Acala Ecosystem Update — May 2021

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Acala

4 min readJun 3, 2021

The fifth Web3 Foundation grant, a HyFi partnership with Current, and 18,000+ register for Karura’s Crowdloan Event.

It’s full steam ahead for Acala and Karura, as we’re now days away from the Kurura Crowdloan and Kusama Parachain Auctions, two key events that pave the way for Karura’s launch as the first parachain on Kusama.

With Karura in view, the team has been hard at work growing the Acala ecosystem while establishing new collaborations — most notably a first-of-its-kind partnership with Current.com to deliver a hybrid finance (HyFi) integration to the banking platform’s 3 Million U.S. customers. The announcement was made at Polkadot Decoded during Acala co-founder Bette Chen’s presentation “Composing Next-Gen DApps with DeFi Legos on Acala,” and is exemplary of Acala’s mission to support and nurture open finance with stability, liquidity, and accessibility for all.

In step with these goals, Acala is pleased to join the Advisory Board of GoodFi, a non-profit organization whose mission includes onboarding 100 million new users to DeFi by 2025. In addition, the Acala team received its fifth Web3 Foundation Grant for xTokens, and announced a new initiative with RMRK to tokenize DeFi incentives and add gamification to Karura’s DeFi protocols.

Read on for more details from our May 2021 report.

Acala & Current Announce HyFi Partnership

Current, a leading U.S. fintech company, has partnered with Acala to establish a new category of hybrid finance (HyFi) combining both traditional and decentralized financial applications. This partnership, the first of its kind, will integrate Current’s banking platform with Acala’s DeFi hub to deliver HyFi infrastructure to Current’s three million U.S. customers.

Acala Co-Founder Bette Chen at Polkadot Decoded

On May 19th, the Polkadot community gathered for its annual conference Polkadot Decoded, which featured a presentation from Acala’s co-founder Bette Chen on “Composing Next-Gen DApps with DeFi Legos on Acala.” Watch the video below to learn more about Acala’s Substrate-based, EVM compatible network, and to discover how DApps can leverage a hybrid of composable tech stacks and Acala’s DeFi applications to deliver trustless smart savings accounts, and other categorically different innovations.

Acala Joins GoodFi Advisory Board

Acala is thrilled to join the Advisory Board of GoodFi, a non-profit organization founded to make decentralized finance as easy as possible. With a mission of encouraging 100 million new users to put at least $1 into DeFi by 2025, GoodFi aims to demystify open finance, fund growth research, and develop educational content and awareness for DeFi products.

Acala Team Receives Fifth Web3 Foundation Grant for xTokens

The Acala team has received its fifth Web3 Foundation Grant for xTokens, providing open source cross-chain messaging for all Polkadot and Kusama parachains. The xTokens grant follows the team’s previously awarded grants for the aUSD stablecoin, Acala EVM, LaminarChain, and Reusable Libraries. With the xTokens implementation in place, Acala has enabled a cross-chain ecosystem in which fungible assets can be transferred from parachain to parachain, and between relay chain and parachain, bringing us one step to achieving composability between all chains on Polkadot and Kusama.

Karura collaborates with RMRK

Karura and RMRK have announced a collaboration to combine DeFi applications on Karura with NFT features on Kanaria, a fundraiser for the RMRK Association, which distributes unique NFT eggs that will hatch into rare Kanaria birds with upgradeable traits. The initiative extends Karura-bonuses to existing Kanaria bird owners, specifically anyone participating in Karura’s crowdloan.

Karura Crowdloan Registration Now Open

The Karura crowdloan event is rapidly approaching! The event invites you to contribute KSM in support of Karura, and receive a distribution of Karura rewards at launch. For every KSM locked in the crowdloan, participants will receive 12 or more KAR. After 48 weeks, all original KSM contributed to the crowdloan will be automatically released back to contributors. You can now connect your Polkadot.js extension to our custom crowdloan website to get a head start on the process.

The crowdloan will be announced suddenly with little notice so be sure to register today!

Until next time,

The Acala Team

About Acala

Acala is an all-in-one decentralized finance network offering a blockchain platform secured by Polkadot, as well as a suite of cross-chain financial applications that let users trade, issue self-serviced loans, become liquidity providers, access staking derivatives, and earn high-interest APY on their digital assets. The network is scalable, Ethereum-compatible, and optimized for DeFi.

Acala was founded in Oct 2019, and today has received five Web3 Foundation grants, has backing from Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital, Polychain Capital, Hypersphere and other top firms, and has a distributed team in New Zealand, China, Europe, Brazil, and the United States.

About Karura

Karura is the all-in-one DeFi hub of Kusama. Founded by the Acala Foundation, Karura is a scalable, EVM-compatible network optimized for DeFi. The platform offers a suite of financial applications including: a trustless staking derivative (liquid KSM), a multi-collateralized stablecoin backed by cross-chain assets (kUSD), and an AMM DEX — all with micro gas fees that can be paid in any token.