So you just got your Keybase spacedrop. What now?
This page is for recipients of the great Keybase spacedrop, an ongoing monthly XLM giveaway for qualified Keybase users. To find out more, including information on how to join, check out the official announcement.
Congrats on your new riches, and welcome to the wonderful world of Stellar! The XLM in your Keybase wallet is yours: you can do whatever you want with it, no strings. Our hope is that you’ll take this opportunity to play around a bit, explore the Stellar universe, and realize its potential to transform life as we know it. Here’s a quick overview of Stellar, and some examples of things you can do right now to get started.
What is Stellar?
Stellar is a multi-currency payment backend that’s decentralized, open-source, and developer-friendly. There are all kinds of assets available on Stellar, and all kinds of interfaces that allow you to access those assets to settle payments and make trades.
While Stellar is a blockchain, it works a lot like cash. It’s much faster and cheaper than bitcoin, and it uses far less electricity. To find out more, check out this overview or watch this video:
What can I do with my XLM?
Use Keybase to send money in a chat
Keybase allows super convenient in-chat sends, which you can denominate in your currency of choice. That means you can interact with people financially the same way you interact with them socially.
There’s a “$” button in direct chats. Click it, and you can send or request funds. To send funds in line, use “+” followed by amount and currency.
In group chats, you can pay more than one person in a single message. For example:
When you send someone lumens, you can price them in real currency, and Keybase will figure out the conversion rate on the fly. So that +1USD@kylemccollom will send Kyle $1 worth of lumens in just a few seconds.
You can also send lumens (and chats) to any phone number, even ones without a Keybase account. So now you can send lumens to anyone in the world and be sure they’ll get them.
Try out other Stellar wallets and exchange interfaces
Keybase has one of the coolest Stellar integrations, but there are other interfaces you can use to access and explore the potential of the network.
Since Keybase wallets are non-custodial, you have direct access to the secret key to your Stellar account. Those funds are literally yours. You can use that key in a lot of Stellar clients, though you should be super careful with it because anyone who knows it has total access to your account. You can also send funds to any Stellar address.
So one thing you can do to explore: set up an account with another Stellar interface such as StellarX, send your XLM (and/or very carefully link the secret key from your Keybase wallet), and see what you can see. You can find more wallets listed here.
Trade XLM for other Stellar assets and redeem those assets for other currencies
XLM is the protocol token of the Stellar network. For more info on what that means, check out this explainer.
Stellar also handles any asset, makes it easy for financial institutions to tether tokens, and has a built-in marketplace, so you can use exchange interfaces to trade XLM for real-world currencies like USD, or for other cryptocurrencies like ETH and BTC.
If you trade your lumens for other Stellar assets, you can hold, transfer, or trade those assets just like you can XLM. You can also redeem tethered tokens with their issuer for the underlying asset they represent. It’s pretty simple, and you can often do it within an app’s interface.
For example: I have 100 AnchorUSD tokens in my StellarX account. If I click “withdraw” and choose those tokens from the dropdown, I convert those tokens into $100 in my bank account.
Micropay for online content
In addition to interfaces that let you buy, sell, transfer, and trade tokens, there are a host of projects built on Stellar that take advantage of its low fees and fast transaction times to do other interesting things. To wit, Satoshipay:
What can I do with Stellar?
Stellar is super developer friendly, and you can use it as a backend for any project that needs to handle any kind of payment. You don’t need to set up a node to get started: you can create accounts, issue assets, program smart contracts, or build a wallet without a ton of overhead or commitment. For some insight into what you can build on Stellar, check out the Get Started section of our website.
One great way to get started: play around with the Stellar laboratory, which is an interface that allows you to craft and submit transactions on both the public network and the test network. It’s a great way to look under the hood, see how things work, and get a sense of what’s possible.
Stellar Community Fund:
Feeling inspired after digging through our wealth of resources? Ready to build something with impact? Check out the Stellar Community Fund, a community-driven grant program that rewards developers (like you) for contributing to Stellar’s growth. If you have a great idea, get building and apply now. Click here to view the contest guidelines and other community proposals.
We love contributors.
For any devs interested in contributing to Stellar, the help wanted labels on our Github repos are a great place to start. For example: here they are for the Go monorepo.
Want to keep digging?
Check out “Awesome Stellar”, a curated list of Stellar applications, blog posts, educational resources, tools, and more.
Eager to stay in the loop?
Subscribe to the Stellar Developer Digest newsletter!
