The Stellar Foundation is a non-profit blockchain project that built the Stellar network. The Stellar ecosystem holds the digital token Stellar (XLM), or Stellar lumens.

The for-profit subsidiary of the Stellar Foundation, Lightyear, purchased Chain for around $40 million. As part of the all-cash deal, all of Chain’s existing investors, such as Citi Ventures, Visa, and Nasdaq will all receive a return on their initial investment, Chain’s co-founder, Adam Ludwin, told Forbes.

“All of the clients that we have now have effectively shifted from using a traditional database model to using a tokens model, …