Blockchain payment processor Metal Pay has followed up its recent acquisition of Lynx by purchasing EOSIO explorer Bloks.io for an undisclosed sum. The takeover will see the consumer-friendly crypto platform expand its development capabilities, with Bloks’ acclaimed technical team staying on under the Metal umbrella.
How Metal Plans to Level Up
A multi-purpose EOSIO platform that evolved from being a basic block explorer created for EOS, Bloks.io currently supports several networks including WAX, Telos, and Proton (XPR), the latter of which Metal launched in May and is deeply integrated into its iOS and Android apps.
It is believed that the incoming Bloks.io team will focus much of their attention on building out the Proton Chain, a novel protocol that lets users push or pull fiat or crypto payments between accounts on any network. Ostensibly a blockchain that interacts with banks and lets users securely authenticate transactions via a unique @ identifier, Proton will also be integrated into Metal’s collectables.io platform as an NFT Marketplace.
By absorbing the popular block explorer, Metal will gain access to a service that is queried and trusted by 10,000 daily crypto users, while leveling up its own blockchain and smart contract platform.
“Combining Neo Banking with an ultra-fast blockchain is the future for payments,” said Syed Jafri, the ex-Ethereum developer and founder of Bloks.io. Jafri’s talents are likely to be at the heart of the merger since Metal will now be working with one of the sharpest developers in the industry.
Metal Is Making It Easier to Buy Crypto
In acquiring Bloks.io, Metal Pay has reasserted its commitment to onboarding the next generation of digital asset holders, having already announced 0% fees for the purchase of BTC, TUSD, MTL and XPR. The latest version of Metal Pay, 2.4.0, supports instant bank and debit card purchases plus unlimited crypto-to-crypto transactions. Metal users can send and receive funds to other users via the app, with transfers – like the purchase of crypto – entailing no fees.
As with the Bloks.io deal, Metal Pay’s merger with Lynx back in May saw the payment processor welcome a highly regarded development team, with plans afoot to enhance Metal’s UI, design and product range. At the time, Metal Founder Marshall Hayner revealed that the company’s long-term vision was to be “the next Stripe – only this time, payments are not insecure and they are built on Proton and blockchain rails, everything completely interoperable, not just blockchain interoperability, but full global banking and financial interoperability.”
With the bright minds of Lynx and Bloks.io now assimilated into Metal’s burgeoning empire, this goal no longer seems outlandish.