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The Astar (ASTR) price doubles as the network prepares to add 15 new projects in April

Photo of Fry Electronics Team Fry Electronics TeamApril 3, 2022
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The Astar (ASTR) price doubles as the network prepares to add 15 new projects in April

After successfully completing its first parachain auctions, the Polkadot (DOT) ecosystem has started to gain a foothold with the cryptocurrency community as the first chains come online and integrate with Ethereum (ETH).

Astar (ASTR) is one such polkadot-based project that ended the month of March on a hot note after the multi-chain smart contract platform attracted the attention of retail and institutional crypto investors.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of ASTR has surged 104% from a low of $0.107 on March 22 to an intraday high of $0.208 on April 1 as demand for the token hit the 20- has increased fold.

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ASTR/USDT 4 hour chart. Source: TradingView

Three reasons for the rally are the closing of a $22 million funding round, the expansion of the Astar ecosystem through protocol launches and partnerships, and an increase in users and overall value locked into the Astar network.

Institutional investors are stepping in

The development that helped jumpstart Astar’s progress in 2022 was the successful completion of a $22 million fundraising round on January 28th.

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Fundraiser participants included Polychain, Alameda Research, Alchemy Ventures, Crypto.com Capital and Digital Finance Group, as well as several angel investors such as Dr. Gavin Wood, Richard Ma, and Keisuke Honda.

The fundraiser followed Astar’s mainnet launch on January 17th and will be used to support the development of the Astar ecosystem to support both Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and WebAssembly, allowing developers to use existing Solidity contracts as well as native Smart -Can use contracts from Polkadot.

The Astar ecosystem is expanding

In the months since its mainnet launched, Astar has launched several projects on its network and expects to add more in April.

The project refers to the month of April as “Astar Season” as it plans to launch at least 15 new projects on the network to attract new users.

Upcoming launches include decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols like Avault and Alnari Finance, gaming protocol Astar Farms, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) AstridDAO and ADAO.

Astar also recently announced a new partnership with Oasys, a layer-one blockchain designed for game developers.

Related: Web3: Onboarding the Next Billion Users – The Way Forward

Network TVL increases

A third factor driving momentum for Astar has been the influx of new users into the ecosystem, which now boasts more than 100,000 unique wallet addresses.

As a result of the influx of new users and the launch of multiple projects on the network, the total value set for Astar hit a new all-time high of $1.16 billion on April 1, according to data from Defi Llama.

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Total blocked on the Astar network. Source: Defi Llama

Recent growth has given Astar the largest TVL of any Polkadot Parachain, helping to become TVL’s eighth EVM-compatible chain.

The views and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should do your own research when making a decision.