The world of blockchain is set for exciting and potentially game-changing times following the acquisition by Stellar Lumen Foundation’s and its arm Lightyear of U.S. based blockchain startup Chain. Lightyear runs on the Stellar blockchain. Without giving the finer details of the merger, Chain’s CEO Adam Ludwin told Reuters on September 10, 2018, that their negotiations with Lightyear began way back in 2017.

Blockbuster Interstellar

The new company will be called Interstellar and they plan to move the entire Chain customer base and products to Stellar’s global blockchain and create a new platform that will facilitate organizations that will issue, exchange and manage assets. Ludwin stated:

“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, their willingness has gone up, and the maturity of the public networks has changed a lot.”

Chain is an upcoming blockchain infrastructure company that helps fresh companies create better financial services. The recently collected over $40 million USD from financial giants that included NASDAQ, City Ventures and VISA and helped to advance the new narrative of businesses interested in the blockchain technology creating partnerships with startups. The merger between Chain and Lightyear has been in the grapevine for a while and brings together among the leading entrepreneurs to support the world’s sixth largest blockchain.

Adam Ludwin, a former RRE will head the new company Ventures partner as the CEO and Jed McCaleb, the brain behind Stellar and XRP protocols, who will act as CTO. The new company will absorb all of Chain’s employees besides Devon Gundry, a co-founder who will remain the chief product officer.

About Stellar

Stellar, founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb has been in talks to acquire the San-Francisco based startup since May. While it’s not yet clear how Lightyear will incorporate Chain into its ecosystem, the fact is that the pairing will make sense. While Stellar has the money, Chain will bring its arsenal of engineering talent.

IBM recently announced the creation of a new payment network that will be based on the Stellar blockchain. Stellar is an open blockchain network that accommodates any asset or currency and facilitates digital issuance, transfer or exchange over the internet. This remains an interesting development for not only the Stellar protocol but the entire crypto sphere and only time will tell the results.