I saw that XLM has recently had an interesting rally, reaching highs it hasn’t seen in years. The curious thing is that it continues to be mentally associated with XRP, but apparently they are two completely different worlds.

Jed McCaleb, the founder of Stellar Development Foundation, has decided to clear up this point. He emphasized that Stellar is structured in a radically different way from Ripple—completely separate code, a different consensus mechanism, different features, and even smart contracts. In short, everything is different.

What prompted McCaleb to make this clarification was a broader discussion in the industry. Charles Hoskinson has recently leveled criticism at the Wyoming Stable Token Commission, accusing it of bias. Meanwhile, Stellar was included in the list of networks eligible for the distribution of Wyoming’s WYST stablecoin project, while Cardano apparently was not.

McCaleb basically said: Stellar is able to do things that Ripple can’t do according to the selection criteria. He also noted that the director of the commission has a background in Consensys, which further fueled the debate.

Here’s the interesting part: Jed McCaleb has recently described Stellar as the most underrated and least understood crypto project in the market. And looking at the numbers, he’s right—Stellar already processes many more transactions per day than nearly all other networks, with a transaction volume 10 times higher than Ethereum. Real people use it every day for real-world transactions.

But despite all of this, it continues to be seen as Ripple’s cousin. Jed McCaleb will probably still have to patiently explain just how different the project really is.