Astar (formerly known as Plasm), a multichain DApp protocol, has raised $22 million in its latest strategic fundraise.
It has been reported that the funding round was led by Polychain and saw participation from the likes of Alameda Research, Crypto.com Capital, Digital Finance Group, and a few other angel investors. Astar rose to popularity after gaining the Polkadot parachain slot last December and the protocol was officially launched on January 17.
However, Astar is currently working to become the first protocol to support two virtual machines on its Polkadot parachain—The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and WebAssembly (WASM). While EVM is currently active, the platform would transition to WASM over time.
The report said that the Astar team is working with Parity blockchain to push its WASM integration. Being a multichain protocol, Astar supports multiple EVM and non-EVM layer-1 bridges. Currently, two Ethereum bridges are live and a Cosmos bridge is under development.
Sota Watanabe, the founder of Astar Network said:
“Interoperability is not only a buzzword but also a reality in the Polkadot ecosystem by connecting all parachains with different virtual machines together with XCM. Astar will be the only parachain supporting both virtual machines and at the same time also make them interoperable with each other.”
Likewise, the Astar team said the recently raised capital would be used for hiring industry-leading engineers to implement both EVM and WASM and to invest and nurture Astar native ecosystem projects.
Thus, parachains on Polkadot are individual blockchains running in parallel within the Polkadot ecosystem. These have been in development for five years and mark a breakthrough for cross-chain tech.
Source: Cointelegraph