Just under a year ago, Acala was founded to build a DeFi infrastructure for Polkadot’s multi-chain ecosystem. Acala has delivered a suite of financial primitives — a decentralized stablecoin, a staking derivative, and a decentralized exchange — poised to be the DeFi hub of Polkadot to power a new wave of financial innovation.
Now Acala is one of the most prominent and active platforms in Polkadot ecosystem, with approximately 14,500 new accounts, 142,000 meaningful transactions, and $52 million locked total value during a 3-week testnet campaign, and 30 ecosystem collaborators integrating and building with Acala. While this indicates product-market fit and community engagement, we’re more thrilled with what comes next after launching Acala mainnet on Kusama and Polkadot.
Today we are delighted to announce a new round of backers led by Pantera, with 1confirmation, Arrington XRP Capital, ParaFi Capital, CoinFund, DCG, Spartan Group, Zee Prime Capital and Divergence Ventures, new strategic partners Altonomy and CMS Holdings, and with Hypersphere, Polychain, KR1 and SNZ reinforcing their previous support.
“Pantera is really excited to be backing Acala and to support them through their next chapter of development and growth. We have been early and large investors in Polkadot and are confident that Acala will become the DeFi hub for the entire ecosystem. The company will bring financial stability, liquidity, and accessibility, enabling a mainstream audience for financial freedom.” — Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital
“At ParaFi, we envision a constellation of DeFi ecosystems spanning multiple chains and believe that would be a win-win for the broader crypto industry. Acala is our first DeFi investment in Polkadot, and one of our first outside Ethereum. We are encouraged by the pace of development and innovation by Acala and are excited to join the team in their journey to become the primary DeFi hub of the Polkadot ecosystem.” — Santiago Roel Santos, Partner at ParaFi Capital
“Acala’s team executes at a breakneck pace, innovating on the learnings of decentralized finance. Acala is built from the ground up for open finance, making core building blocks like exchange, derivatives and stable coins first-class citizens in their layer one blockchain. Hypersphere couldn’t be happier to follow-on in Acala’s Series A and continue to support the team as ACA prepares for their first initial parachain offering.” — Jack Platts, Partner, Hypersphere Ventures
This round of backers and strategic partners will help Acala’s next chapter of development and growth: launching the Acala parachain as a DeFi hub on Kusama and Polkadot, solidifying adoption of the core protocols, and empowering more DeFi Dapps to deploy on Acala. Together we can deliver financial stability, liquidity, and accessibility to more people around the world.
