Stellar’s Joyce Kim Talks the Launch, the Fork and the Future

Backed by mainstream payments technology startup Stripe, decentralized payment network Stellar provides a vision for how digital currency could solve real problems for people with restricted financial access.
It may be no wonder then that at San Francisco’s Future of Money Summit in early December, the Stellar panel was among the most popular. The digital currency community is increasingly focused on the technology’s use in payments, and Stellar aims to provide a decentralized payment system that improves on bitcoin and its closest competitor, Ripple.
However, since launching in July after months of secrecy, Stellar has arguably struggled to emphasize this message. Relatively silent in the media, the project has also waged high-profile battles against Ripple Labs, the company founded by its own creator Jed McCaleb, over both matters of technology and more corporate disputes.
In a new interview with CoinDesk, Stellar co-founder Joyce Kim provides a unique window into efforts at the Stellar Foundation, the non-profit dedicated to overseeing the development of the wider project, addressing issues regarding Stellar’s initial launch, perceived vulnerabilities and developer adoption.
Launch issues ‘overblown’
Owing to the high-profile nature of its debut, Stellar was greeted with enthusiasm by the bitcoin community, but just how enthusiastic this response was has been subject to debate.
By September, Stellar already had 1 million Facebook authentications for users collecting free Stellar, a figure Kim suggests is indicative of the total users the project has garnered.

This post was published at Coin Desk on December 21, 2014.