One of the advantages of the Stellar network is that can be used to track, hold, and transfer any type of asset: dollars, euros, bitcoin, stocks, gold, and other tokens of value. Assets on the Stellar network represent a credit from a particular issuer of the asset.

If you are planning to issue an asset on Stellar I have great news for you, creating an asset on the Stellar Network is as easy as performing a few operations, whether using the Stellar Laboratory, alternatively doing the calls directly using one of the currently available libraries.

Creating issuer and distribution accounts

The first step when creating an asset is by generating a distribution account and an issuer account. You can achieve this using the Stellar Laboratory , going to “Create Account” and by clickling on “generate keypair”.

Once both accounts are created, make sure to fund the accounts with some lumens, since technically Stellar accounts does not exist until they have some lumens on it. If you are using the Stellar testnet, you can use the Friendbot, which will automatically generate 10,000 XLM so you can easily start performing test operations.

Creating an asset

In order to create an asset, you need to open a trustline to the issuer account. To do this with the Laboratory, you will need to create a transaction coming from the "distribution account". You can leave out the “Base Fee” and Memo as default.

At the bottom, select the “Change Trust” in the Operation Type field. Select Asset 4 Alphanumeric and proceed to add the name of the asset (in our case we will create the test asset "XEDU"). Then add the Issuer Account in the "Issuer Account field".

You can leave Trust Limit and Source Account fields as default and proceed to Sign in the transaction with the Transaction Signer.

Then Add the Secret Key of the Distribuitor Account and submit it with the Transaction Submitter.

Then proceed to post the transaction with the Transaction Post endpoint. Now the transaction should have been created.

Now you need to add the Tokens created to the Distribution Account. To do this, you need to create a payment operation coming from the Issuer Account (you will need to fetch the “Transaction Sequence Number” once again).

Below you will need to add payment as Operation Type, then select the Distribution as the Destination, add the Asset name once again, the amount that you wish to "generate" and proceed to sign the transaction.

Congratulations, you have succesfully created a new asset on the Stellar network. Almost instantly, you will be able to see the balance of the newly created asset on one of the Stellar Explorer. In this case, we will use Stellar.Expert.

As you can see the new test asset named "XEDU" was created and is available on the distribution account.

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