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Stellar, like Ripple, is centralized. They run an append-only database that only they can approve transactions on. Ethereum is attempting to be far more decentr

Stellar, like Ripple, is centralized. They run an append-only database that only they can approve transactions on. Ethereum is attempting to be far more decentralized, which is why it’s so difficult. Stellar may solve problems but the types of problems it solves are nothing like what Ethereum is doing. And smart contracts are indeed important for many applications, despite their flaws.

jillesvangurp 8y ago
Not as black and white as that. There are multiple companies running validators and you can choose to run your own. The transactions go to the same shared blockchain. Most of the significant tokens on Stellar have their own preferred validators for transactions. Each validator can configure consensus for their ecosystem as well. IMHO this is a reasonable compromise and not that different from Ethereum proof of stake in combination with a high stakes. Ethereum is a nice science project so far that may one day result in something usable and when that happens, I will look at it again. However, that is not right now and we are trying to run an actual business right now. Most of the smart contracts I've seen are convoluted and tend to solve things that Stellar can do out of the box with zero programming. The smart thing seems to be to reuse smart contracts from Github and avoid writing your own and thus avoid taking the risk of introducing exploitable bugs right in the heart of your financial operation. Not to say that they are useless, but I have no need for them with Stellar. That saved us a lot of time so far.