Multichain Protocol Astar Raised $22M In Funding Round By Polychain

The Multichain protocol Astar raised $22 million in a new funding round led by Polychain and the funds will be used to hire engineers to implement EVM and WASM as we are reading more in our latest blockchain news.

Astar is a multichain protocol known in the past as Plasm and raised $22 million in the latest fundraise led by Polychain. The funding round aside from Polychain saw participation from the likes of Alameda Research, Digital Finance Group, Crypto.com Capital, and other angel investors. Astar rose to popularity after it gained a spot on the Polkadot parachain last year. Astar is working to become the first protocol to support two virtual machines on the Polakdot parachian, the WebAssembly, and the Ethereum Virtual Machine. While the EVM is now active, the platform will transition to WASM over time.

Our vision is to become the foundation of Web3.0. We will connect all major L1 chains to become a multi-chain smart contract hub. pic.twitter.com/sElXO1UptO

— Astar Network – Multichain Smart Contract Hub (@AstarNetwork) January 25, 2022

The Astar team is now working with Parity blockchain to push the WASM integration. Being a multichain protocol, Astar supports other EVM and non-EVM layer 1 bridges, and now two ETH bridges are live and a Cosmos bridge is under development. Sota Watanabe who is the founder of Astar Network said:

“Interoperability is not only a buzzword but also a reality in the Polkadot ecosystem by connecting all parachains with different virtual machines together with XCM. Astar will be the only parachain supporting both virtual machines and at the same time also make them interoperable with each other.”

The Astar Team said they raised capital and will be used for hiring industry-leading engineers to implement both WASM and EVM but to also invest and to nurture Astar native ecosystem projects. PArachains on Polkadot are individual blockchains that run in parallel with the Polkadot ecosystem and these have been in the works for five years and mark a major breakthrough for cross-chain tech.

As recently reported, Following the launch on the Polkadot Mainnet, Acala is an ETH-compatible DEFI protocol for scaling dapps and revealed what lies ahead for the project. The team noted in an official press release that it intends to start launching core products soon. These include decentralized exchange and an upgraded Ethereum Virtual Machine as well as a decentralized stablecoin. The projects developers added that Acala could rollout core products that are scheduled to go live after the launch on Mainnet.