By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 12th, 2024
San Francisco technology start-up Chain Inc. and Lightyear Corp. has joined forces to create a new company that is expected to make building and operating on Stellar even easier.
In the world of blockchains it is a common deal when at least two industry behemoths providing the community with great and key fin-technical solutions decided to compound their inputs in order to produce something even greater. The headlines are rife with collaboration announcements while a numerous number of newly born joint companies are facing a customer.
Another milestone merger took place as a blockchain company for financial solutions from a scratch, Chain Inc had been acquired by the for-profit developer of the Stellar network, Lightyear Corp. According to the announcement following the acquisition, the two companies teams up to devise a new project dubbed Interstellar. The combined enterprise will see its goal in leveraging Stellar as a platform to build novel financial products and services.
The merger brings Chain’s enterprise products and customer base to Stellar’s global public ledger, creating an end-to-end solution that will enable organizations to issue, exchange, and manage assets on a highly-scalable public network. In the meanwhile, Chain’s cloud ledger service, Sequence, will allow organizations to easily track assets as they move between private ledgers and the Stellar network.
From the organizational aspect, the Interstellar management team will consist of both Chain’s and Stellar’s representative, precisely the new chief executive officer will be Adam Ludwin, a former Chain CEO, while the position of Interstellar CTO goes to co-founded the Stellar Development Foundation and Lightyear, Jed McCaleb. Notably the Stellar Development Foundation, which develops the Stellar protocol and supports the open source community, remains independent.
Adam Ludwin as well as Jed McCaleb are very excited about the signed partnership saying it will pave a way for the mainstream blockchain adoption backed by Stellar, six of the world’s top cryptocurrencies.
Further the appointed Interstellar CTO, Jed McCaleb added:
“Chain’s team has led the market for enterprise adoption of blockchain technology, which is a critical component of building a future where money and digital assets move over open protocols. We are thrilled to be joining forces to help organizations build on Stellar.”
So far, the confirmation of acquisition named as a significant industry merger has been sending shockwaves through the cryptocurrency markets, yet any financial details of the deal were not disclosed. However, the closest estimates have pegged the deal as valued at nearly $200 million, which if true, would make it one of the year’s largest.
In the statement Ludwin affirmed that shareholders were bought out and that it was “a good deal for investors.” Indeed, Chain raised over $40 million in initial funding from Citi, Visa, Nasdaq and others, and brings a wealth of knowledge and connections. These industry ties will set off further institutional adoption rumors, and looks to be aligning with the Stellar network’s lightning network integration by end of year.
At close, the combined company will retain “100 percent” of Chain’s employees including co-founder Devon Gundry, who will remain on as chief product officer. About 60 employees in total will be employed by Interstellar with its headquarters in San Francisco and offices in New York City and Singapore.