Fund will focus on supporting native and multi-chain deployments on Moonbeam that tap into its novel interoperability capabilities
Arrington Capital, a digital asset management firm in blockchain-based capital markets, and the Moonbeam Foundation are pleased to announce the launch of a new $100 million ecosystem fund dedicated to support projects building on Moonbeam, the top destination for multi-chain applications on Polkadot. The Arrington Moonbeam Growth Fund is intended to spur additional development and growth on the network, which already has more than 100 projects live or soon-to-be launched, including top-tier DeFi initiatives.
This is the first ecosystem fund for the Moonbeam Network. The entirety of the funds will go toward helping new projects develop and scale multi-chain applications, including new use cases that leverage the interoperability potential of Polkadot and innovative general message passing technologies outside of Polkadot. The fund is designed to benefit projects across all categories, including DeFi, marketplaces, NFTs, and gaming.
“Moonbeam has gained significant momentum as a new Layer-1 protocol and provides a needed spark for the larger multi-chain movement, a trend which we are seeing across our portfolio,” said Michael Arrington, Partner at Arrington Capital. “We are thrilled to more deeply support the Moonbeam team’s goal of empowering cross-chain expansion for startups and developers in the simplest way possible. This fund signifies our enthusiasm for Moonbeam, and we’re excited to work closely with the rapidly expanding ecosystem of teams there.”
Since first launching in January 2022, Moonbeam has garnered significant interest from early and growth stage DApps thanks to its keen focus on the developer experience and unique approach to enabling interoperability within and outside of Polkadot. In its first five months, Moonbeam users have completed over 6.5 million transactions and seen the deployment of nearly 5,000 smart contracts from 775 developers.
Since Moonbeam is connected to Polkadot as a parachain, the Arrington Moonbeam Growth Fund will help spur growth not only on the parachain directly, but across the Polkadot ecosystem at large.
“Growing a successful Web3 project requires not only great teams and technology, but also the right partners to provide capital, strategic advice, and connections to other teams,” said Derek Yoo, Founder of Moonbeam. “Arrington Capital helped Moonbeam from the beginning to scale, make strategic decisions, and connect with many of the partners we have today. So it was natural for us to work with them to create a fund where they could help projects in our ecosystem in the same way. I expect the Arrington Moonbeam Growth Fund to be a significant catalyst for the expansion of the Moonbeam ecosystem.”
This announcement follows on the heels of several significant ecosystem developments, including the introduction of DOT liquid staking via Lido and a successful proposal to bring Uniswap v3 to Moonbeam. In the coming weeks, Moonbeam expects to complete its “building” phase, at which point it will support all major infrastructure tools and integrations to power the major DeFi protocols that are expected to launch in the coming weeks. These integrations include APIs/indexers, multisig support, VRFs, oracles, and more.
About Arrington Capital
Arrington Capital is a digital asset management firm primarily focused on blockchain-based capital markets. The firm, founded in 2017 by TechCrunch and CrunchBase founder Michael Arrington and TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde, has over $1 billion under management and has invested in hundreds of startups across the world. Arrington Capital is a seasoned, international team composed of Silicon Valley veterans and operators with deep venture capital experience and crypto native roots. Arrington Capital’s first fund was Arrington XRP Capital, and has expanded to multiple funds over time. For more information on Arrington Capital, visit https://arringtoncapital.com/.
About Moonbeam
Moonbeam is a fully Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform on Polkadot that prioritizes secure cross-chain interoperability. As a leading Web3 development platform, Moonbeam offers rich integration and decentralized solutions that allow developers to build native multi-chain DApps and port their existing smart contracts across chains with ease. Moonbeam natively supports existing ERC-20 assets to help extend a project’s reach into a multi-chain ecosystem.
