Stellar (XLM)

Overview

XLM, or lumen, is the native currency of the Stellar network and is used for transaction fees, account reserves, rent, and native value transfer.

Stellar accounts hold XLM directly, while non-native assets generally require trustlines and can introduce issuer authorization, limits, and clawback or freeze controls. Native-asset economics connect issuance, fees, rewards, and security. new supply may compensate validators or miners, while burns, treasury allocations, or governance decisions can alter circulating supply and incentives.

XLM is distinct from Stellar-issued assets, liquidity-pool shares, claimable balances, and wrapped or custodial representations on other platforms. Stellar (XLM) should be distinguished from wrapped or bridged versions, exchange balances, staking receipts, and same-ticker tokens on other chains. The native network, denomination, address format, and fee rules define the asset.

Risks include insufficient minimum balance, missing trustlines, exchange memo errors, issuer confusion for non-XLM assets, market volatility, and incorrect network selection. Risks include software and consensus failures, validator or mining concentration, inflation or emission changes, governance capture, network outages, reorganization, fee volatility, slashing, liquidity loss, and migration to a successor chain or token.

Applications should preserve account ID, muxed account or memo where required, stroop amounts, sequence number, fee, operation result, ledger close, and reserve availability. Treasury policy should address custody, staking lockups, liquidity, concentration, and conversion. A small test transfer is prudent after wallet, network, or migration changes.

Stellar (XLM), Stellar Network, and USDC on Stellar may appear in the same workflow. Every component connected to Stellar (XLM) should therefore be validated independently so a related asset or mechanism is not credited as the intended token.