Stellar Network is a distributed ledger technology well-suited for cross-border payment use cases and financial innovation. Its fundamental architecture simplifies the process of generating and releasing digital assets, facilitating prompt and inexpensive global transactions. 

In this article we explore:

1. What makes Stellar Network different from other distributed ledger technologies and where it is gaining popularity
2. How companies might encounter challenges when working with Stellar Network
3. Why using Catalyst Blockchain Manager to streamline Stellar Network deployment and management is the right choice for organizations looking to move quickly

What makes Stellar Network uniquely suited for the issuance of digital assets?

Stellar Network is an open-source, decentralized layer-1 blockchain network operating on a peer-to-peer basis, providing a platform to build applications, release assets, and link to established financial infrastructures. Stellar uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), a proof-of-agreement (PoA) consensus mechanism. Thanks to PoA, Stellar stands out for its speed, cost-effectiveness, and superior energy efficiency when compared to other blockchain platforms.

Within the Stellar Network, users can easily create their own currencies and tokens. This empowers users to generate, transmit, and exchange digital representations of diverse forms of value, including currencies, precious metals, and real estate. 

Benefits of Stellar:

Fast and Low-Cost Transactions 

Stellar is designed for rapid transaction settlement, typically taking 2-5 seconds. Additionally, transaction costs are kept low, making it an efficient choice for cross-border payments.

Decentralized Exchange

The platform incorporates a decentralized exchange, fostering liquidity and allowing users to trade a diverse array of assets directly within the network.

Asset Issuance and Custom Token

Stellar empowers users to effortlessly create and issue their own digital assets or tokens, expanding the range of representable value on the platform.

Smart Contracts

Support of a Soroban smart contract platform - built with Rust, optimized for scalability and efficiency.

Interoperability

Stellar is built to interoperate with traditional financial institutions, different types of assets, and web and layer two blockchain applications.

Which use cases is Stellar best suited for?

Cross-border payments

Stellar enables users to expand their global reach and manage payments around the clock, offering any-time settlement. Stellar makes cross-border payments easy, facilitating remittance, payroll handling, payments to suppliers, maintenance of treasury balances, and more.

Digital Asset creation

Stellar Network allows users to effortlessly generate, distribute, and oversee digital versions of fiat currencies and Real World Assets (RWAs). From CBDCs and stablecoins to securities, tokenization on Stellar is straightforward and includes customizable features and compliance tools to help align with your specific use case requirements.

Delivery Versus Payment (DvP)

Stellar's features, such as its ability to tokenize assets, maintain a real-time ledger, and support smart contracts, provide a strong foundation for implementing DvP mechanisms. These capabilities make it suitable for DvP applications where simultaneous settlement and exchange of digital assets are required to reduce counterparty risk and ensure transaction finality.

Where do companies struggle using Stellar Network?

While Stellar is a powerful and relatively straightforward blockchain, it remains an emerging technology: having sufficient understanding and resources to effectively deploy and manage applications can be challenging for all but blockchain experts.

Typical challenges when employing Stellar include:

Understanding the Technology 

Grasping the intricacies of Stellar, its consensus mechanism, and its unique features compared to other blockchain technologies — requires novel expertise that only a select few organizations will have. Any errors in configuring the network will lead to lengthy delays and unavoidable costs.

Management and Deployment of Stellar Network Entities 

Deployment and management of different types of nodes, Horizon servers, and integrating with the Soroban RPC, are not simple tasks and will likely create hurdles for developers. Tackled manually, many of these tasks will be technical and challenging, making project duration difficult to assess.

Scalability and Performance

Managing the performance and scalability requirements of Stellar Network entities and use cases can be difficult. For example, having the resources to deploy new Validator nodes and ensure the availability of needed memory to store network data takes expert planning from development teams. Failure to do so could result in mismatched requirements and resources, leading to infrastructure deficiencies.

How does Catalyst Blockchain Manager help you to deploy and manage Stellar Network entities?

Catalyst Blockchain Manager (“Catalyst”) helps organizations deploy enterprise-grade blockchain applications. It is a tool for streamlining and automating management and deployment, and abstracting away technical developer tasks in favor of clickable simplicity. 

For Stellar, Catalyst provides peace of mind through a suite of powerful capabilities: 

Automation for Stellar Node Management

• Stellar node deployment in Testnet and Pubnet
• Availability for Watcher, Validator and Full-validator nodes
• Quorum and Home Domain customization

Effortless Horizon Services Deployment

• Deployment in Testnet and Pubnet

Streamlined Compatibility

• Database support for internal, external, and PostgreSQL databases
• Customizable and default Docker images

Catalyst solves the challenges of Stellar infrastructure, streamlining the deployment and management of Stellar nodes, and enabling users to effortlessly run Stellar Horizon Services. 

With this powerful toolset, managing your Stellar network has never been easier. Catalyst Blockchain Manager also offers an intuitive interface to simplify operations, helping to ensure your Stellar environment remains secure, reliable, and straightforward to run.

In the next release, Catalyst will support Soroban RPC node deployment, enabling comprehensive capabilities for rapid tokenization and digital asset use case development.

Create unique Stellar Network use cases 

For a free demonstration of how Catalyst can streamline Stellar Network management, speak to our specialists to schedule a free demo.

Have a busy schedule, but want to see Catalyst for Stellar in action? No problem — take a look at a pre-recorded demo here ->

‍