Stellar is a payments‑focused blockchain that uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), a federated Byzantine agreement where each node chooses its own quorum slices. Anchors issue fiat‑backed tokens, and Stellar’s built‑in DEX offers path payments that can hop through multiple assets in a single transaction. The 2023 Soroban upgrade added WebAssembly smart contracts, enabling on‑chain AMMs, lending and other DeFi primitives.