The Polkadot-based smart contract platform Astar (formerly Plasm Network) has raised $22 million in a strategic funding round. It was led by venture firm Polychain Capital.
Amazing news!! We are excited to announce a $22M fundraise with participation from @polychain, Dr. Gavin Wood, @AlamedaResearch, @AlchemyPlatform, @cryptocom, and other great investors.
We will create a multi-chain smart contract hub and Web3.0🚀https://t.co/sNgecVsslS
— Astar Network — Multichain Smart Contract Hub (@AstarNetwork) January 28, 2022
Funding was also provided by Alameda Research, Crypto.com Capital, Digital Finance Group, and several angel investors.
The Astar team is working with Parity Technologies on WebAssembly (WASM) integration to enable support for a second virtual machine. The protocol currently supports only the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
“Astar is behind a highly competitive proposition for new developers in the Polkadot space, and we are excited to collaborate with them. The project aims to include additional WASM-compatible languages into the EVM. It should help attract developers to a much larger number of programming languages, and their platform dApp Staking represents an innovative approach to bootstrapping and financing an emerging ecosystem,” said Ben Pershik, a partner at Polychain Capital.
In December 2021 Astar won the auction for the third parachain slot on Polkadot. About 10.33 million DOT were locked in its favor, with a total value of around $373.14 million at the time.
The project has the backing of more than 27,000 DOT holders. The lease period for the Astar parachain slot will run until October 20, 2023.
In February 2020, then-Plasm Network attracted $2.4 million from the blockchain incubator Binance Labs and other investors.
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