StellarX Review, Tutorial and Walk-through

Published in

The Cryptoverse

6 min readOct 2, 2018

On Today’s Episode of The Cryptoverse…

I would like to walk you through what I have discovered about the brand new StellarX exchange simply by reading the official announcement and then playing around with it.

Now I will be interacting with StellarX throughout this video via the most secure means possible, which is a Ledger hardware wallet.

Episode Transcript & Notes

If you don’t already own a Ledger hardware wallet I’d highly recommend you get one to make your crypto impossible to steal without your consent.

And if the thief has your consent it’s not really stealing.

Anyway if you would be kind enough to make your purchasing using The Cryptoverse Ledger referral link in the video description that will help fund more content like this.

You can also help fund more content like this by going to www.TheCryptoverse.show and becoming a patron at The Cryptoverse Patreon page.

Continuing The Show!

Now let’s get into the tutorial.

When you visit StellarX for the first time and select the option to interact with it using your Ledger hardware wallet it’ll point out a few key areas on the screen.

The interface is nicely organised into a hierarchy.

Next to the StellarX logo we have the 3 major areas:

Markets
Wallet
Activity

The next horizontal row displays sub-options based on which major area you are in…

The rest of the interface is reserved for displaying the exchange contents.

One feature I found most valuable when playing around was the ability to add an asset to my favourites inside the exchange.

When I click the star icon next to the US Dollar…

It then shows up in the pinned section.

I noticed that if you click into the pinned section too quickly after clicking the star it doesn’t register.

The pinned section is great because you’ll end up with a personalised sub set of assets that you are interested in.

Native tokens are assets where the developers decided to build their token on the stellar network itself.

That’s relevant because StellarX is not limited to native stellar tokens.

Because StellarX is a marketplace rather than an exchange, a whole network of 3rd parties plug in and offer other assets for sale.

This is going to expand into bonds, stocks, real estate commodities and crypto assets.

So when you see fiat tethers or crypto tethers, that’s not a reference to the tether stablecoin, it’s simply a reference to the fact that the token you are trading on StellarX is a representation of the real asset held in reserved by the issuer that is listed in the issuer column.

Ordinarily an exchange would hold custody of your assets and allow you to trade them, StellarX is more like a marketplace where a network of exchanges are connected together.

Sometimes, like in the case of the US Dollar, there are multiple issuers, denoted by this plus sign which you can click on to see more detail.

Don’t quote me on this but it looks like the system lists the issuer with the highest volume by default but gives you the flexibility to trade on any market you want.

There are some clear arbitrage opportunities here allowing you to exploit price differences for the same asset.

To help you with that StellarX displays the price in XLM, but also in the fiat currency that you select at the top. I find that very helpful.

Even more helpful is the instant search feature which filters the asset list in real time… let’s go for Litecoin.

Then we get the classic exchange layout with a chart, order form, order book, trade history and it wouldn’t be complete without a trollbox.

Orders execute pretty quickly. I say that because as far as I understand, it all happens directly on the network.

Let me show you this in real time… [buys 10 XLM worth of LTC]

[Show it in the wallet]

[Show it in the activity screen]

[Sell the LTC back to XLM]

Let’s move on to deposits and withdrawals, particularly as it relates to fiat currencies.

If I hit deposit…. Then go for USD… eventually this will give you many organisations that you could deposit your dollars with, but for now there is just this one option of Anchor USD.

They will hold our dollars and issue us with digital representations that are tradeable on StellarX.

Just like Casino chips anyone in possession of those tokens can exchange them and have US dollars transferred back to their bank.

This is ultimately how I see you’ll be able to buy and sell all assets on StellarX.

As long as someone joins the marketplace that is in possession of that asset then it will be available.

That’s the vision StellarX have of ending up with real estate, stocks, bonds and all the rest of it. Better yet you’ll have instant access to those assets in every country.

Once we get to that point the playing field will have really been levelled since the unbanked population of the world will have equal access to international financial markets on the same terms of everyone else.

A final note on withdrawals before I close this off.

At the moment, if I buy a tether asset like LiteCoin and I want to withdraw it to an actual LiteCoin wallet, I have to do that directly on the issuers website.

This is what StellarX refers to as an off-chain account, because the asset was not built on the stellar network itself.

This is temporary thought and as it says here you’ll soon have the ability to withdraw tethered assets right from within StellarX, making a true one stop shop.

https://medium.com/stellarxhq/how-stellarx-will-take-over-the-world-119e280e09fc

So in conclusion then, StellarX is starting to give BitShares a run for it’s money.

Almost everything we just went through has been possible on BitShares for years, but without an interface as soon as this and without hardware wallet support.

StellarX is also free and refunds all stellar network fees, so it really is free.

The only fees you might incur are from those third party issuers.

It’s not entirely trustless when it comes to the tethers tokens, but it is very decentralised.

The transfers happen at the stellar protocol level, meaning there’s no smart contracts to that can break.

What stands above all else though is that StellarX is perfectly congruent with the mission and purpose with which the stellar network was created…