Astar Network Secures $22M Funding Months After Winning Polkadot Parachain Auction

Months after winning its Polkadot parachain auction, Astar Network has made the headlines yet again after securing $22 million in funding from crypto-based venture capital investors. As announced by the platform, the funding round enjoined participation from Polychain, Alameda Research, Alchemy Ventures, Animal Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, Digital Finance Group, GSR, ROK Capital, Scytale Ventures, Vessel, and Injective Protocol.

With angel investors including Dr. Gavin Wood, Richard Ma, Keisuke Honda, and some executives from Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies also backing the firm, Astar Network now boasts of the support of the industry’s top powerhouses.

Astar Network is a protocol that incentivizes developers with tokens for their work. The protocol launched its mainnet last week after about two and a half years since Stake Technologies, the startup behind it has been developing it. The protocol has gained massive recognition for filling a rare void in the emerging world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies and this informed the participation from investors across the globe.

“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,” said Ben Perszyk, Partner at Polychain Capital.

While this latest funding round was targeted at US investors in a bid to broaden its overall geographical reach, the protocol said the funds will be used in building out its infrastructure to become a multichain protocol.

Are Investment Rounds Taking a Peak Already

Investors backing innovative protocols in the blockchain ecosystem are growing at a very fast pace, as more money bags seek to tag along with the promising growth of startups that are focused on developing every aspect Web3.0 is heralding.

Funding news has permeated the blockchain ecosystem in recent months with TheCoinRise reporting recently that digital currency infrastructure service provider Blockdaemon grabbed $207 million in funding from investors led by Sapphire and Tiger Global.

The new year has seen related news like this make the round, signaling the likelihood of more ambitious financial backing for upcoming DeFi, and gaming protocols to beat last year’s record.