSD as a dollar stablecoin built for a remittance distribution network rather than as a standalone asset. SDF CEO Denelle Dixon describes Stellar in the release as "built for real-world utility at institutional scale."
​

"Stellar was built for real-world utility at institutional scale. Our five-year partnership with MoneyGram is proof that stablecoins have moved well beyond pilots."
​

Denelle Dixon, CEO, Stellar Development Foundation, in the MGUSD launch release (June 2 2026).
​

For deeper coverage of each issuer's mechanics, see the related-reading list at the bottom of this page.
​

Soroban is Stellar's Rust-based smart contracts platform, executed in WebAssembly. SDF launched Soroban on mainnet through Protocol 20 in February 2024 after a two-year test phase. Soroban contracts compose with Stellar's existing accounts and assets through Stellar Asset Contracts, letting issued assets like USDC or MGUSD participate in programmable logic.
​

Soroban targets four use cases: programmable mint and burn for stablecoin issuers, automated liquidity for cross-asset paths, DeFi primitives, and integrator hooks for compliance and treasury workflows. Contracts compile to WASM and run in a metered host environment. Soroban's developer overview covers the toolchain.
​

Stellar's pre-Soroban asset issuance still works the same way it always did. Soroban is additive. Stablecoin issuers can run their reserve attestations and mint logic in classic Stellar operations, in Soroban contracts, or in a combination of both. M0's smart-contract stack, named in the MGUSD launch announcement as the mint-burn layer, is one example of programmable stablecoin infrastructure that composes with the Stellar ledger; specific MGUSD contract configurations beyond what is disclosed in the launch announcement are not yet publicly detailed.
​

Anchors are regulated businesses that issue or redeem Stellar assets against local bank rails. Pathfinding is the Stellar protocol feature that finds a multi-hop route between any two assets in a single operation, using order books and liquidity pools to bridge them. Together they turn Stellar into a routing layer over local fiat.
​

An anchor in Argentina might issue a peso-pegged token redeemable for cash at participating partners. An anchor in the Philippines might do the same for pesos. A sender holding USDC can issue a path payment that quotes the route USDC to ARS-anchor or USDC to PHP-anchor at the best available rate. The recipient sees a local-currency token they can redeem with the local anchor.
​

This model is why payment companies treat Stellar as a settlement layer rather than just a transfer ledger. MoneyGram's Stellar relationship started in 2021 around USDC cash-out and now extends to MGUSD issuance.
​

Stellar treats assets and payments as protocol-level primitives, Ethereum treats them as smart-contract balances on a general-purpose VM, and Solana treats them as token-program accounts on a high-throughput chain. The structural difference shapes which use cases each fits, not which is "better."
​

The trade-off table:

Use-case fit follows the architecture. Stellar's protocol-level assets and pathfinding make it strong for remittance corridors, fiat issuance, and stablecoin-to-cash flows. Ethereum's smart-contract depth and DeFi liquidity make it strong for composable financial primitives. Solana's throughput and low latency make it strong for high-frequency consumer flows. Stablecoin issuers increasingly publish on multiple chains rather than picking one: Circle issues USDC on more than ten chains, including Stellar, Ethereum, and Solana.
​

Stellar is one of several settlement layers stablecoins live on. A payment that starts as MGUSD on Stellar and ends as USDC on Solana traverses both a chain and a cross-chain transport rail. Orchestration layers handle the route selection and execution between rails, leaving the chains themselves to do what they do well.
​

Eco Routes is an example of a stablecoin intent router that aggregates rails (such as CCTP, Hyperlane, and others) so a sender can express a destination intent and let the router pick the path. It composes with chain-native stablecoin issuance (Bridge on Stellar for MGUSD, Circle across multiple chains for USDC) rather than replacing it. Other peer aggregators including LI.FI, Across, Squid, and Jumper operate in the same intent-routing layer.
​

Picking Stellar for issuance does not lock the flow to one chain. Pathfinding handles in-chain routing; intent routers handle cross-chain routing.
​

The SDF site at stellar.org and the developer site at developers.stellar.org are the canonical references for protocol, SDKs, and ecosystem programs. Stellarchain and stellar.expert are public ledger explorers. The Stellar Asset Issuer Directory enumerates regulated issuers active on the network.
​

For the MGUSD launch specifically, the primary source is the June 2 2026 PRNewswire release from MoneyGram. As of June 2026 limited public technical detail beyond the release is available; sibling articles in this cluster (linked below) walk through the issuer, contract, custody, and distribution mechanics piece by piece.
​

Sources and methodology. Network facts pulled from Stellar Development Foundation and Stellar developer docs. MGUSD launch facts cite the June 2 2026 PRNewswire release. Soroban mainnet date from SDF's Protocol 20 announcement. Comparison-table figures reflect public protocol documentation as of June 2026.
​