Coming just weeks after a $22 million fundraise, Astar’s new fund will offer liquidity and financial support for smart contract developers.
Astar Network, a parachain or parallel chain of the Polkadot network, has announced the $100 million Astar Boost Program fund to provide liquidity and offer financial support and incentive programs to smart contract developers. The company told CoinDesk that the program was funded through $22 million in fundraising, as well as an allocation of the native ASTR token.
Last month, Astar raised $22 million in strategic funding from crypto venture capital firms Polychain and Alameda Research.
Polkadot, a framework for connecting various blockchains, does not support smart contracts on its main relay chain. Astar provides that support for smart contract developers.
Astar also lets developers earn tokens for building smart contracts or infrastructure, supported by the #Build2Earn protocol and paid out in ASTAR.
The new Astar Boost Program has already supported liquidity and incentives for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on the protocol, including decentralized exchanges ArthSwap and PolkaEx, and Celer cBridge, a multichain asset bridge.
“Astar Network will support projects committing to Astar financially by Astar Boost Program as well as dApp Staking, our original incentive system for developers,” said Sota Watanabe, founder of Astar Network, in the announcement blog. “We expect to grow rapidly together. Through this program, our community will be extra rewarded for their on-chain activity.”