Author: George Naylor

Just in – Chain Inc, a San Francisco startup, has confirmed its acquisition by Lightyear Corp., the for-profit company developing the Stellar network.

Both the Chain and Lightyear brand will be combined into a new company and re-named ‘Interstellar’. Chain’s customer base and products will be migrated onto Stellar’s public ledger, allowing for the issuance, exchange and managements of all assets onto their blockchain network.

When we started a few years ago, our customers were not ready for a public network. Fast forward to three years, they’re willingness has gone up, and the maturity of the public networks has changed a lot,” – Adam Ludwin (CEO of Chain)

Confirmation of this major acquisition will send shockwaves through the cryptocurrency markets, and marks a significant industry merger. Chain raised over $40 million in initial funding from Citi, Visa, Nasdaq and others, and brings a wealth of knowledge and connections. These industry ties will set off further institutional adoption rumours, and looks to be aligning with the Stellar network’s lightning network integration by end of year.

Equally excitingly for Stellar Lumens holders, Stellar X – a brand new front-end for its decentralised exchange, built by app veterans from Kickstarter and OkCupid – will also be included within Interstellar’s product portfolio, adding yet further validation to their technology.

Proponents of the Stellar ecosystem and cryptocurrency aficionados alike should have little doubt of the monumental impact of this merger. The race for adoption is well and truly on.

Finally, after months of waiting for Stellar supporters, IBM officially launch their much anticipated Universal Payments System as ‘IBM Blockchain World Wire’. The Stellar protocol is clearly mentioned front and center under ‘how’ World Wire works, forming a key part of the technical framework for near instant cross-border payments.

Using blockchain technology and the Stellar protocol, IBM Blockchain World Wire makes it possible for financial institutions to clear and settle cross-border payments in seconds.’

Benefits of ‘Word Wire’ include faster payment processing (simultaneous clearing and settlement), lower costs, increased efficiency and simplified payment and asset type form of transaction. With 97% of the world’s largest banks as clients of IBM there remains little doubt that their new flagship payments system won’t be heavily advertised to their existing customer and client base.

The underlying process of exactly what occurs during these cross-border transactions is explained, and uncovers further exciting revelations. ‘Central bank digital currency’, for example, is suggested as one type of digital asset on the network to be used for these new cross border payments. Following Stanley Yong’s (ex Monetary Authority of Singapore and now CTO and Global Lead at IBM for Central Bank Digital Currency) ‘Desirability and Necessity of a Central Bank Digital Currency for Blockchains’ presentation, CBDCs are all but confirmed as an integral part to IBM’s cross-border payments ecosystem. In short – CBDCs will be used on the Stellar network.

The importance of a CBDC on a blockchain network (and specifically on Stellar’s network) cannot be overstated. It would provide the legitimacy that the industry and blockchain technology has been generally lacking.

With a potential slice of a $2-trillion-dollar payments industry by 2020, the competition for this sector has increased significantly. Today marks the official flag in the ground for both IBM and Stellar with a clear message to the rest of the industry – we are here and we are going to transform the financial world.

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Another day, another exclusive ground-breaking news story for the Stellar network. SatoshiPay – one of the first major projects to build on Stellar – has announced their plans for an IPO on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM, a market for growth companies.

📢 SatoshiPay getting ready for IPO in London 📈 https://t.co/p2hjgY8o2B

— SatoshiPay (@SatoshiPay) July 26, 2018

By listing on the AIM, SatoshiPay will have access to a very liquid high-growth market, as well as institutional investors. If listed, they will be one of the first blockchain businesses to do so in London. Utilising the Stellar protocol allows them to facilitate digital micropayments for online content, providing a login-free, one-click nanopayment ecosystem, all the while taking advantage of Stellar’s incredibly quick settlement times and almost negligible fees.

The announcement of this IPO marks a fantastic development for both the SatoshiPay team and the Stellar network as a whole. Initially coded in just one month, Meinhard and his team have targeted the diminishing subscriptions models associated with major international news and media vendors. Their alternative form of revenue generation gets rid of cumbersome paywalls, allowing for the freer distribution of online content.

With regards to the potential IPO – Meinhard Benn, CEO SatoshiPay says:

This is a giant leap for SatoshiPay, and I am extremely proud that the startup I co-founded in 2014 has grown into a company that, with the support of an amazing team and fantastic investors, is now approaching a stock market float. This is beyond my wildest dreams when starting SatoshiPay by writing a few lines of code at a kitchen table in a Berlin flat. In a way we are just getting started, and I am looking forward to the things we can achieve by taking SatoshiPay public.”

SatoshiPay was originally created to utilise Bitcoin before the spiralling costs and fees associated with the cryptocurrency made this business model untenable. In choosing to build on the Stellar platform they gave the biggest accolade they could – that Stellar was the rightful replacement for what Bitcoin was originally intended to be; an immutable, purely digital form of payment and value exchange.

