Chain and Lightyear leap into Interstellar blockchain space
Cryptographic ledger company Chain has finally been acquired by blockchain technology platform Stellar – and is rebranding to Interstellar, reports Julie Muhn at Finovate.
My God, it’s full of fintech stars!
Following on from June’s announcement, Interstellar brings Chain together with Lightyear, which Stellar launched in 2017 to design and develop the Stellar protocol and create an open source reference for the Stellar network.
Interstellar uses Lightyear’s functionality and blends it with Chain’s enterprise products and customer base. Combined the two companies offer a platform to let large enterprises build on Stellar.
Adam Ludwin, who has served as CEO of Chain since the company’s launch in 2014, will become Interstellar CEO.
Ludwin says: “Chain has worked from inside the enterprise while Stellar has focused on the network between organisations. As a single team we will have a complete view and set of capabilities to make value-over-IP a reality.”
Chain’s product offerings will become part of Interstellar’s product portfolio. The portfolio will also include StellarX, a marketplace where users can trade assets on Stellar.
Interstellar will be headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York and San Francisco. The new organisation will employ 60 people. Jed McCaleb, founder of Stellar, will serve as Interstellar CTO.
Before its acquisition, Chain had raised more than $43 million from notable investors including Khosla Ventures, RRE Ventures, Nasdaq, Visa, Citi Ventures, and Thrive Capital.
As FinTech Futures reported in May, Interstellar is also used by Cameroon-based Fintech Ltd for its crypto exchange – and it’s powered by the Stellar network.
Interstellar v2.0 introduced new features, including semi-automatic asset/token verification, price conversions for any token into all major fiat currencies, and a new set of desktop applications for increased security of a user’s assets.
