Lightyear Corp., a company operating around the Stellar platform announced that it has acquired the U.S. based blockchain startup Chain Inc. on Monday. The merger of the two, in turn, will now be collectively known as Interstellar which will operate on Stellar.
Interstellar, the new entity will be headed by Chain’s former CEO, Adam Ludwin, as the company’s CEO while Jed McCaleb, co-founder of the Stellar Development Foundation and Lightyear, will be acting as the Chief Technology Officer or the CTO.
Ludwin confirms in an interview with
Reuters that the company will be migrating Chain’s existing customer base and products onto the Stellar’s global public ledger, thus creating a platform that will enable organizations to issue, exchange and manage assets.
“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.”, said Ludwin.
Chain helps financial organizations such as Visa, Citigroup, Nasdaq and many more by building enterprise-level blockchain applications for them which facilitates their professional financial needs. The startup also raised $40 million from companies such as Visa, Citi Ventures, Orange, as well as Nasdaq.
“Chain has worked from inside the enterprise, while Stellar has focused on the network between organizations. As a single team, we will have a complete view and set of capabilities to make value-over-IP a reality.”, noted Ludwin in a company statement.
We
reported earlier this month that IBM introduced its new cross-border payments system based on the Stellar protocol. This merger will combine two incredible players of the blockchain market whilst creating a high-level, end-to-end blockchain development solution that will enhance the quality of the way organizations issue, exchange and manage assets on a flexible, scalable and multifunctional public network. Under the merger, the Stellar Development Foundation will remain independent.