Stellar Data Structures

The fundamental data structures and building blocks present on the Stellar network.

📄️ Ledgers

A ledger represents the state of the Stellar network at a point in time. It is shared across all Core nodes in the network and contains the list of accounts and balances, orders on the distributed exchange, smart contract data, and any other persisting data.

📄️ Accounts

Accounts are the central data structure in Stellar- they hold balances, sign transactions, and issue assets. Accounts can only exist with a valid keypair and the required minimum balance of XLM.

📄️ Assets

Accounts on the Stellar network can be used to track, hold, and transfer any type of asset. Assets can represent many things: cryptocurrencies (such as bitcoin or ether), fiat currencies (such as dollars or pesos), other tokens of value (such as NFTs), pool shares, or even bonds and equity.

📄️ Smart Contracts

Stellar has integrated a smart contracts platform called "Soroban" into the core protocol.