Astar Network to raise $22 million, funds to go towards enhancing interoperability

ambcrypto.com:

Two-and-half-year-olds aren’t expected to do much in real life, but that isn’t the case in the crypto sector. In fact, a project under development for 2.5 years is now making headlines across the industry after its ‘rags to riches’ story ended with a lucrative strategic investment round.

Having won in one of the Polkadot parachain slot auctions back in 2021, Astar Network enjoyed its mainnet debut on 17 January, 2022. Now, the project has announced a $22 million strategic fundraiser led by Polychain. Other investors included Alameda Research, Crypto.com Capital, and Polkadot founder Gavin Wood.

In its press release, the Astar Network team also shared plans to connect L1 chains and several smart contract virtual machines. It reported,

“Currently, 2 Ethereum bridges are live and 1 Cosmos bridge is under heavy development. We will connect all major chains by Q4 this year.”

This is one feature that Astar has stressed on, to stand out from the pack. The dApp hub supports Solidity contracts and Polkadot native smart contracts, as well as both Ethereum Virtual Machine [EVM] bridges and non-EVM L1 bridges.

In essence, the endgame is interoperability.

Furthermore, as if Astar didn’t have enough reason to celebrate, the project announced a DeFi milestone. As of 29 January, Astar reached $400 million in total value locked [TVL].

Go to our portal and check the status!https://t.co/s2QRcJMc3H pic.twitter.com/EOgoHNkUPE

— Astar Network – Multichain Smart Contract Hub (@AstarNetwork) January 29, 2022

The news might have been buried under the market bloodshed, but the Polkadot parachain slot auctions have been