Following the successful completion of the first parachain auctions, the Polkadot (DOT) ecosystem is starting to gain traction in the cryptocurrency community as the first chains begin to come online and integrate with Ethereum (ETH).
Astar (ASTR) is one such Polkadot-based project that ended the month of March on a hot streak after the multi-chain smart contract platform caught the attention of retail and institutional crypto investors.
Data from Coin-Crypto Markets Pro and Trading Display shows that after a low of $0.107 on March 22, the price of ASTR is up 104% to a daily high at $0.208 on April 1, while demand for the token increased 20-fold.
ASTR/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
Three reasons for the rally include the completion of a $22 million funding round, the expansion of the Astar ecosystem through protocol launches and partnerships, and an increase in users and total value on the Astar network.
Institutional investors are piling up
The development that kick-started Astar’s progress in 2022 was the successful completion of a $22 million fundraising round on January 28.
Fundraiser participants included Polychain, Alameda Research, Alchemy Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, and Digital Finance Group, along with multiple angel investors such as Dr. Gavin Wood, Richard Ma and Keisuke Honda.
The fundraiser followed Astar’s mainnet launch on January 17 and will be used to help develop the Astar ecosystem to support both Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and WebAssembly, allowing developers to use existing Solidity contracts as well as native smart contracts from Be able to use polka dot.
The Astar ecosystem is expanding
In the months since the launch of its mainnet, Astar has launched multiple projects on its network and expects more to follow in April.
Astar Season is coming
Welcome to new friends who just joined @AstarNetwork in early April#Dot #A star #cryptnews #blockchain #to give away pic.twitter.com/6f1IPFa2DU— Polkadot Nation (@PolkadotNation) Apr 1, 2022
The project refers to the month of April as “Astar Season” as it plans to launch at least 15 new projects on the network as part of its drive to attract new users.
Upcoming launches include decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols such as Avault and Alnari Finance, the gaming protocol Astar Farms, and the AstridDAO and ADAO decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
Astar also recently unveiled a new partnership with Oasys, a layer-one blockchain built for game developers.
Related: Web3: Onboarding the Next Billion Users — The Way Forward
Network TVL rises
A third factor that propelled the momentum for Astar has been the influx of new users into the ecosystem, which now has more than 100,000 unique wallet addresses.
Another day, another milestone I’m excited about all the growth we’re seeing on Astar Network! pic.twitter.com/mGUTcb4Gb4
— Astar Network | WASM + EVM HUB on Polkadot (@AstarNetwork) March 29, 2022
As a result of the influx of new users and the launch of multiple projects on the network, total value on Astar hit a new all-time high of $1.16 billion on April 1. according to to data from Defi Llama.
Total value locked on the Astar network. Source: Defi Llama
Recent growth has made Astar the largest TVL among all Polkadot parachains and has become TVL’s eighth EVM compatible chain.
$1.3 billion in TVL. No. 8 EVM Blockhain. LFG pic.twitter.com/RNH5pLs1fm
— Astar Network | WASM + EVM HUB on Polkadot (@AstarNetwork) Apr 1, 2022
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