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DFG piles $12.6M into Astar Network’s Polkadot parachain bid

November 16, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Astar Network

Astar Network currently ranks third place in Polkadot’s first parachain auction behind Acala and Moonbeam.

The first-ever parachain auction on Polkadot is heating up, with leading projects from the Polkadot ecosystem competing for the coveted first slot.

On Nov. 15, DFG Group — a global blockchain investment firm controlling $1 billion in assets under management — announced it had pledged 300,000 DOT tokens (worth $12.65 million) in support of Astar Network’s parachain bid.

Polkadot will use parachain auctions to realize its sharded proof-of-stake ecosystem. In order to secure a parachain or shard on the Polkadot network, projects compete in auctions by bidding to lock up large sums of DOT for the duration of a parachain slot’s lease. Projects competingfor parachain slots distribute governance to tokens to users who contribute dot to their parachain auction bids.

Astar Network, previously known as Plasm, is vying to build a decentralized application hub on Polkadot that supports Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Web Assembly-based smart contracts.

According to the Nov. 15 announcement, DFG has made the pledge through the Bifrost’s Slot Auction Liquidity Protocol (SALP), which allows users to participate in parachain auctions held on both Polkadot and Kusama.

Bifrost’s SALP platform allows users to contribute to a wide range of parachain auctions, while also providing participants with liquid staking derivatives representing their underlying DOT contributions.

DFG Founder and CEO, James Wo, commented that “aside from a very strong team, Astar addresses a critical interoperability issue and bridges Polkadot with Ethereum, which will bring a great number of experienced teams to this ecosystem.”

The company is an early investor in new and emerging protocols including Polkadot, Kusama, Avalanche, Solana, and Near.

Astar is currently in the third spot in the first Polkadot parachain auction which began on Nov. 11. Astar has a total of 6.6 million DOT worth around $281 million staked for its crowdloan according to Dotmarketcap which is tracking the auction progress.

Acala Network is currently leading the crowdloan race with 30.7 million DOT pledged worth roughly $1.3 billion. Moonbeam, an EVM-compatible smart contract platform, ranks as close second place also with 30.6 million DOT locked up.

DFG also pledged 500,000 DOT to Acala in early November before the auction commenced.

The first auction will run until Nov. 18 and the winner is decided by the Dutch candle method, with the precise moment of the auction’s close determined retroactively at the end of the bidding period.

The projects that win Polkadot’s first five parachain slots will go live on Dec. 17 and will hold the slot until there their lease period ends.

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Kraken launches Kusama Parachain Auction platform as KSM defies downtrend

June 9, 2021 Coin Telegraph

auctions

KSM token prices surge as Parachain auctions launch nears.

U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has announced a “first-of-its-kind” Parachain Auction Platform enabling clients to participate directly from the exchange.

In a blog post on June 8, Kraken revealed the new platform will enable users that qualify to pledge support for Kusama projects vying for a Parachain slot by staking Kusama’s KSM tokens.

The rewards for contributors who support a winning bid vary and can include referral bonuses, early participation bonuses, and airdrops.

Polkadot’s multi-chain ecosystem will use sharded sidechains to process transactions in parallel. These Parachains are acquired in the auction process whereby projects try to outbid each other for the right to use the slot for 48 weeks with KSM tokens. Kusama is the testing and development network often dubbed Polkadot’s “Canary network.”

Only 100 Parachain slots are expected to be available, but this may change through protocol governance votes over time.The post stated:

“For Kusama auctions, the project with the most KSM bonded to support its bid, at the time the auction snapshot is taken, will generally be able to claim the auctioned parachain slot.”

The platform is not available to residents of the US, Canada, Japan, and Australia.

In its first Parachain auction, Kraken will allow clients to support the bids of at least two projects, starting with Karura and Shiden.

Karura is a DeFi hub and stablecoin platform for the Kusama network offering a crypto-collateralized stablecoin, a decentralized exchange, access to liquid staking, and an EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible blockchain.

Shiden is a smart contract layer for the Kusama network upon which developers can design and build new DApps. It will be a cross-chain platform that also supports Ethereum and layer two protocols.

As reported by Cointelegraph, Polkadot creator Gavin Wood has proposed June 15 for first the Kusama Parachain auction. Following the first five weekly auctions, Wood recommended a pause to evaluate the performance of the network before commencing another batch of auctions.

In late March Acala Network was the first project to secure a Parachain slot on Polkadot's Rococo testnet. On May 17, Polkadot announced that Kusama was finally ready to host Parachains.

The impending auction launches have given a boost to Kusama’s KSM token which has defied the market slump and surged 28% over the past fortnight. According to CoinGecko, KSM is up 12% over the past 24 hours, trading at $410 at the time of writing.

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Online marketplace eBay now allows NFT sales

May 11, 2021 Coin Telegraph

auctions

A representative said that eBay "will add new capabilities that bring blockchain-driven collectibles" to the platform.

Online marketplace eBay has introduced auctions for nonfungible tokens to its platform.

According to a Reuters report, eBay users who meet certain criteria on the platform will be permitted to list nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. The company added that it would expand its policies and tools surrounding digital collectibles in the future.

"In the coming months, eBay will add new capabilities that bring blockchain-driven collectibles to our platform," said eBay's North America senior vice president Jordan Sweetnam.

The report comes almost exactly one week after CEO Jamie Iannone said the platform would be "exploring opportunities" to enable NFTs on the platform "in an easy way." The CEO said buyers and sellers were already able to deal in NFTs on eBay but the platform had not yet simplified the process. Iannone said at the time that the company was also considering introducing crypto payment options.

Executives at the online marketplace have previously hinted that eBay could be open to accepting crypto payments. Three years ago, a senior vice president at the firm said eBay was "seriously considering" integrating Bitcoin (BTC) into its platform as a payment method.

Thousands of projects featuring NFTs have exploded in the crypto space over the last few months, seemingly following the example of multimillion sales of digital artwork on online marketplaces. The introduction of the tokens into a marketplace like eBay with roughly 187 million active buyers has the potential to keep the craze going for even longer.

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