Stellar History: From Mt. Gox and Ripple to Asset Tokenization
2014: Founded After Leaving Ripple
Stellar was founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb — a figure with a uniquely storied crypto history: he previously founded the Mt. Gox exchange (later sold and only went bankrupt after he left) and was one of Ripple's co-founders. After parting ways with the Ripple team over the project's direction, McCaleb launched Stellar together with lawyer Joyce Kim as a non-profit initiative — the Stellar Development Foundation.
2015: Network Launch and Early Growth
The Stellar network went live in April 2015. The protocol initially relied heavily on Ripple's codebase, but over time Stellar developed its own consensus architecture (the Stellar Consensus Protocol), distinct from Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work.
2018: A Price Peak Amid the Broader Crypto Boom
Amid the broader market mania of late 2017 into early 2018, XLM closed out 2017 up over 14,000% and reached an all-time high of roughly $0.94 in early January 2018.
2019 Onward: Partnerships and Real-World Asset Tokenization
In 2019, Stellar partnered with IBM (the World Wire project) for cross-border payments between banks. In later years, the focus shifted toward real-world asset (RWA) tokenization — for example, a partnership with asset manager Franklin Templeton to issue a tokenized money market fund directly on Stellar, making the project one of the pioneers of this space among public blockchains.