XLM has seen a recent dramatic rise in speculative value, with the market clearly processing the torrent of good news stories. What will happen to the price of Lumens if and when Coinbase announce the go-ahead for listing the cryptocurrency is another story altogether. In any event, breaking stories for Stellar and its native currency seems set to continue for a while yet.

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The good news for the Stellar network and Stellar Lumens (XLM) holders keeps on coming. TransferTo, a leading B2B mobile payment network and airtime hub serving Western Union, 7 Eleven, Paypal, MoneyGram and more, has partnered with the Stellar Foundation in order to facilitate cross-border mobile payments on the Stellar network.

Very, very excited to see what an innovator like @TransferTo will launch on the @StellarOrg network! Welcome friends 👋💸🚀 https://t.co/RJJnRWuTmy

— Lisa Nestor (@nestorious828) July 25, 2018

Connecting mobile operators and financial institutions globally, TransferTo links over 4.5 billion mobile users through partnerships with more than 400 mobile operators including Safaricom, Orange and Vodafone. Regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, the company provides business partners with a global compliance framework for all relevant regulatory requirements, enabling thousands of businesses in over 100 countries to offer real-time mobile money and airtime transfers to their customers.

In a statement from Lisa Nestor, Director of Partnerships at Stellar.org: 

TransferTo is a leader and innovator in the remittance space, and has extensive experience and reach in emerging markets. We’re thrilled to be partnering with TransferTo to offer an expanded network for our current and future partners, as well as continue to drive greater financial inclusion for the underbanked.”

With cryptocoinspy having only just published an article on the future potential of the Stellar network, this news serves as further proof of the industry-ready nature of the protocol. Indeed, a press statement by TransferTo praises the blockchain’s strengths, particularly in regards to cross-border settlements and instant clearing between banks and payment gateways.

By integrating with Stellar, TransferTo will enable a more seamless and efficient settlement method between its network partners.” – TransferTo

Such an established and regulated B2B partnership will serve as a huge validation of Stellar’s credentials, technology and business-worthy acumen. It seems that the critical mass of positive sentiment building up for this blockchain and cryptocurrency won’t be able to hold for much longer.

With all the good news that the Stellar network has experienced recently, it seems like a great opportunity to review recent partnership announcements and explore the potential effects they may have on both the network and native asset XLM (Lumens).

Stellar’s ‘SDEX’ announced as StellarX – summer launch

Back in January, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) published their January roadmap. Within it they alluded to the third-party development of a ‘world-class front-end’ for ‘Stellar’s inherent decentralized exchange’ and dubbed the project ‘SDEX’.

Five months passed by, and finally the silence was broken with the announcement of StellarX – the much-anticipated front-end development and SDEX project. Developed by industry veterans whose previous projects include Kickstarter, Headspace and OkCupid, the trading app promises fee-fee trading of every asset class imaginable, directly from the user’s wallet.

Announcing StellarX! A user-friendly and totally free place to trade on @StellarOrg‘s universal marketplace. https://t.co/tPNYGY2qe0

You trade on-chain. We refund all network fees. Swap crypto, fiat, commodities, whatever. Get an invite here: https://t.co/CVSogvKJGE

— StellarX (@stellarxhq) July 5, 2018

Market maker rewards are available (of roughly $20,000) per week to the top market makers, demonstrating that the SDF and StellarX are prioritising the liquidity available within the protocol’s orderbooks. Furthermore, inflation pay-outs of 1% a week will be facilitated, meaning that any funds held with StellarX will receive the pro rata Lumens every Tuesday. Signup invitations are live on their website, with the app debuting this summer.

IBM’s and Stronghold’s USD Anchor

Following StellarX’s news, the Stronghold exchange announced their partnership with IBM to offer the network’s first official, venture-backed USD anchor. Institutional investors will be able to exchange US dollars for Stellar Lumens (XLM) and any other asset listed on the Stellar network, through the stronghold platform. Prime Trust will be acting as the custodian for USD accounts.

Stronghold USD will be used to explore payment settlement and foreign exchange with @IBMBlockchain. #Stellar #Blockchain https://t.co/zlvibnctHr

— Stronghold (@strongholdxchg) July 17, 2018

Whilst retail investors will have to wait, this particular announcement constitutes a landmark moment for the Stellar network. Providing direct access to the network and therefore greater liquidity with fiat is exactly what brought exchanges like Coinbase huge popularity. Not only that, but the speed of settlement that XLM provides means that it is now possible for institutional investors to use Lumens as a bridge currency, avoiding the slow speed and high transaction costs associated with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Combined with StellarX’s front-end and fee-free trading, the importance of this development for the network cannot be overstated.

