The process of confirming transactions works a bit like this. Imagine you are a student assigned an at-home math test to be completed in groups, you’re like a Stellar node. First, you’ll decide which of your fellow students you want to work with and form a study group, that’s your Quorum Set. When you sit down to do the test together, you’ll want a certain number of fellow students you trust within your study group to compare answers and agree, that’s a Quorum Slice. But that’s just your own study group. In order to get widespread agreement on the answers being correct across the class, you’ll need members of your group to have their own trusted fellow students outside the group agree too. Now you have overlapping Quorum Slices that agree - and that achieves Proof-of-Agreement. And congratulations - the whole class gets an “A” on that test.

Finally, one of the most singular distinctions about the Stellar network is the transparency surrounding asset issuers and nodes. In order to participate in SCP and issue assets on the Stellar network, you must have a publicly-accessible and verifiable record (called a TOML file) that identifies you to the world. In SCP, each node chooses who will be in their quorum set, like the students in the math test example, so all are known to each other. Having a transparent and open process builds trust in the network and allows for flexible growth and collaboration.