Astar Network announces a strategic partnership with Acala

Astar Network and Acala’s partnership is set to boost the decentralised finance (DeFi) ecosystem on Polkadot.

Astar Network, an innovation hub on the Polkadot blockchain, announced on Wednesday, August 10th, that it has partnered with the leading DeFi network Acala to supercharge DeFi on Polkadot.

The partnership resulted in the launch of the “Astar x Acala DeFi Rising ” program to unlock new opportunities and rewards for developers.

According to the press release shared with Coinjournal, Acala’s suite of flexible financial products that serve the Polkadot network are pivotal to the booming ecosystem of dApps on Astar.

The partnership will empower developers to build on Astar’s vibrant DeFi ecosystem using Acala-native assets like aUSD, LDOT, and ACA while receiving extra ACA and additional rewards from various Astar ecosystem teams.

Bette Chen, co-founder of Acala commented that

“With Acala, we have built a DeFi app-chain to provide products like aUSD to other networks in the Polkadot ecosystem and broader Web3 space. Our deep integration with the Astar team is very exciting for us as we look to help accelerate the growth of Astar’s strong DApp ecosystem with aUSD liquidity and cross-chain use cases.”

Acala is a DeFi network powering financial applications on Polkadot. The protocol’s wide range of DeFi products includes the recently launched liquid staking, which enables users to stake DOT tokens on the relay chain to ensure security while staying liquid with LDOT, a token backed by staked DOT.

Astar added that the DeFi Rising program is the first step towards a thriving DeFi ecosystem leveraging its Cross-Consensus Messaging Format (XCM) to execute trustless and decentralized cross-chain transfers.

While commenting on this latest development, Sota Watanabe, founder and CEO of Astar Network, said;

“This collaboration is the first official campaign conducted by major Polkadot parachains in the ecosystem. As it has been the case in the past, Acala and Astar will lead the Polkadot ecosystem and create multichain use cases together. This partnership is our first step to prove the value of trustless Polkadot bridges (XCM) and create the future of multichain dApps.”

The team added that Astar developers could build new dApps on top of Acala’s reliable assets. Furthermore, the Astar ecosystem will build the early use-cases needed for aUSD mass adoption across the multichain future.

Astar said projects adding utility to aUSD on its network could apply for Acala’s $250 million aUSD Ecosystem Fund and Astar’s SpaceLabs program.

The $250 million ecosystem fund is designed to support early-stage startups building applications with strong stablecoin use cases on any Polkadot or Kusama parachain. 

Astar Network supports the building of dApps with EVM and WASM smart contracts and offers developers true interoperability, with cross-consensus messaging (XCM). Meanwhile, Acala is a decentralized finance network powering the aUSD ecosystem.