Poseidon Foundation (Stellar network ICO) Landmark Partnership with City of Liverpool

Cryptocoinspy published details of the landmark partnership between the Poseidon Foundation, a non-profit blockchain carbon credit NGO, and the City of Liverpool. Liverpool is aiming to become the world’s first ‘carbon positive’ city by 2020, with the foundation and its utilisation of the Stellar network playing a pivotal role in doing so.

A ground breaking deal for @Poseidon_NGO with Liverpool City Council! The journey starts now! https://t.co/p0mBXOJ3z6

— Poseidon Foundation (@Poseidon_NGO) July 19, 2018

By creating a seamless point-of-sale system for consumer purchases, and an immutable carbon credit network, the Poseidon Foundation allows for the transparent offsetting of carbon emissions, contributing to key conservation and ecology projects around the world. This recent city partnership announcement comes off the back of yet more news for Poseidon, who have also secured deals with Ben and Jerry’s and BAC Mono previously.

The speed at which these collaborations and adoption of DLT on the Stellar network is occurring demonstrates a fantastic validation of the protocols capabilities.

Conclusion

It’s no secret that cryptocoinspy has been closely following the Stellar protocol for some time. Despite the top 10 position of this cryptocurrency, the general market opinion seems to be that Stellar and its growing network is hiding in plain sight. Certainly, acrimonious feelings and partisan behaviour between different network supporters seems to contribute to this ‘hiding’, as does the relatively low-key way in which the foundation goes about securing partnerships. What is quickly becoming clear, however, is that the Stellar network can no longer be ignored.

As Ethererum quickly grew in popularity at the beginning of 2017, acting as a springboard and catalyst for the exponential growth of the cryptocurrency market, so it seems Stellar is fast becoming 2018’s ‘Ethereum’ and catalyst. The sheer number of start-up and major projects coming online and onto the network certainly alludes to this conclusion. It is no great leap to even suggest that the Stellar network may act as one of the main contributing factors towards the end of the six-month long bear market. Cryptocoinspy will therefore be providing regular updates on the developments and breaking partnership news resulting from the network.

Whatever the potential iterations that might occur within the wider context of the markets, one view remains perfectly clear. Supporters and advocates of cryptocurrency would be foolish to ignore the Stellar network and its potential for much longer.

In a live video broadcast interview panel with Fortune Magazine, Bridget van Kralingen – IBM’s Senior Vice President for Global industries – confirmed that Stellar and its native asset Lumens (XLM) is currently being used by ‘a couple of the largest banks’ in financial exchange (FX) corridors.

The FX corridors and countries involved include New Zealand, Australia, South East Asian Islands and the UK, and is ‘up and running’. This confirmation of IBM and big institutional banks using the Stellar protocol for live cross-border financial settlements serves as further validation of the real-world use cases and potential applications that blockchain technology and the Stellar network bring. When the identity of these two large banks will be revealed remains to be seen.

Excitingly for Lumen’s holders, this confirmation comes off the back of yet more partnership news for Stellar, with recent support announcements from Blockdaemon, an established Node Deployment and Management Service company for blockchain applications, and the Dala Foundation (Dala), a leading Emerging Markets decentralised Financial System – which will be using Stellar amongst its multi-blockchain ecosystem to facilitate low-cost, instantaneous payments for their market consumers.

A great new addition to the @StellarOrg ecosystem! The @GetWala and @DalaFoundation teams are currently active in #Uganda and #SouthAfrica. Their mission is zero fee financial services for the masses 🚀 https://t.co/y2lNmhtWoO

— Lisa Nestor (@nestorious828) July 20, 2018

Add this to the Poseidon Foundation’s (a Stellar ICO) recent ground-breaking partnership announcement with the City of Liverpool, StellarX’s (SDEX) much anticipated launch this summer, and Lightning Network compatibility starting this October, it’s apparent that industry partnership announcements are set to continue for Q3 and Q4.

Just in – the Liverpool City Council in the UK has partnered with the Poseidon Foundation, a non-profit carbon credit and blockchain NGO built on the Stellar network, in a bid to become the world’s first climate positive city by the end of 2020. This marks a landmark partnership and world first for both Poseidon and blockchain technology, and is the third major corporate partnership announcement for Poseidon in 2 months, having also partnered with Ben and Jerry’s and BAC Mono.

A ground breaking deal for @Poseidon_NGO with Liverpool City Council! The journey starts now! https://t.co/p0mBXOJ3z6

— Poseidon Foundation (@Poseidon_NGO) July 19, 2018

The Poseidon foundation will be moving its operations to the city in order to play a key role in their climate strategy, with a 12-month trial. Cryptocoinspy has been carefully watching this exciting non-profit climate change project over the past few months. Only two weeks ago they gained 850,000+ views over a day on Instagram in a post with oneday1change – a popular positive action account, run by David Teplitzky, who himself has 760,000+ followers.

