Stellar is a platform that connects banks, payments systems, and people.
Integrate to move money quickly, reliably, and at almost no cost.
The Stellar protocol is supported by a nonprofit, the Stellar Development Foundation. The Foundation’s mission is to expand financial access and literacy worldwide.
Lumens is the native currency used in Stellar network.

Advantages of using Stellar network:

• Real-time settlement (2-5 seconds)
• Cryptographically secure transactions
• Regulatory compliance
• Payments that move like email
• International reach with a single integration
• Great for micropayments: A $0.01 fee handles ~600,000 transactions
• Automatic currency exchange

Stellar.org will grant awards in the following four categories:

Anchors, Applications, Exchanges, and First-Time Submissions.
First round of winners will be announced on October 1, 2016.

Build Challenge awards will be funded by unclaimed lumens from the bitcoin-lumen program. https://www.stellar.org/lumens/bitcoin-lumen-program
This pilot challenge is simple by design: it’s an experiment to find ways to develop services that are fair, affordable, and community-driven, and at the same time drive uptake of the Stellar network to maximize efficiency and reach.

Categories and Awards

Anchors: 4 Annual Awards, Based on Usage

Anchors are either banks, licensed money-service providers, or mobile money operators that accept deposits, issue credits, and honor withdrawals on the Stellar network. They are vital to the success of the Stellar network.

Entries will be evaluated based on usage and uptake.
1st: 55 million lumens
2nd: 44 million lumens
3rd: 33 million lumens
4th: 22 million lumens

To qualify as an anchor, organizations that enter the challenge must meet the following criteria:

Record customer balances of some asset in the Stellar ledger
Support federation for deposits and withdrawals
Have a proper stellar.toml so others can add your anchor by domain name
Comply with local regulations
Sustain activity and placement for 12 months

These awards will be determined on October 1, 2016. The Lumens will be held in escrow and will only be delivered on July 1, 2017, if the anchors still qualify at that date.

Exchanges: 4 Annual Awards, Based on Volume

Four awards will recognize exchanges that support lumen trading.
Entries will be evaluated by the Lumen volume on the qualifying exchange.

1st: 33 million lumens
2nd: 22 million lumens
3rd: 14 million lumens
4th: 5 million lumens

To qualify as an exchange, organizations that enter the challenge must meet the following criteria:

Trade lumens for fiat or digital currency
Accept lumen deposits and honor withdrawals
Deposit lumens via federation
Support federation for withdrawals
Allow fiat deposits/withdrawals via Stellar
Be listed on coinmarketcap.com
Comply with local regulations
Sustain activity and placement for 12 months

As in the anchor category, these awards will be decided on October 1, 2016. The Lumens will be held in escrow and will only be delivered on July 1, 2017, if the exchanges still qualify at that date.

Applications: Quarterly Awards, Judged by Panel

All kinds of apps are possible with the Stellar network. It's broken down into a few subcategories. Due to the qualitative nature of this category, award recipients will be determined by a panel of community members (more information below).

Wallets
1st: 8 million lumens
2nd: 5.5 million lumens

To qualify as a wallet, entries must meet the following criteria:

Be available on the web or downloadable for iOS or Android
Send lumens to federated addresses
Have the capability to add anchors by domain name
Support balances in multiple currencies

Most active forum dedicated to Stellar: 5.5 million lumens
Trading client: 11 million lumens
Most innovative applications
1st: 11 million lumens
2nd: 5.5 million lumens
3rd: 2.7 million lumens

Participants may resubmit each quarter, and may win multiple times.
First-Time Submissions: Quarterly Awards

To encourage developers new to the Stellar ecosystem to build, each first-time submission from a unique GitHub account will be awarded 200K lumens.

To qualify as a first-time submission, entries must meet the following criteria:

Represent original work from the developer, open-sourced on GitHub
Be functional and able to demo

Participants may only receive the first-time submission award once (hence the name).
Timeline and Judging

Participants can submit their projects for consideration in mid-September. An entry form will be available then. The first round of awards will be granted on October 1, 2016.

Awards will be decided by a panel of judges from the Stellar community. This panel includes the following community members. Also listed are their handles on Stellar’s public slack channel.

Cheng Kuan @lab
Johan Stén @dzham
Eno Han @eno
Christian Rudder
Tim Akinbo @takinbo

Judges will have one vote for each potential award in the four categories. Judges will not cast votes in categories for which they have submitted entries.

The Fine Print

If you live in a restricted area—any country on the U.S. sanctions list, as well as the states of NY, CT, or NH—regulations prevent us from sending you Lumens. Unfortunately, therefore, residents of restricted areas are not eligible for an award.

All participants will retain the intellectual property associated with their submission.

https://www.stellar.org/blog/build-challenge/