Acala Ecosystem Update — October 2021

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Acala

6 min readNov 2, 2021

The Acala Crowdloan Fast Approaches, Quests Debut To Help Community Prepare and Earn Additional Rewards, Liquid Crowdloan DOT (LCDOT) Offers Ongoing Access to Crowdloaned DOT Liquidity, and Bifrost Launches on Karura Swap With a New Liquidity Mining Program

October has been an exciting month for the Acala team and the ecosystem, since the Polkadot parachain slot auctions have been officially announced by Polkadot to begin on November 11th, 2021. To prepare for the big event, we’ve published a comprehensive checklist for the upcoming Acala Crowdloan, and debuted Acala Quests — a step-by-step game to help the community set up a crowdloan compatible wallet (Polkadot.js extension), which they can soon use in the Acala Crowdloan event to contribute DOT and receive ACA rewards.

For those concerned about a two-year DOT lockup, the team announced Liquid Crowdloan DOT (LCDOT) to give Acala Crowdloan participants the option to maintain ongoing access to their DOT liquidity. In parallel, Bifrost has officially launched on Karura Swap with over 200k BNC in Liquidity Mining Rewards, and Liquid KSM staking and redemption has launched, marking the full delivery of the KSM Liquid Staking on product on Karura.

Read on for our October report.

Countdown to the Acala Crowdloan

With the Polkadot parachain slot auctions in sight, the team spent much of October in preparation for its accompanying event, the Acala Crowdloan. During this event, the community will be invited to help strengthen Acala’s bid in the auction by contributing DOT, all while earning rewards in ACA, the Acala token, which will be distributed after launch.

The Acala Crowdloan marks the last network ownership event before launch, so it’s only natural that the community is counting down to the moment they can participate. For users old and new, Acala has set out to make the experience as easy as possible — while offering some additional rewards along the way.

Review the Acala Crowdloan Checklist

All eyes are peeled for news and updates on the crowdloan, especially the upcoming announcement on the DOT to ACA rewards scheme, but in the meantime, the Acala team has published a step-by-step checklist to ensure that users have the correct wallet (Polkadot.js browser extension) and the minimum amount of DOT required to participate.

In summary, be sure you’ve worked through the following steps before the event begins:

I joined the Acala newsletter.
I installed the Polkadot.js browser extension.
I have a Polkadot.js account.
I know the DOT address that I want to use for the Crowdloan (starts with the number “1”).
I have my private key phrase safely stored and won’t share it with anyone.
I have DOT in my Polkadot.js account.

For further assistance, navigate to Acala Quests.

Earn Rewards with Acala Quests

Additionally, we’ve launched Acala Quests, a gamified experience for learning about the Polkadot ecosystem and the Acala Crowdloan. Acala Quests invites our community of supporters to level up their skills while earning experience points (XP) and bonus rewards. Each quest helps educates users — old and new– on how to create a Crowdloan-compatible web3 wallet (polkadot.js browser extension) and how to become a DOT holder: two requirements that supporters need to satisfy before contributing to the Acala Crowdloan and receiving their share of the Acala network. As an incentive, users that complete ALL of the program’s inaugural quests will receive an extra 2% ACA bonus on their crowdloan contributions, an Acala NFT, and their own referral code, which entitles them to an additional 5% ACA bonus on any referee contributions or an additional 10% ACA bonus by using their own referral code.

For more on Acala Quests and its perks, check out the original blog post, review the guide, and start playing.

Acala Announces Liquid Crowdloan DOT (LCDOT) to Give Polkadot Crowdloan Participants Ongoing Access to their DOT Liquidity.

By participating in the Acala Crowdloan, supporters agree to a two-year lock on their DOT assets, as any contributed DOT is locked in a contract on Polkadot’s Relay Chain and never touched by the parachain teams. While it’s clear that the Polkadot community is eager to support parachain teams through crowdloans, a common concern is the long duration of the lock on their DOT.

After receiving such feedback, the Acala team decided to find a solution and to create a product that could meet the needs and concerns of the community: the Liquid Crowdloan DOT (LCDOT), a derivative that enables Crowdloan participants to stay liquid while contributing to the Acala Crowdloan. With LCDOT, contributors can utilize an unlocked token, representing their DOT contribution to the Acala Crowdloan, in Acala’s DeFi protocols. That means that now, instead of losing access to the underlying DOT liquidity for 2 years, LCDOT holders will be able to collateralize for self-serviced loan in aUSD stablecoin, or trade trustlessly in Acala’s AMM-style DEX.

Read more about the LCDOT and its Transition to Become Fully Trustless.

Bifrost Launches on Karura Swap With Over 200k BNC in Liquidity Mining Rewards

Karura Swap, the AMM-style decentralized exchange on Kusama, has joined forces with Bifrost Finance to introduce its newest trading pair BNC/kUSD, launched on October 19th.

To celebrate the launch, Bifrost and the Acala Foundation have allocated liquidity mining rewards including 200,000 BNC and 25,000 KAR. The two reward pools will be available to BNC/kUSD liquidity providers over the course of 3 months, with an additional 70% “loyalty” bonus available for Karura Swap users that keep their rewards in the pool until the program ends. Read more here or check out the guide to get started on Karura.

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.