Chain And Lightyear Merge, Become Interstellar

September 11, 2018 12:02 AM

A September 10 announcement published on Medium states that blockchain company Chain has been acquired by the Lightyear Corporation, a for-profit entity created by Stellar to promote enterprise adoption of the lumen, Stellar’s native cryptocurrency. The Chain and Lightyear brands will reportedly be retired, and a new company will be formed: Interstellar.

The merger is apparently the brainchild of Chain co-founder and CEO Adam Ludwin and Jed McCaleb, the co-founder of the Stellar Development Foundation and Lightyear, who are both leading entrepreneurs in the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem.

According to the report, Ludwin will be Interstellar’s CEO, while McCaleb will act as the CTO. The Stellar Development Foundation, which is responsible for developing Stellar’s protocol and supports an open-source community, will remain independent.

“Chain has admired Stellar for years, and from day one we’ve shared their goal of enabling financial assets to move seamlessly over the internet,” said Ludwin.

The merger is intended to combine Chain’s enterprise products and customer base with Stellar’s global public ledger to create an “end-to-end solution that will enable organizations to issue, exchange, and manage assets on a highly-scalable public network.”

Interstellar currently includes four projects under its wing, including Kelp, a free and open-source trading bot that allows trading on the Stellar universal marketplace, and StellarX – which is currently in the beta testing phase – that will reportedly be a user-friendly, peer-to-peer marketplace that will list “every asset class imaginable” including cryptocurrency, fiat, and commodities once it launches.

The specific terms of the merger were not given in the official announcement, so it remains unclear how this merger will affect major investors.

Chain, launched in 2014, works on cryptographic ledgers for financial products and has received funding from Visa, Citigroup, and several other financial services powerhouses. It is perhaps not as well-known as Stellar, which has been a very active participant in the cryptoverse. In March, ETHNews reported that IBM had plans to issue a central bank digital currency on the Stellar blockchain platform.

Nathan Graham is a full-time staff writer for ETHNews. He lives in Sparks, Nevada, with his wife, Beth, and dog, Kyia. Nathan has a passion for new technology, grant writing, and short stories. He spends his time rafting the American River, playing video games, and writing.

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