The Stellar Network allows a participant to send a payment in any currency to another participant through the Stellar Network’s built-in distributed exchange. The receiving participant  will receive the currency of his or her choice. As its end-state, the Stellar Network’s primary goal is to allow payments to move through its system with minimal friction, cost and delay.  

Stellar Lumen (XLM) are the native currency of the Stellar Network. The Stellar Network was released in April 2015 and went live in November 2015. The Stellar Network works by providing a conversion path between currencies. Essentially, a user holds a balance with a network participant, usually a bank, who accepts a fiat deposit in exchange for credit on the Stellar Network. When a user wishes to send a payment through the Stellar Network, using distributed ledger technology, the Stellar Network will exchange and transmit this credit so that the receiving user will receive the payment in the currency of his or her choice. Lumens facilitate this process by being used both as the base conversion pair and also as the transaction fee currency.