Bitcoin Global News (BGN)

September 10, 2018 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire -- Chain has been acquired by Lightyear.io. The new company brings together to important figures of the blockchain space: Chain CEO Adam Ludwin former RRE Ventures partner and Jed McCaleb, creator of the XRP and Stellar protocols. With the addition of Chain, the new blockchain network becomes the world's sixth-largest.

Chain raised more than $40 million from financial institutions including Visa and Nasdaq, and in the process helped to define the narrative for business interest in the technology through its partnerships. Stellar protocol was the basis for Chain, as well as many other global businesses, such as IBM.

Interstellar Network

The deal includes creating a new brand of the combined businesses. The new organization,  Interstellar will be led by and Adam Ludwin as CEO and Jed McCaleb will be fill the position of CTO. The combined company will retain all of Chain's 60 employees, including co-founder Devon Gundry, who will remain on as chief product officer.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Ludwin affirmed in interview that shareholders were bought out in a manner that was "a good deal for investors." Early estimates of the deal valued Chain at nearly $200 million, and the new organization will be able to achieve success not possible be either of the former businesses separately.

"If you look at our work with Visa, Citi, in every case, we made huge progress, but we would also find ourselves at an impasse when it was the partners who had to instantiate a blockchain. We needed a chain that anyone could access." - Adam Ludwin

Distinct From Other Networks

Ludwin makes sure to distance Interstellar from comparisons to McCaleb's early work in the blockchain space with Ripple, where he McCaleb served as founder and CTO before becoming involved in several legal issues.

"Ripple is focused on international B2B networks, being crypto Swift for banks. Stellar has increasingly become the platform of choice for issuing tokens of all kinds.” - Adam Ludwin

Unlike Ripple’s network, Interstellar is built on open-source grounds. Interstellar will seek to work with the Stellar Development Foundation to build relationships with with other for-profit startups.

Interstellar will still use the tech behind Chain’s service called Sequence, which offers a suite of tools designed to enable private blockchain networks. This allows interstellar to work with both private and non-profit or government organizations.

By: BGN Editorial Staff










 

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