The Polkadot (DOT) ecosystem is starting to gain traction with the crypto community as it begins to gain traction with the crypto community as the first chains are beginning to come online and integrate with Ethereum(ETH).
After the multi-chain smart contract platform gained the attention of institutional and retail crypto investors, Astar (ASTR), a project based on Polkadot has experienced a period of repeated successes in the month of March.
According to the data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, the price of ASTR has surged 104% reaching a daily high at $0.208 on April 1 with a 20-fold increase in demand, after hitting a low of $0.107 on March 22.
Three reasons for the rally include the completion of a $22 million funding round, the expansion of the Astar ecosystem through protocol launches and partnerships, and an increase in users and total value locked on the Astar network.
The expansion of the Astar ecosystem through protocol launches and partnerships, completion of a $22 million funding round, and a surge in users and total value locked on the Astar network, are three reasons behind the rally.
Successful completion of a $22 million fundraising round
The progress Astar has experienced in 2022 had its foundation laid in the successful completion of a $22 million fundraising round on Jan. 28.
Alameda Research, Polychain, Alchemy Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, and Digital Finance Group were among the participants of the fundraiser, along with multiple angel investors such as Richard Ma, Dr. Gavin Wood, and Keisuke Honda.
The fundraising was conducted after the main-net launch of Astar, on Jan 17 and will be used for providing assistance in developing the Astar ecosystem in order to support both WebAssembly and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), enabling developers to deploy Polkadot native smart contracts along with existing Solidity contracts.
Addition Of New Projects
Astar is expecting the addition of more projects in April though it has already witnessed multiple projects launch on its network since its main net launch.
As part of its agenda to attract new users, the project is calling the month of April “Astar Season” because of its plans to launch at least 15 new projects.
Recently, Astar has also announced a new partnership with a layer-one blockchain created for game developers, Oasys.
The Rise in Network TVL
The addition of new users to the ecosystem is the third factor that provided momentum for Astar. It now has over 100,000 unique wallet addresses.
As per the data from Defi Llama, the TVL on Astar reached an ATH of $1.16 billion on April 1 due to the inflow of new users and the launch of multiple projects on the network.
Astar is now the largest TVL of all the Polkadot parachains and also the eighth-ranked EVM-compatible chain by TVL, as a result of recent surges in it.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/04/02/heres-why-the-astar-astr-price-doubled/