KR1 plc, a digital asset investment company, has announced that Acala Network (“Acala” or “ACA”), a portfolio project of KR1 and one of the most prominent projects building infrastructure on Polkadot, has completed a successful US$7 million ‘Series A’ funding round led by Pantera Capital at a fully-diluted network valuation of US$65 million. The funding round included participation from previous backers, such as Polychain and Hypersphere, as well as new backers, including Coinfund and Zee Prime Capital amongst others.
KR1 is also pleased to announce the Company’s participation in the recent funding round, investing a further US$100,000 into Acala in exchange for 153,846.15 ACA tokens at a price of US$0.65 per token. This investment comes in addition to KR1’s seed round participation, announced earlier this year. Across both funding rounds, the Company now holds a total of 1,020,512.82 ACA, which represents an interest of approximately 1.02% in the Acala Network.
The Acala Network is a cross-chain finance hub for the Polkadot ecosystem and beyond, offering a suite of financial primitives: a multi-collateralized stablecoin backed by cross-chain assets like Bitcoin (“BTC”), a trustless staking derivative and a decentralized exchange to unleash liquidity and power financial innovations. As such, Acala’s current testnet has become one of the most prominent and active platforms in the ecosystem, with approximately 14,500 new accounts and 142,000 meaningful transactions during a 3-week testnet campaign. There are many other projects also integrating with Acala or building on top of Acala’s products.
As previously announced, KR1 also intends to use a small part of KR1’s Polkadot (“DOT”) position to support the Acala Network, which might require locking up some DOT tokens for a certain period of time to receive additional ACA tokens. This happens by an auction process called a ‘Parachain Auction’, which is unique to the Polkadot ecosystem. Projects bid for limited amounts of Polkadot parachain slots that facilitate cross-chain transactions. Acala Network is expected to initiate its parachain campaign on Polkadot, as well as on Kusama, in the near future.
George McDonaugh, Managing Director and Co-Founder of KR1, commented: “We’re very excited about the next part of Acala’s journey. The progress the team has made over the past months is extraordinary and they continue to deliver groundbreaking technology at a rapid pace. Their latest successful funding round is testament to this hard work. Acala’s stablecoin, staking derivative and exchange products are laying the foundations for the emerging Polkadot DeFi ecosystem and we are going to see them gain evermore traction as Polkadot evolves.”
KR1 to became a member of the Ethereum-based MetaCartel Ventures
The news come after KR1 has become a member of the MetaCartel Ventures Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (“MCV” or “MCV DAO”), by contributing US $199,119.54 into the entity and receiving 4,938 MCV shares in return, representing an interest of 7.85% in the MCV DAO as at the date of this announcement.
The MCV is a for-profit DAO, created by Ethereum’s ‘MetaCartel’ community for the purposes of making investments into early-stage decentralized applications, being an exciting new development in blockchain venture funding. This project is a new way for individuals and entities to coordinate funding, labour, time and social capital through an on-chain managed organisation.
MCV is formed as a hybrid organisation made up of blockchain smart contract code and a traditional corporate structure. The technology half consists of a deployment of a ‘MolochDAO v2’ smart contract on Ethereum, with the legal half being a member-managed Delaware Limited Liability Company, ‘MetaCartel Ventures DAO LLC’.
With MCV’s strong community of established blockchain entrepreneurs and founders, the Directors believe that MCV will have its pick of the best seed stage opportunities in the Ethereum space, including DeFi (Decentralised Finance) projects, other friendly DAO projects and many more. To date, the MCV DAO has already made several investments, including ‘Reflexer Labs’, building ‘RAI’, a low volatility collateral for the DeFi ecosystem, and ‘Zapper Finance’, a popular DeFi dashboard. MCV is initially looking to allocate small amounts of capital, which could increase over time as the amount of funds in the DAO’s treasury grows.
Peter Pan of MetaCartel Ventures DAO commented: “In crypto we are all on the same team to make change happen and KR1 is a great example of a team that is on your side. KR1 truly cares about the grassroots ethos of Web 3 and is willing to back their beliefs. Excited to see MetaCartel Ventures grow in strength.”
Keld van Schreven, Managing Director and Co-Founder of KR1, commented: “We are very excited about the innovation MCV is doing in the blockchain funding space. MetaCartel and all the individuals involved are a highly credible and hugely influential community including the best and brightest people, which will serve it well as it grows. MCV may very well serve as a future model on how to manage and govern capital in the future. For us the MetaCartel Ventures DAO offers a unique investment opportunity, which brings with it a strong deal flow pipeline where we can contribute our expertise and experience as well as add to it with early-stage projects we are seeing.”
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