Stellar Core is a peer-to-peer consensus node implementation that maintains and validates a distributed ledger for the Stellar network.
The tool solves the problem of coordinating agreement on financial transactions across a decentralized network without a central authority. It implements the Stellar Consensus Protocol, a federated consensus mechanism where nodes reach agreement by consulting a configurable set of trusted peers rather than requiring all participants to validate every transaction. Each node maintains a local copy of the cryptographic ledger and processes transactions against it in consensus with its peer set.
Stellar Core is suited for operators who want to run a validating node on the Stellar network or developers building infrastructure that requires direct participation in consensus. It is the reference implementation for the Stellar network, written in C++20 and runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Anyone deploying it should expect to engage with the Stellar Consensus Protocol documentation and the project's code layout and abstraction documentation to understand how to configure their node's trusted peer set and participate in the network.
The project maintains active continuous integration with automated build workflows. Development activity shows regular code contributions across the codebase. The project provides structured documentation covering both the protocol implementation and code organization, along with defined processes for contributions and testing.
