The Advantages of Building Dapps Through Astar Network

Astar Network makes a parachain where EVM and WASM smart contracts can co-exist and communicate with each other. It connects the Polkadot ecosystem with layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum and COsmos. Binance Labs and Coinvase Ventures backed the project. It operates on two layers. The first layer is built on Substrate framework and the second is built on Optimistic Virtual Machine for scalability.

Sota Watanabe founded Astar Network in 2019. He is a blockchain pioneer who was featured in Forbes30 under 30 Asia in 2022. He graduated from Keio University in Japan with a degree in Economics.

Till 2021, Astar Network was known as Plasm Network. In January 2022, it was renamed Astar and launched as a multi-chain smart contract platform on Polkadot. The network was developed by Stake Technologies which is based in Singapore and operates from Japan.

How is Astar Different?

Astar is built to become a full-scale multi-chain smart contract platform that supports different layer2 solutions and blockchains. As it is built on Substrate, a web 3.0 building platform, it has benefited from the features like upgradable blockchains, modular architecture, and customizable block execution.

Features of Astar

Operator trading: It has the feature to assign other users as operators. The user can transfer the ownership and tokenize the smart contracts.

Multi-Lockdrop: it permits the user to distribute the tokens across the network. The participants can lock the tokens for a set period and the native tokens are distributed between the token holders. This method encourages the users to take part.

DApps staking and dApp rewards: the developers who contribute to the development of the network are rewarded. There is a division of the reward per block. 50% of the reward is distributed among validators which includes 10% to nominators and 40% to operators or smart contract administrators. The remaining 50% is distributed among validators.

ASTR Tokenisation

ASTR is the native token of Astar Network. It is a governance and staking token. It is used to pay the fees. The holders of the token can take part in making decisions regarding the governance of the network by voting or proposing. The users are also rewarded with ASTR tokens.

The market cap of the token is $457,663,861. The circulating supply of the token is 5,400,141,295 ASTR. The total supply is 8,307,528,083 ASTR. The fully diluted market cap is $704,480,054.

The distribution of the token is as follows:

5% to the team, 10% to the foundation, 5% for marketing purposes. For protocol developments and grant programs, 10% is allocated. DAO is allocated 5%. 10% allocated to early financial backers.20% is for parachain auction and the remaining 5% to auction reserve.

ASTR is available at various exchanges. Some of them are Binance, KuCoin, Kraken, Gate.io, OKX, etc.

How is Astar Network Secured?

ASTR uses the nominated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. It operates on the Polkadot Parachain. It benefits from Polkadot’s security and scalability.

Advantages of Astar Network

Developer Incentives: The design of the Astar network favors the growth of the network. It rewards the participants and builders. It permits developers to earn incentives for building decentralized applications. It also allows users to earn incentives for supporting their favorite projects 

Scalability: Scalability is the major issue of most of the blockchains and they do not scale by design. If they are faster than they would be less secure. There is always a limit to the amount of data stored. This leads to network saturation and the users may face that their transactions are pending for a long period which gives a bad experience to users.

Most of the blockchains opt for bridges which connect independent transactions. But, this lacks the security. The idea of cross-chain connection therefore has mostly to do with copying and pasting a smart contract from one blockchain to another. Astar has changed that by cooperating with the best features from both EVM and WebAssembly Virtual Machines in smart contracts. 

Interoperability: It facilitates interoperability powered by the shared security of Polkadot that allows developers to build smart contracts like never before.

Accounts of Astar Network

Like any other network, Astar accounts have two keys. The private keys and the public keys. The public key is the address of the user’s account that is public or accessible to all. Like the email address that is shared with anyone. While a private key is the access to the user’s account. Anyone can send tokens to the user’s address but that is only accessible by the user as they have the private key. 

Therefore, it is said that it is important to keep the private keys safe. Astar Network supports two virtual machines – Wasm VM and EVM and so it uses two account formats.

Substrate Accounts: Astar is built with Substrate which is a framework to build blockchains and uses Substrate accounts. The underlying public key is used to derive one or more public  addresses in Substrate-based chains that use the underlying public key to derive one or more public addresses. 

In place of using public keys directly, Substrate permits generating multiple addresses which means it allows the generation of the public key pair once and derives different addresses for different Substrate chains.

The private key is a combination of randomly generated numbers which is a cryptographically secure sequence. For human readability, the private key generates a random sequence of words known as seed phrases.

Mr. Pratik chadhokar is an Indian Forex, Cryptocurrencies and Financial Market Advisor and analyst with a background in IT and Financial market Strategist. He specialises in market strategies and technical analysis and has spent over a year as a financial markets contributor and observer. He possesses strong technical analytical skills and is well known for his entertaining and informative analysis of the Financial markets.