Binance Labs recently led a $6 million “strategic” round of the Moonbeam smart contract platform along with contributions from CoinFund and ParaFi.
The funds acquired from the investment round will be used to hire development resources, “build additional integrations and developer tools, perform third-party security audits, and establish a market presence in Asia,” according to an update from Binance. The company noted that these activities should position the team for the planned launch of the Moonbeam network later this year.
As noted in a blog post by Binance, Moonbeam has grown to become one of the most established parachains in the Polkadot ecosystem. During the past 6 months since securing funding via a seed round and introducing a TestNet in September 2020, “dozens of projects have begun building on — and integrating with — the Moonbeam network.”
Binance’s blog post further noted that examples of protocols “with planned or live integrations on Moonbeam include SushiSwap, Balancer, IDEX, Seascape, Linear Finance, and Ocean Protocol.”
Wei Zhou, Head of Binance Labs, stated:
“We hope that this strategic round will be a stepping stone for Moonbeam, as they work to make their Ethereum-compatible network a reality. We support Moonbeam, believing that it will be one of the notable parachains of the Polkadot ecosystem.”
Jake Brukhman, CEO of CoinFund, remarked:
“We see enormous potential in the Polkadot space, and Moonbeam is setting the state of the art of Ethereum compatibility on Polkadot as well as developing a robust smart contracting facility in the new network. We are pleased to be able to support the Moonbeam team as they continue to make incredible technical progress in this space.”
The PureStake, which is the firm that’s working on the Moonbeam smart contract platform, intends to officially launch the Moonbeam network in a “multi-phased” approach that is similar to the one employed for the Polkadot network launch: “a TestNet parachain deployment (currently live), the Moonriver network deployment to Kusama, followed by a Moonbeam network deployment for Polkadot (planned for later this year),” the announcement explained.
This funding round will “help the team plan and successfully launch each deployment, including third-party security audits of the code, as soon as the functionality is available,” the announcement confirmed.
The funding round also reportedly included prominent VC companies across the blockchain sector such as Hypersphere Ventures, Hashkey Capital, Arrington XRP, KR1, D1 Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Divergence Ventures, and Signum Capital.
Derek You, CEO at PureShake and Founder of the Moonbeam Project, noted:
“From the beginning, we have prioritized broad and strategic distribution when fundraising. The partnerships forged in this round — which include some of the most well-respected names in the industry — will provide us with the capital, guidance, and global traction we need to launch the Moonbeam network and establish it as a center of DeFi, NFT, and other activity on Polkadot.”
The Moonbeam and Moonriver parachains are scheduled to go live later this year, “once parachain functionality has been enabled on Polkadot and Kusama, respectively.”