Moonbeam’s interoperability and compatibility will drive the next wave of application development and user growth

This week marks a momentous time with Moonbeam’s Kusama parachain Moonriver winning one of the first parachain auction slots, kicking application and user growth into the next gear. CoinFund has been an early supporter of the network, having led Moonbeam’s $6MM capital raise earlier this year. We also recently contributed KSM towards the Kusama parachain auctions for Moonriver to secure its Kusama parachain slot ahead of Moonbeam which will be doing the same later this year on Polkadot. We are thrilled to continue to support Moonbeam and excited for this next phase of growth.

The Polkadot ecosystem is one of the fastest growing networks in terms of active developers and new projects in the entire blockchain space. In many ways, Polkadot mirrors where Ethereum was in 2016/2017, when it was still building out key infrastructure and had yet to find the product market fit it now has with DeFi, NFTs, and elsewhere. At this stage, the root structures within Polkadot and Kusama are being formed that will enable the next stage of growth and ultimately become the building blocks for the future of the network. Moonbeam is one of those key pieces for a variety of reasons. At its core, Moonbeam’s Ethereum compatible architecture will make it the easiest and most enticing place for blockchain developers to build attractive user facing applications. Developers will be able to leverage the speed, finality, transaction throughput, low fees, and interoperability of Polkadot while at the same time will have the ability to deploy without re-engineering their codebase. This in turn will allow Moonbeam to grow in tandem with both the Ethereum AND Polkadot ecosystems.

The key innovation of Polkadot is in its structure as a Layer 0 network, connecting various purpose-built blockchains (parachains) via its relay chain¹. Its Substrate development framework allows projects to build a variety of different blockchains to meet different use cases, all while still having interoperability with other parachains connected through the relay chain. Customization and interoperability are at the core of Polkadot, while simultaneously constructed for fast finality, low fees, and decentralization.

The Moonbeam parachain will live at the heart of the Polkadot relay chain (and Moonriver within Kusama) because of its exceptional technology architecture, product market fit, and team. At a high level, Moonbeam is building a general purpose smart contract parachain. However, their key differentiation compared with other general purpose smart contracting parachains is their focus on EVM compatibility. Through their programming framework and Substrate’s Frontier pallet (which Moonbeam helped implement), Moonbeam will be the go-to blockchain for all Ethereum based applications looking to either move to, or expand to, Polkadot.

Many Ethereum applications are actively searching for viable scaling solutions. Potential options include Optimistic and ZK rollups, side chains, EVM compatible base layers, and others. I believe Moonbeam has the opportunity to be the best such solution by leveraging the highest level of EVM compatibility in a smart contract platform combined with the benefit of interoperability with all other parachains and applications that will live on top of the Polkadot and Kusama networks. This is a unique advantage compared to other Ethereum compatible networks in that it has broad, built-in, network effects and composability across a large network from inception. Further, Ethereum users will be able to easily access applications built on Moonbeam, doing so via Ethereum addresses, using familiar wallets such as MetaMask. To-date, a deep pipeline of leading projects have committed to deploying to Moonbeam including Sushiswap, The Graph, Ceramic Network, API3, Biconomy, Injective Protocol, and many others, all committing before parachains had even launched. A number of base layer blockchains promise the next frontier of technology but suffer from a lack of go-to-market success in convincing developers to build on their network. Ethereum has incredible network effects and has maintained its pole position for that reason, despite growing pains in its transition to increased scalability with ETH2. Moonbeam’s Ethereum compatible parachain architecture makes it uniquely positioned to benefit from the tail winds of growth in the Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems, working with Ethereum network effects not against it. Beyond its ability to attract existing Ethereum applications as part of a multi-chain deployment strategy, for projects starting on Polkadot, Moonbeam is a simple choice as the easiest parachain to deploy on and then be able to seamlessly deploy in parallel on Ethereum at a later date, synergistically driving activity towards Ethereum as well. Just as important as the technology, the team behind it, led by Derek Yoo, has deep experience executing and scaling organizations, having previously built Fuze, a $150MM ARR company with a 700 person team.

Moonbeam’s architecture leverages a unique combination of advanced developer tooling, seamless Ethereum compatibility, a familiar but upgraded user experience, and interoperability throughout the Polkadot ecosystem. Moonriver winning one of the first parachain auction slots is the result of non-stop building by the Moonbeam team and the support of their amazing community to get to this point. Moonriver finalizing its deployment on Kusama and going live is nonetheless very much just the beginning of the Moonbeam story. I look forward to the game changing applications and use cases that will be possible within this network and all that is to come!

Endnotes

1. Kusama, Polkadot’s sister network, is also a Layer 0 network and was built as the canary network for Polkadot development. All network upgrades will be shipped on Kusama first, and after ensuring security and robustness in Kusama’s live economic environment, the code upgrades will be shipped on Polkadot. Similarly, Moonriver, Moonbeam’s sister parachain on Kusama, will serve the same beta network function as Kusama does for Polkadot but at the parachain level.

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