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The Moonbeam Foundation has successfully secured a parachain slot on Kusama, which will be used to ensure Moonriver continues to operate as a parachain past its current lease. The Foundation has decided to self-fund this slot extension. This decision allows existing MOVR reserves to be directed to grants and other developer support initiatives. This milestone signals great things to come from Moonriver over the term of this new lease.

Moonriver is a community-led parachain on Kusama. To ensure its place as a parachain, Moonriver proactively bid and won a slot in the 27th Kusama parachain auction during the 20-27 lease period. The auction began at block #11592600 and bidding ended on Block #11691600 and resulted in a secured slot for Moonriver until March 2023.

Since launching in June 2021, Moonriver has established itself as the go-to destination for building applications in the Kusama ecosystem. Over 100 projects have deployed to the network with new ones launching regularly, including native projects like Solarbeam and Moonwell, as well as multi-chain projects like SushiSwap and Lido.

In January, Moonriver introduced the new XC-20 format, which is a new type of interoperable token that conforms to the ERC-20 standard but is also Substrate-native. Since its introduction, several XC-20s have launched on Moonriver, including representations of KSM/stKSM, RMRK, KINT, and soon, KAR. Moonriver has proven to be a valuable and active network, and will continue to exist alongside Moonbeam in perpetuity.

By choosing to self-fund this slot acquisition, the Moonbeam Foundation is able to direct existing MOVR reserves to be used for initiatives that help increase activity and adoption on Moonriver, including grants and developer support.

The Moonbeam Foundation does not plan to produce blocks on the new parachain slot until it switches Moonriver over from its current slot to the new one. We anticipate that there will be no disruptions to the network during this transition period.

Pending additional information from Parity on its swap functionality, the Moonbeam Foundation will be able to easily swap lease periods. In order to swap, the owner of both parachains (the Moonbeam Foundation) can send a swap request for each of the parachains to transfer Moonriver to the new lease. On the second request, the swap will take place, switching the lease periods. As with all things in the extended Polkadot ecosystem, these technical experiences on Moonriver via Kusama will serve to inform and prepare the team for future scenarios on Polkadot.