it's a ripple fork with better distribution. if you want to learn more about stellar, i suggest reading the ripple primer here: https://ripple.com/ripple_primer.pdf
stellar is basically a copy/pasted ripple with some tweaks.
What a second. How does the stelar project select who is on the unique node list? That unique node list is at the heart of Ripple.
If it is not Proof of stake but a unique node list style centralized system it doesn't matter at all what the distribution of tokens is in terms of network security. Matters a bit maybe for network effect but that is not a major factor in my opinion as Ripple does heavy marketing to compensate for that.
Where am I wrong?
yes. until ripple and ripple-like systems figure out how to add independent 3rd party validators, it is centralized.
Do you know if they have any plans here?
no concrete plans mentioned from their side but this is what they posted on their site:
"Consensus
Under the hood, Stellar uses its own distributed ledger, which is maintained by a consensus algorithm rather than mining. Each node in the network communicates with a set of other nodes that it believes will not collude (such as nodes run by universities, governments, and companies). Importantly, it doesn’t need to trust the nodes themselves — it just needs to believe the nodes won’t work together to produce the same malicious result. Consensus is then reached by an iterative process, which results in each new ledger being decided upon every few seconds. Correspondingly, transactions confirm nearly instantly, and no mining is needed.
We’ll be releasing a paper soon documenting and exploring a provably-correct version of this algorithm."
https://www.stellar.org/blog/introducing-stellar/so. i guess the have plans on wooing uni's and government, banking and other establishments to run stellard.