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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