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Stellar XLM vs Ethereum ETH. Is there a battle on the horizon?

Stellar XLM vs Ethereum ETH. Is there a battle on the horizon?

During the 2017 and 2018 dose of ICO’s, a trend emerged that saw those who had a dream of selling cryptocurrency tokens to the masses to fund their own development of projects. Many failed, probably 1% can arguably be classified a success of sorts. The year 2019 is now in full force, and it has become very clear where the market is headed. Security token projects, or STO’s in the IEO format are the latest wave of fundraisers to wash over us.

You’ve got a team, have a game changing or disruptive idea. You’ve started writing your whitepaper, and get to a point where you can comfortably sit back and get the ball rolling.. Only, you have a choice to make: Your ICO/STO/IEO can be developed and run on both the Ethereum and Stellar Blockchain. Which one do you choose?

Ethereum vs Stellar

The Ethereum Blockchain is widely known for being able to develop Smart Contracts and DApps with ease. This is the most popular, and, arguably easiest way to realizing the ICO development process, and is one of the reasons for the explosion of ICO’s in the cryptocurrency space during the last 3 years.

Stellar, on the other hand, is described as a decentralized payment protocol which allows for quick, easy and flexible fiat to crypto transfers. They are also responsible for the Lumens, or XLM cryptocurrency.

Development on the Ethereum and Stellar blockchain can be compared according to complexity of the application you are looking to develop. The EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) allows for the development of applications of a wide range of complexity ; from simple payments or data logging to inter-operable workers

Stellar, on the other hand, uses non-turing complete. While the platform limits the type of detail or complexity a developer can get into when developing applications, the speed is arguably much faster, costs less and is perfect for basic applications.

When it comes to security, is simple better? We already know Ethereum allows for complex applications and smart contracts, while Stellar is more simple, but faster. Which one provides the best out-of-box security? According to the National University of Singapore, the chances of third party manipulation is very high when dealing with Ethereum. After evaluating one million live smart contracts, they concluded that 34,000 of those contracts had vulnerabilities, and 2,000 of those had ‘high-risk’ vulnerabilities.

Stellar, while not as complex as Ethereum, is simple and does not allow for as much flexibility as their counterpart. What that ultimately provides users, is less of a chance of manipulation by third parties. Less is more here. Where Stellar does excel is the introduction of two very important solutions to their blockchain. Multi signature, which requires a second verification (unique) before a transaction can be completed. Developers who choose to use Stellar for their ICO/STO may also include the ability to specifically choose what nodes validate their transactions. This is especially important to think about if you plan to run a STO project. In addition to the above, Batching (including multiple operations in one transaction) and Atomicity (the guarantee that given a series of operations, upon submission to the network – if one operation fails, – all operation in the transaction fails) are also choices that can be made at the time of developing the smart contract.

When it comes to compliance, Stellar wins. Regulation is the current topic of discussion, and has been since before 2017. At the time of writing the SEC has shut down more than a dozen illegal or fraudulent offerings. This number is going to rise, mainly because of the lack of understanding of the cryptocurrency space, disregard for the existing regulations, or for sheer disregard altogether.

While there are companies out there that provide KYC/AML for prudent project teams looking to run an offering, it is not inherently built into the blockchain. Stellar, on the other hand, has this built into their blockchain and can be turned on to prevent trading of tokens to people who do not have KYC/AML approved addressed. There is also provision to freeze accounts proven to be owned by terrorists.

Ethereum is one of the most popular blockchain’s in the world. The ERC20 token is supported by hundreds of exchanges, and makes it easy to have a token listed. Liquidity, at the moment does not appear to be an issue. While Stellar does not have the notability that Ethereum has, they do have their own exchange where Stellar-based tokens can be listed on as soon as the offering ends. A Distributed Exchange, or DEX for short will list tokens on day one of post-offering. There are currently very few projects listed on DEX in the light of security offerings and lockups due to regulations, which can last 6 months to a year.

Finally, when looking at the running costs and transaction speeds of both blockchain’s, Stellar, once again prevails. At an estimated transaction speed (from beginning to settlement) is approximately 5 seconds, versus Ethereum’s 4 minutes. The fee is also lower with Stellar, at approximately 1 XLM for every 100,000 transactions, which is approximately 0.01% of the total fee for Ethereum transactions.

Ethereum seems to have the foundations built, and has control of the early market, but with Stellar chipping at their heels everyday, there is more pressure on Vitalik for an innovative fork to satisfy people heavily intertwined in the technology, and market for this years offerings.

Written by Jamaal Julien — JJulien@TheCoreAdmin.Com

Edited by Paul Mills — PMills@TheCoreAdmin.Com

Get in contact with The Core Admin for community management, consultations, contract audits, or any other ICO/STO/IEO needs!

www.TheCoreAdmin.Com

Published at Sun, 12 May 2019 21:57:56 +0000

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