I'm somewhat familiar with Bitcoin, and I've heard of Stellar, and my sense is they are related - both a decentralized consensus based ledger system. I'm wondering if the problem that Stellar encountered is something that Bitcoin has some resistance to. Anybody have some insight?
Stellar is not decentralized. If problems like this occur, there is the Stellar organization /corporation, to enforce consenus. Whenever there is a legal entity behind it, it's not de-central. Bitcoin has solved all these problems. Ripple was invented before Bitcoin. Stellar is a Ripple fork.
Stellar is not currently decentralized. The use of a single validating node is a temporary measure while they rewrite their consensus algorithm. This is obviously far from ideal, but the Stellar foundation has been transparent that this is a temporary measure. In the original design, and in their stated mission that they've never wavered from, this will be a open protocol where anyone can join as a validating node. But they needed a stop gap measure while they fixed this ledger fork issue. Again, far from ideal, but let's not jump to harsh conclusions either.