Polkadot Auction Winner Astar Network Secures $22M in Venture Capital Funding

Astar Network, a Polkadot parachain auction winner has secured the sum of $22 million from venture capital as well as angel investors. 

As unveiled by the blockchain protocol, the fundraise drew participation from Polychain, Alameda Research, Alchemy Ventures, Animal Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, Digital Finance Group, GSR, ROK Capital, Scytale Ventures, Vessel, Injective Protocol, and angel investors including Dr. Gavin Wood, Richard Ma, Keisuke Honda, and some executives from Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies.

While venture funding is growing at a very fast pace, Astar Network is a protocol that was deserving of consideration from investors based on the innovative solution it is heralding. Built as a protocol to take network interoperability to a whole new level, Astar Network became the third protocol to win a Polkadot parachain auction, a development that showcases how well it has a community that believes in its push. Astar Network is also building a framework whereby Web3.0 developers can be incentivized adequately for their work.

“Astar is making a highly competitive bid for new developers to the Polkadot space, and we’re excited to be partnering with them. The project’s focus on including additional WASM-compiling languages in their EVM’s compatibility should help attract development in many more programming languages, and their dApp staking platform represents an innovative new approach to bootstrapping and funding an emergent ecosystem,” Ben Perszyk, Partner at Polychain Capital.

With the new funding, the startup now has the financial backing to continue in its development of a multichain solution. As detailed by the startup, it is working relentlessly to be a multichain smart contract hub by connecting multiple L1 chains and supporting multiple smart contract virtual machines. Currently, 2 Ethereum bridges are live and 1 Cosmos bridge is under heavy development. In its ambitious timeline, the startup hopes to connect all major chains by Q4 this year.