Yes, very much inspired by the work done by Ruben.

Oh my bad, just realized Mercurylayer improves a lot on the initial statechain concept.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/mercury-layer-a-massive-improvement-on-statechains

south_korea_ln

Aren't the statechains on which Merculylayer is based a brainchild of Ruben? He may not know about all Mercury's implementation details, but I'd imagine he knows a lot about the protocol.