 

The revolution will not be televised!! It will start by people making positive changes in their own lifes and demanding of each other that they are better. Meet Laszlo Giricz and Chidi Akutu who are two of the folks responsible for the exciting non profit foundation called Poseidon. It is an innovative venture utilising the blockchain platform to bring us a simple way to buy carbon credits and help stop climate change. Poseidon empowers everyone to do their part in the biggest challenge of our lifetime: preserving the physical diversity of the planet. Through forest conservation, we can together save the precious wildlife that makes our planet so wonderful. It is a beautiful world, let’s preserve it for future generations – please have a listen and then go and check out Poseidon and see what you can do to make a difference. They can be found at – https://Poseidon.eco ~ #planet #green #nature #forest #carboncredit #diversity #climatechange #blessup #peace #love #climatepositive #environment #oneday1change @poseidon_foundation @laszlo_giricz @chidiakutu

A post shared by David Teplitzky (dt) (@oneday1change) on Jul 3, 2018 at 7:08am PDT

The Poseidon foundation’s successful partnerships with global confectionary magnate/ climate change supporters Ben and Jerry’s, and now British supercar manufactures BAC Mono and City of Liverpool show the demand from major corporations who wish to rebalance their carbon emissions through Poseidon’s POS micro-donations on the blockchain.

By utilising Stellar’s network, Poseidon are able to provide almost instantaneous purchase, transaction and immutable settlement of the carbon credits, all at a cost of a fraction of a penny. Furthermore, the Stellar network only produces 0.0000015kg of CO2 per transaction, compared to 21.08kg for Ethereum and 310.75kg for Bitcoin – adding to Poseidon’s green credentials.

Carbon credits have been a controversial industry to date, exhibiting a lack of market transparency and inaccessibility for consumers. By creating the opportunity at checkout for micro-donations towards carbon credits, customers can both enjoy their purchases and contribute to rebalancing their resulting carbon footprint. The transparency created by utilising Stellar’s network further helps this new exciting, emerging carbon market.

It seems like good news for both Poseidon and Stellar keeps rolling in. With recent announcements of Coinbase and Kodak, amongst others, the Stellar protocol is certainly making waves. Will this be the year that both achieve mainstream adoption? Only time will tell. If you want more details of Poseidon’s framework and business use cases, they can be found here.

This just in. The much-anticipated front-end development of the Stellar network’s underlying trading protocol (SDEX), hinted at in the Stellar Development Foundation’s January roadmap, has been announced as StellarX – the first fully-featured trading app for Stellar’s universal marketplace and back-end technology.

Announcing StellarX! A user-friendly and totally free place to trade on @StellarOrg‘s universal marketplace. https://t.co/tPNYGY2qe0

You trade on-chain. We refund all network fees. Swap crypto, fiat, commodities, whatever. Get an invite here: https://t.co/CVSogvKJGE

— StellarX (@stellarxhq) July 5, 2018

Posting on r/Stellar, the StellarX developers revealed their project and reasons for choosing to develop on the network.

Hello! I’m very happy to announce StellarX–a new trading platform built on the Stellar universal marketplace. We’re free–we’re refunding network fees and using lumenaut.net to get every user his/her inflation–and, of course, being on Stellar we’re super fast.”

We’ll list every token on Stellar (provided the issuers do stuff like complete their toml) so that means you’ll be trading crypto, fiat, commodities, whatever, once we launch.”

Features such as completely fee-free trading and the listing and trading of all asset types will be possible, whilst also taking advantage of the protocol’s super-fast settlement times. Users will be able to trade from their own wallet, and even collect the 1% weekly inflation from the Lumenaut’s inflation pool. Because the Stellar network’s fees are so small, StellarX can offer completely free trading – essentially absorbing the minimal transactional costs.

The third-party team behind the new complete trading app have previously developed industry blockbuster projects such as Headspace, Kickstarter and OkCupid, and worked with the Stellar Development Foundation to ‘ensure StellarX delivers the optimal Stellar Experience’.

As if that wasn’t enough, these industry developer veterans went on to sing Stellar’s technological praises in this medium post, waxing lyrical about their ‘fantastic settlement backend’, saying that they ‘…believe Stellar is actually underappreciated’. This news will come as a mixture of relief and excitement for proponents of Stellar and XLM, finally getting to hear about the ‘…world-class front-end that our underlying technology has long deserved.’ hinted at 6 months ago. Whatever the wider market reaction, this development promises to deliver a potentially world-beating decentralised cryptocurrency exchange on the Stellar network.

StellarX will be live this summer, with early beta signups available for keen cryptocurrency users.

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