Cryptocurrency startup Lightyear.io working with bloccano Stellar, purchased Chain — the company-developer of financial solutions based on DLT. Clients include Chain — of large financial corporations such as Visa, Nasdaq and Citigroup. Officially, the deal took place on 5 September; for the first time, representatives of Lightyear and Chain.io told about the merger yesterday.

Company formed as a result, was called “Interstellar”. CEO appointed head of the Chain’s Adam Ludwin (Adam Ludwin), Creator of the protocols Stellar and XRP jed McCaleb (Jed McCaleb) was the main technical Director. The position of production Manager was taken by the co-founder of the Chain Gandi Devon (Devon Gundry).

The representatives of the Interstellar did not disclose terms of the deal, however, Ludwin said that all shareholders got their money and that for them it was a “great deal”. According to estimates by Fortune, we are talking about the amount of approximately $200 million dollars. If this information is reliable, it promises to be one of the largest deals of the year.

Commenting on the merger, Adam Ludwin assured the audience that Interstellar won’t take on the major powers in the market of token Stellar, XLM, since the activities of the company focus on software development. He also said that the absorption of Lightyear.io is not a sign of change of the vector of operation:

“If you look at how we worked with the Visa or Citi, in each case, we have made great strides, but we have also hit a dead end: our partners had to create templates of the blockchain. We needed a network that is accessible to all”.

In other words, the Chain needed a platform like Stellar, which is already well demonstrated as the basis for issuing tokens.

At the same time jed McCaleb tried to solve the inverse problem. At Stellar was a great software base; however, the Stellar Development Foundation was registered as a nonprofit organization, and she needed the big names and reputable sponsors.

That all changed earlier this year when McCaleb suggested Ludvina to arrange a meeting.

A long courtship

Gmina ludwin and McCaleb was familiar with 2014, but according to Ludwina, “didn’t know each other that close.” Therefore, he continued, the first meetings were held primarily to establish contact, and the final decision was taken only on the fourth or fifth week. Soon, rumors of an impending deal began to leak to the press in may correspondents CoinDesk became aware of the fact that the Chain started negotiations on the sale of a business of a certain company closely associated with the Stellar. However, details of the process and accurate list of all of the parties involved in the transaction, remained closed.

Later, Ludwin confirmed that the talks were delayed because of finding the optimal solution, including those which would save the staff. The question CoinDesk about the possible elimination of cryptocurrency assets — under the terms of the transaction, or for the payment of the acquisition Chain, he refused to answer.

Flexibility and distance

One of the main “headaches” for Interstellar and Ludwina — probable Association between the new company and Ripple where McCaleb previously held the position of technical Director. The difference, of course, is: so, according to Ludwin, main market Ripple is an international B2B network of banking institutions, while Interstellar will focus on the development of projects in the framework of Stellar Development Foundation, and issue tokens.

However, he also noted that, like Ripple, Interstellar will continue to provide partners with a Chain ON his open for the realization of the necessary financial decisions.

It is known that Interstellar will continue to use cloud services Sequence represented by Chain in October last year, as well as development in the basis of Chain Protocol — tools package to run the private blockchains that have appeared on the market in 2016. According to Ludwin, combined with Stellar technology, these services will allow the company to work with both open and private networks:

“You’ll see, in fact, the merging of both components. When you need to place a token in a closed environment, we use products Chain when needed to ensure the movement of these assets within the network, we use Stellar. No need to think about how open do you network or private — you are just working on the computer”.

Guess from three notes

For Ludwina Interstellar — an important crossroads, to which it has led the way of trial and error. This is the third attempt to realize the vision that arose in his head four years ago.

Despite the successful start — incredible competitiveness, $30 million start-up capital, large financial corporations as investors — Chain in that form in which she “froze” after repositioning, was never the ultimate realization. Gmina ludwin admitted that his goal has always been to create a platform for new assets, akin to bitcoin and its blockchain based on cryptography and peer-to-peer network.

Now that he seems to have reached the goal, Ludwin believes that its success owes more aggressive behavior on the market and ready for any twists and turns that awaits his company.

He added:

“We tried different approaches? Hell yeah, but if this is not done in this industry, it is hardly possible even to achieve something on the first attempt”.