> To claim the next air drop you only need to have bitcoins in an exchange like Poloniex?

yes in an exchange that supports it. If you don't see your exchange listed here: https://www.stellar.org/blog/bitcoin-claim-lumens-2/ then contact them to suggest they support it.

Re: stellar vs ripple
Not that much detail but someone made this: https://galactictalk.org/d/72-ripple-users-tutorial
One major difference is our consensus algorithm: https://www.stellar.org/developers/guides/concepts/scp.html
watch the video.

Distribution to bitcoin and some xrp holders: https://www.stellar.org/blog/bitcoin-claim-lumens-2/

Here are a list of wallets: https://www.stellar.org/about/directory#wallets
Another good one is: https://github.com/stellarchat/desktop-client/releases

wwzsocki  > Thank you for this info. But still I haven't found information when this signup proces begin and how to participate.
There isn't a general signup right now. We have an invite system so at some point you will likely receive an invite from someone to claim some lumens.

wwzsocki: We also have a general airdrop. 50% of the lumens were allocated to this: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Lumen_distribution

You can check the progress here: http://dashboard.stellar.org

Of course I have no idea what the price will do but last round of the distribution to bitcoin holders the price actually went up. I think because more people learned about Stellar and that increased demand.

 Luzina90:  We will put up a claim page where you will have to sign something with your bitcoin keys once the distribution starts.

JWH007: They are useful and there is a limited supply of them, like bitcoin.

triasel yeah there are several different stellar wallets. you can see a list here: https://galactictalk.org/d/14-projects-built-on-stellar

 Pavel1995: https://www.stellar.org/about/  and yeah lots of good announcements coming in the months ahead.


Arvydas77: Stellar is not an XRP clone. Completely different code base.

You can operate your stellar-core in two modes, validating or observing. If you are in validating mode you are both listening and participating in consensus.
But semantics aside, in Stellar anyone can participate in consensus. As in anyone can both listen and talk. It is true that maybe no one else will want to listen to you but there is certainly no barrier in the protocol keeping people from talking. And again if there is some cartel or some group that people feel are getting too much control it is trivial to set up your own nodes that are fully participating in consensus and have the non-cartel nodes listen to each other.

Also I'm not sure what people have in mind for the IETF ILC thing (I haven't had a chance to catch up on what is being discussed/proposed) but you can also easily have multiple independent stellar networks.

There was a thread on twitter (https://twitter.com/taoeffect/status/832041974735654912) debating this question and I wanted to move it here since discussions on twitter usually aren't that productive.

In my view Stellar is definitely permission-less. Anyone can run a validator. You don't need permission from anyone to join or use the network.

Greg, in the case that you are concerned with that there could be some "cartel" of validators that are all listening to each other and no one else, it is trivial for people to set up their own validators outside this cartel and listen to each other.

Keep in mind that this can also easily happen in bitcoin, if a cartel of miners with over 51% of the hashing decide to stop accepting blocks from people outside of cartel they can do this. The difference is in bitcoin it would be hard to ignore the cartel and there is economic incentive for the cartel to take all the blocks.

jovan85: It might be a bitrex issue. You can look up your account here: https://stellarchain.io/  and see if the transaction made it

God27: yes the round for the XRP holders will happen at the same time

ivanst776: We are very much alive. We are working on tons of partnerships. Things are going very well. Our community is mainly in http://slack.stellar.org

There will be another lumen distribution to bitcoin holders in the summer probably.
There is also this way to get lumens: https://www.stellar.org/lumens/build/

There is a list of projects built on Stellar here: https://galactictalk.org/d/14-projects-built-on-stellar

logictense: not sure what you are talking about.

Also some recent news about companies connecting to the network:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/global-banks-and-financial-operators-using-stellar-to-create-a-global-payment-network-1481131175
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2016/12/07/stellar-makes-sending-money-internationally-as-easy-as-email/#46851221131b

 cengsuwuei: STR was what they used to be called. They are called XLM or lumens now. Poloniex hasn't changed the symbol for some reason.

For bounties are you talking about this: https://www.stellar.org/lumens/build/
There are awards every 3 months for projects built on stellar.

New build challenge is up: https://www.stellar.org/lumens/build/  Get lumens for making things.

We haven't stalled at all. One of the largest internet companies in China is now using Stellar: https://www.stellar.org/blog/lefinance/