Polkadot Parachains And Venture Funds Team Up to Launch $250 Million ‘aUSD Ecosystem Fund
Polkadot Parachains and Venture Funds Team Up to Launch $250 Million ‘aUSD Ecosystem Fund’ to Grow Polkadot’s Native Stablecoin, Acala USD
Acala, along with an initial nine Polkadot parachain teams and several supporting venture funds, has launched the $250 million aUSD Ecosystem Fund to support early-stage startups building applications with strong stablecoin use cases on any Polkadot or Kusama parachain. The fund participants are seeking Solidity or Substrate-based applications driving yield or utility for aUSD, including money markets, DEXs, derivatives, asset management, DAOs, payments, and other use cases. Learn more and apply to the aUSD Ecosystem Fund here.
aUSD’s Origins
The four Acala co-founders (Bette, Bryan, Ruitao, and Fuyao) set out over three years ago in Auckland, New Zealand, to build a DeFi-focused parachain in the Polkadot ecosystem after being stifled by Ethereum scaling challenges and evaluating other options such as Cosmos and ETH2. The idea for Acala started with the anticipated need for a native, decentralized, multi-chain stablecoin to serve as the foundational ‘oil’ to operate the would-be economy that Polkadot was sure to enable.
Polkadot is very much a long-term bet on revolutionary blockchain technology with a radical focus on decentralization. Any team, whether a parachain or DApp, building in the Polkadot ecosystem has come here to enjoy Polkadot’s shared security model allowing any parachain to get plug-and-play security from Polkadot’s core ‘Relay Chain’.
aUSD Ecosystem Fund
aUSD Ecosystem Fund goals:
To support and facilitate investment in early-stage teams building in the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem with a strong use case for the aUSD stablecoin
Grow the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem through increased cross-chain activity and growth of Polkadot’s native stablecoin, aUSD
Qualifying Projects: Any DApp or early-stage parachain building on Polkadot or Kusama that drives growth and utility of aUSD
Supporting Parachains: Acala, Astar Network, Centrifuge, Efinity, HydraDX, Manta, Moonbeam, OriginTrail, Parallel, and Zeitgeist. Parachain teams interested in joining the fund should reach out to their contacts on the Acala core team.
About Acala
Acala is a decentralized finance network powering the aUSD ecosystem. The core product, Acala USD, is a decentralized, multi-collateral, crypto-backed stablecoin serving as the native stablecoin of the Polkadot ecosystem. Acala’s Ethereum-compatible blockchain has built-in DeFi protocols for application developers to leverage, including a trustless staking derivative (liquid DOT — LDOT), a decentralized exchange, and the EVM+, a hybrid EVM offering fully Ethereum-compatible development environment plus full compatibility with Substrate.
