Crowdloan Rewards Distributed, ACA now transferable and available on exchanges, Launch Update, Announcement of AquaDAO, Karura and Taiga announcement, RMRK listings, and LP incentives.
What a start to 2022! It’s been a little over one month since Acala successfully onboarded its parachain to the Polkadot Relay Chain to initiate genesis. During that time, the Acala team focused on achieving deliverables as stated in our ongoing launch process, each successful milestone further synergizing the Acala and Polkadot blockchains.
In time, Acala’s onboarding process will enable new DeFi primitive/protocols, in addition to cross-chain bridges, custom features like Bring Your Own Gas, the Acala EVM+, and on-chain democracy to empower ACA holders in governing the future of the layer-1 network.
Let’s recap what’s been an impressive January for Acala.
Acala Crowdloan Rewards Distributed to Participants
On Dec 28, Acala started distributing rewards to Crowdloan participants ensuring eligible supporters received ACA and LCDOT tokens to their respective addresses. Participants who contributed DOT to the Acala Crowdloan received ACA as a reward, giving them a share of the Acala network and the opportunity to participate in governance activities. Most Crowdloan contributors had their coins automatically distributed by Acala; however, users who participated in the Crowdloan via indirect channels must claim their tokens. Crowdloan participants who have yet to claim their tokens can do so by visiting our “Check & Claim Tokens” portal.
For more on the Crowdloan distribution, read here.
ACA & LCDOT Token Transfer Enabled. Community Can Send, Receive and Participate in On-Chain Governance
As part of the ongoing launch process, ACA token transfers were enabled. Users can now transfer ACA and LCDOT between accounts. Acala Crowdloan participants have received their allocated ACA, and the wider crypto community now enjoys access to ACA tokens through several exchange listings. For LCDOT contributors, 100% of their LCDOT is liquid and usable within Acala DeFi primitives launching soon, enabling liquid services such as swap and the ability to collateralize for a self-serviced loan in aUSD stablecoin. Community governance and depositing and withdrawing ACA tokens are fully live.
Community Call Acala Launch Update & Introducing AquaDAO: Aiming to Grow Acala Treasury and Reserves
Another exciting January announcement was the community call and Crowdcast presentation by Acala Co-founder Bette Chen and Chief Growth Officer Dan Reecer.
Enjoy the complete discussion here:
During their discussion, Bette and Dan provided an overview of the plans ahead for Acala and shared the following key points;
- Acala has $600 million + TVL, over 200k token holders, and 3M+ fintech clients to onboard.
- Acala is ushering in a new category in finance known as Hybrid Finance (HyFi). HyFi combines the world of fintech and traditional banking with crypto and Web3. The setup will enable upgrades as the market demands, making the Acala network future-proof.
- Users should be patient as some of the products and services by Acala depend on the Polkadot network. For instance, cross-chain messaging relies on Polkadot and its timeline. Updates on Polkadot are also generally slow; thus, users require patience when expecting updates.
- Users should expect benefits from the EVM+ feature by Acala.
- ACA staking and the growing Acala treasury. The distinctive arrangement of the Acala treasury will contribute to a long-term, self-sustainable network.
- AquaDAO will champion protocol-controlled policies to grow the Acala treasury and its reserves. It will also inspire engagement in Acala governance through delegated and vested voting.
- Karura and Acala co-exist for their mutual benefit.
Watch the entire launch update here or read through the summary here.
Taiga, A Synesthetic Asset Protocol Launches on Karura
Following months of collaboration, Acala was thrilled to reveal Taiga as the inaugural synthetic asset protocol to launch on Karura.
Taiga is a parachain agnostic synthetic asset protocol based on the Kusama network. The integration on Karura ensures optimum usability for uniform assets for the Kusama ecosystem. Taiga’s Stable Asset system powers efficient, low-risk trading using uniform, closely-pegged assets.
Karura offers a suite of financial applications; a trustless staking derivative (LKSM), a multi-collateralized stablecoin (kUSD), and an AMM DEX (Karura Swap). Taiga seamlessly integrates into the Karura stack, empowering DeFi primitives on Karura through usable synthetic assets.
To celebrate the Karura launch, Taiga and Karura jointly held a community exploration event, dubbed “The Exploration Begins.” Both platforms combined to offer up to 500,000 TAI rewards for DeFi participants and was a massive success, with Taiga distributing TAI rewards to 8,735 approved addresses. A second community event is currently under development, with strong expectations to exceed the success and enthusiasm of the first event.
Interested in the Taiga and Karura partnership; follow here for more information.
RMRK Lists on Karura Swap With Liquidity Mining Rewards for Kanaria NFT Holders
RMRK, a team spearheading the development of the RMRK protocol for creating highly composable “NFT legos” using NFTs, collaborated with Karura to support RMRK tokens as collateral and initiate two trading pairs in Karura Swap. Users can now bridge RMRK to Karura with two new RMRK trading pairs, RMRK/kUSD and RMRK/KSM, live on Karura Swap for trustless trading. At launch, RMRK and Acala committed 3,000 RMRK and 10,000 KAR in liquidity mining rewards to qualifying LPs, along with the creation of two reward programs for LPs who provision RMRK, kUSD, or KSM to qualifying pairs on Karura Swap.
At launch, users were able to participate and earn incentives by providing one- or two-sided liquidity during Bootstrap mode, and now that trading is enabled, anyone can provision liquidity to both sides of the pair and become an LP to earn rewards. Bootstrap mode allows Karura to enable trustless trading at a fair market rate by disabling trading temporarily until the pool meets the predetermined liquidity requirements. After completing the bootstrap period, the exchange rate is made public, and Karura enables trading.
For users interested in RMRK listings and incentives:
- To transfer RMRK tokens to Karura, please view the following transfer guide.
- To move RMRK to Karura via Polkawallet, follow the directions here.
- More information for minting kUSD stablecoin is found here.
The Acala team is on track for a successful quarter, with roadmap targets already being achieved in the first four weeks of Q1. The Crowdloan distribution and token launch transfer were major objectives as we moved into the subsequent phases of our launch process. Over the ensuing several weeks, Acala will aim to enable primitive protocols, initiate the bootstrap plan and sequence, and facilitate the EVM+.
We have exciting updates in store!
About Acala
Acala is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform optimized for DeFi and scaling DApps to Polkadot. The blockchain has built-in DeFi protocols for application developers to leverage, including a decentralized stablecoin (Acala Dollar — aUSD), a trustless staking derivative (liquid DOT — LDOT), and a decentralized exchange.
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