Stellar's Lightyear Acquires Chain to Create Interstellar

Lightyear has acquired Chain for a new venture-aptly called Interstellar-in a move that could make the company the world's sixth largest blockchain.

Chain had already made a name for itself in the fintech community; in the four years since its inception, the company has independently accumulated $40 million in venture capital from financial giants like Visa and Citigroup.

Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Ripple and the non-profit Stellar, took notice of the startup's fintech development and provoked contact upon seeing a potential for growth.

"From day one we've shared their goal of enabling financial assets to move seamlessly over the internet. Chain has worked from inside the enterprise while Stellar has focused on the network between organizations. As a single team, we will have a complete view and set of capabilities to make value-over-IP a reality."

As Lightyear absorbs Chain, their mutually-combined efforts appear to solve the issue of individual partners representing their own blockchain.

They are likely referencing Chain's cloud-ledger service Sequence, which allows users to issue, manage and trade assets on a public network that is also scalable.

Incubating Chain's technology with Stellar's open network aids the financial manufacturing process on a platform designed for enterprises and developers.

The Stellar Development Foundation will continue to work independently as Interstellar moves forward with a new product portfolio called StellarX, a marketplace for trading assets on Stellar.

Per its charter, Stellar is obligated to distribute 95 percent of its network tokens, called lumens, to remain decentralized and operational.

Adam Ludwin, Chain's co-founder, will act as Interstellar's CEO alongside McCaleb.