Two-and-half-year-olds aren’t expected to do much in real life, but that isn’t the case in the crypto sector. In fact, a project under development for 2.5 years is now making headlines across the industry after its ‘rags to riches’ story ended with a lucrative strategic investment round.<\/p>\n
Having won in one of the Polkadot parachain slot auctions back in 2021, Astar Network enjoyed its mainnet debut on 17 January, 2022. Now, the project has announced<\/a> a $22 million strategic fundraiser led by Polychain. Other investors included<\/a> Alameda Research, Crypto.com Capital, and Polkadot founder Gavin Wood.<\/p>\n In its press release<\/a>, the Astar Network team also shared plans to connect L1 chains and several smart contract virtual machines. It reported<\/a>,<\/p>\n “Currently, 2 Ethereum bridges are live and 1 Cosmos bridge is under heavy development. We will connect all major chains by Q4 this year.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is one feature that Astar has stressed on, to stand out from the pack. The dApp hub supports<\/a> Solidity contracts and Polkadot native smart contracts, as well as both Ethereum Virtual Machine [EVM] bridges and non-EVM L1 bridges.<\/p>\n In essence, the endgame is interoperability.<\/p>\n Furthermore, as if Astar didn’t have enough reason to celebrate, the project announced a DeFi milestone. As of 29 January, Astar reached $400 million in total value locked [TVL].<\/p>\n Astar's TVL just hit $400,000,000 today! And, more than 16,500 token holders have locked $ASTR<\/a>!! <\/p>\n Go to our portal and check the status!https:\/\/t.co\/s2QRcJMc3H<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/EOgoHNkUPE<\/a><\/p>\n — Astar Network (@AstarNetwork) January 29, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n