Astar Network partners with Acala to boost DeFi on Polkadot

The Astar Network and Acala partnership strengthens Polkadot’s Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

Polkadot blockchain innovation hub Astar Network announced Wednesday, August 10, that it will partner with leading DeFi network Acala to power DeFi on Polkadot.

This partnership has launched the “Astar x Acala DeFi Rising” program, bringing new opportunities and rewards to developers.

According to a press release shared with Coinjournal, Acala’s flexible suite of financial products serving the Polkadot network is vital to Astar’s booming ecosystem of dApps.

The partnership will allow developers to build Astar’s vibrant DeFi ecosystem using Acala native assets such as aUSD, LDOT, and ACA, with additional ACA and additional You can receive rewards.

Acala co-founder Bette Chen commented:

We used Acala to build a DeFi app chain that brings products like aUSD to the Polkadot ecosystem and other networks in the broader Web3 space. Close integration with the Astar team is very exciting as we aim to accelerate the growth of our strong DApp ecosystem.

Acala is the DeFi network powering Polkadot’s financial applications. The protocol’s wide range of DeFi offerings include the recently launched liquid staking. This allows a user to stake his DOT tokens on the relay chain to ensure security while maintaining liquidity in his LDOT, the token backed by staked DOT.

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

Commenting on this latest development, Astar Network Founder and CEO Sota Watanabe said:

This collaboration is the first official campaign carried out in the ecosystem by a major Polkadot parachain. This partnership is the first step in proving the value of the trustless Polkadot Bridge (XCM) and creating the future of multi-chain dApps.

The team added that Astar developers will be able to build new dApps on top of Acala’s trusted assets. Additionally, the Astar ecosystem will build the initial use cases necessary for mass adoption of his aUSD across multi-chains in the future.

Astar said projects that add utility to aUSD on the network can apply to Acala’s $250 million aUSD Ecosystem Fund and Astar’s SpaceLabs program.

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

Astar Network supports building dApps using EVM and WASM smart contracts, using cross-consensus messaging (XCM) to provide true interoperability for developers. Acala, on the other hand, is a decentralized financial network that powers the aUSD ecosystem.