Frequently Asked Questions

The Stellar Development Foundation (“SDF”) is a non-stock, nonprofit corporation organized under the laws of Delaware.  SDF is not a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) organization and we don’t have plans to seek tax exempt status from the IRS.  As such, SDF pays taxes similar to a C corporation.‍

As a non-stock, non-profit, SDF does not have shareholders, so we are not motivated by profits, share value, or dividends.  Instead, we are driven by our mission: creating equitable access to the global financial system.  We dedicate all of our resources to supporting Stellar, building the ecosystem, and furthering this mission.  Our mandate details our progress towards reaching our goals.  

If you are making an ‘everyday’ transaction on the Stellar network using a popular Stellar wallet, forgetting the memo is no big deal; it’s optional. If you are sending (depositing) lumens to an exchange, forgetting the memo will generally lead to your exchange account not being credited with lumens. If this happens, it’s important that you contact the exchange you sent lumens to — SDF can not help you recover your lumens.

We suggest finding your transaction using the Payment Locator on Stellar.Expert and getting as many details as you can regarding the transaction. Reach out to the exchange’s support team with the transaction details, let them know that you forgot the memo, and see what they can do to help you identify your transaction.

Going forward, make sure to review the address you’re sending to, verify if you need to provide a memo, and check that you provide an appropriate fee. You should only send transactions after you have double checked all of this information and verified that it is correct. Remember, it’s never a bad idea to try sending a small amount of an asset before making any transaction.

Read more here.

Minimum balances help protect the network from spam account creation. You can create an account by funding it with at least 1 lumen. Each new held asset (trustline) requires an additional 0.5 lumen reserve. To add three different assets to an account, a user must have at least 2.5 lumens: 1 XLM account reserve + (0.5 XLM asset reserve * 3 assets) = 2.5 total reserve.

If you are having issues sending a transaction from your Ledger, please make sure that your Ledger and the Stellar app on the device is up to date. Also, consider sending the transaction in a different browser.

Scams are an unfortunate outgrowth of any industry involving money, including crypto. The Stellar Development Foundation team hates to see anyone in the Stellar community targeted or hurt by scams. We have a full-length security guide we highly encourage you to read, but the abbreviated version is below.

First things, first – here’s what to know about SDF:

SDF is a non-profit organization that supports the growth and development of an open-source distributed ledger protocol called “Stellar” or the “Stellar network.” The Stellar network is run by a global set of independent validators and is publicly available for use. SDF: 

• DOES NOT and CANNOT control the operation or public usage of the Stellar protocol or Stellar network 
• DOES NOT have access to or control over Stellar accounts created and used by individuals to access the network.  
• DOES NOT have the capability to freeze or return XLM held in a Stellar account.

The SDF team will: 

• NEVER ask you for your private keys.
• NEVER ask you to deposit funds to any wallet address. 
• NEVER host staking initiatives and competitions.
• NEVER cold direct-message (DM) people to participate in airdrops and giveaways. 
• NEVER cold DM people regarding support issues or security alerts.
• NO LONGER hold airdrops or XLM giveaways. 

Our official site is https://www.stellar.org/. To access the site, type the URL into your browser address bar and then bookmark the site. Only use the bookmark to visit the site. Scammers can create fake websites that look very convincing, so always check the full URL before entering any personal information — make sure, for example, someone did not replace a lowercase “L” with an uppercase “i”! or that there are no additional letters following “.org/” in the domain address such as “stellar.org.jp/”.

You can also find official announcements from SDF on our active social media accounts, which are:

• Twitter: @StellarOrg
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stellar-development-foundation/
• Discord: Developers Discord
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/StellarDevelopmentFoundation
• If you are unsure if an account you come across is affiliated with SDF and it is not listed above, it is not an official SDF account. (e.g. Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.)

The SDF team will only email you from emails using the @stellar.org domain and will never ask for sensitive information like private keys.

When in doubt, please fill out this form (https://www.stellar.org/contact) and we will instruct you whether a communication is actually from SDF.

All official partnerships and announcements are made on our social media and website — do not fall for any third party rumors or speculation. If you see a reposted announcement in any other forum that does not contain a link to the original information on our website, it is fake. Only trust what you see on the https://www.stellar.org/ website.

Lastly, a few quick notes:

• Always verify the domain and email addresses where the communication is coming from. In addition, check the website certification.
• Be thoughtful about how you store your crypto and how you protect your keys. There are many options out there, so find one that you understand and works for you. For example, one approach that can help minimize the risk of loss from a compromised self hosted wallet is to hold the majority of your crypto in a "cold wallet" and only interact with third-party accounts or interfaces from a “hot wallet.” A cold wallet is somewhere you keep most of your assets, and you don’t interact with third-party accounts or interfaces through it. When you want to interact with a third-party account or interface, you can send only those assets you wish to use for that interaction from your cold wallet to your hot wallet. That way, even if the hot wallet were compromised, only the assets you moved to your hot wallet for the activity would be at risk as the majority of your assets would still be stored in your cold wallet. 

• If you believe you are a victim of a scam or fraud, we recommend that you contact the relevant law enforcement agency for assistance. In the U.S., one place to report this type of issue is the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center: https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx. 

To upgrade from the old network, log in here: https://launch.stellar.org/

No. 

The old Stellar network launched in July 2014. The node software (stellard) was a modified fork of the Ripple node software (rippled). The ledger was completely new and contained no history from Ripple’s network.

In September 2015 the current Stellar network was launched with a new consensus model (SCP) and software, stellar-core. stellar-core was written from scratch — it does not share any code with rippled. For more information, read these blog posts about why the Stellar network was relaunched:

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Safety, liveness and fault tolerance—the consensus choices
Stellar Consensus Protocol: Proof and Code