Stellar Foundation Invests $5 million Into Abra's Non-Custodial Wallet

Stellar has officially announced an investment to the tune of $5million into Abra, an all-in-one cryptocurrency? wallet? and exchange? app (available on both the Google Android and iOS stores).

The funds have been distributed by Stellar’s ‘Stellar Development Fund’: a Non-profit organisation founded in 2014, with the intention of contributing to “the development and growth of the open-source Stellar network.”

The expectation from Stellar is that this investment will lead to “greater avenues of growth” for the Stellar network as a result of integrating Abra: giving Stellar users access to the companies “global banking infrastructure.”

Stellar’s Open Money Network

Stellar is an “open network for storing and moving money”: self-described as not only decentralized; but scalable, and “uniquely sustainable” with features such as a global payments mobile app (iOS and Android) and an integrated decentralized assets exchange?.

It claims to “make it possible to create, send and trade digital representations of all forms of money: dollars, pesos, bitcoin?, [etc]... on a single network” and currently boasts active partnerships with organisations such as IBM, Wirex, and SatoshiPay.

Furthermore, Stellar posits itself as  “a way out” from the current status quo of the finance economy: letting “people [to] participate in a worldwide, stable, financial network regardless of where they live”.

The native cryptocurrency? of the Stellar network is called Stellar Lumens (XLM), and it is a utility token? used for purposes such as acting as an intermediary currency in cross-currency transactions (across crypto as well as fiat).

The Stellar Development Fund & Foundation

"This investment marks the beginning of our partnership to work together towards creating equitable access to financial services that also create new, innovative business opportunities for the Stellar network." - Denelle Dixon (CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation)

According to its website, the Stellar Development Fund is dedicated towards helping to support development of the Stellar network. Areas specified for investment by Stellar include: Ecosystem (business, community, partnerships, products); Platform (Horizon, SDKs), Infrastructure (Stellar core).

Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) is a non-profit organisation which was founded in 2014 to support the development and growth of the open-source Stellar network. It is accountable for codebase maintenance, in addition to the provision of “technical and business communities” support.

Another recent investment the foundation has made was in Elliptic (announced on April 30, 2020), an organisation which specialists in the prevention and detection of financial criminal activity within the cryptocurrency? / blockchain? space.

The Foundation published an update on April 9, 2020 titled ‘Stellar Development Foundation Q1 in Review’ which hailed the “first major release” of Stellar’s HTTP API server: ‘Horizon’. It also revealed that the SDF had joined the Blockchain? Association as well as the Chamber of Digital Commerce; in addition to details of its first investment - which was into ‘DSTOQ’ around early April 2020. 

DSTOQ is a Liechtenstein-based Fintech company. A licensed, decentralized stock exchange? which offers “zero-fee investing into global stock markets” - and describes itself as end-to-end, borderless “securities trading as a service” solution.

More About Abra

"As we integrate with Stellar, we're going to be able to build the next generation of banking, leveraging the network's ability to use traditional banking infrastructure combined with the innovative opportunities of blockchain? technology." - Bill Baryhdt, CEO of Abra

Abra is a ‘global investment app’ which advertises itself as a service which helps to make “cryptocurrency? more accessible for everyone” - through its all-in-one cryptocurrency? wallet? and exchange? app.

Having launched back in 2014, Abra is based in California, USA and “supports Bitcoin? as well as “over 50 fiat currencies”... and over 100 different cryptocurrencies”.