SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 BY LUC LAMMERS
Lightyear, the for-profit arm of Stellar, has successfully acquired San Fransisco-based blockchain startup Chain, according to an article from Reuters today. The two companies will now stop their individual brands and form a single entity called “Interstellar.” The new company will move Chain’s existing users onto the Stellar (XLM) blockchain platform, and enable organizations to issue, exchange, and manage assets.
Lightyear was founded by Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) in May 2017 to help integrate businesses with the Stellar Protocol and serve as the organization’s for-profit arm. Although, Lightyear is a separate entity with its own board of directors, the acquisition will, of course, also benefit SDF and the Stellar network.
The companies have not revealed the financial details of the acquisition, but Chain maintains that this is a “good outcome” for its investors as they have all been cashed out. Chain CEO Adam Ludwin will also serve as the CEO of Interstellar, while Stellar Development Foundation’s (SDF) co-founder Jed McCaleb will serve as the CTO of the newly-formed company. Interstellar will also retain all of Chain’s existing employee
Chain’s Chief Executive officer, Adam Ludwin, said on Monday:
“We were looking for a way to help our customers move the projects that we have been working on from a private network to a public one. When we started a few years ago, our customers were not ready for a public network. Fast forward to three years, they’re willingness has gone up, and the maturity of the public networks has changed a lot”
Chain was one of the bigger players in the blockchain space with customers in the financial services industry, while Stellar is an open network that allows any currency or asset to be digitally issued, transferred, and exchanged over the internet. Chain got in the headlines in 2014-2015 when it raised more than $40 million in investments from some of the most well-known financial institutions including Visa, Nasdaq, Citi Ventures, Pantera Capital, and RRE Ventures among others.
The founders of Chain and Lightyear believe that it is a win-win situation for both companies. Chain wants to develop its products and services and Stellar has the right money for it. Lightyear wants to see Stellar Protocol integrated with more businesses and Chain has the right engineering talent for it.
Interstellar will employ 60 people with headquarters in San Francisco and an office in New York City. Furthermore, Interstellar’s product portfolio will also include StellarX, a recently announced marketplace for trading assets on Stellar. StellarX is currently in beta phase and will launch to the public soon.
Originally published at altcoinbuzz.io on SEPTEMBER 10, 2018.
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