🐟 Neemo Finance plans to develop nsASTR (Neemo Staked ASTR), an LST token for ASTR, and launch it on the Astar EVM, with future implementations on other L2 chains.

👉 Learn more about Neemo Finance here: 

🙌 @neemofinance joins Astars dApp staking!

🐟 Neemo Finance plans to develop nsASTR (Neemo Staked ASTR), an LST token for ASTR, and launch it on the Astar EVM, with future implementations on other L2 chains.

👉 Learn more about Neemo Finance here: https://forum.astar.network/t/neemo-finance-ucg-application-grant/7061 

How to Add Astar Network to MetaMask

## What Is Astar (ASTR)?

Astar Network helps developers build decentralized applications ([dApps](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-applications-dapps)) and [layer 2](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/layer-2) solutions by providing interoperable [web 3.0](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/web-3-0) infrastructure, financial incentives, incubation programmes and technical support. It seeks to provide the best solution for all developers by supporting EVM and making a parachain where EVM and WASM smart contracts can co-exist and communicate with each other.

Astar connects the [Polkadot](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/polkadot-new/) ecosystem with [layer 1 blockchains](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/layer-1-blockchain) like [Ethereum](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/) and [Cosmos](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cosmos/). It's a Polkadot Parachain, and was designed as a multi-chain Polkadot dApp hub with support for [DeFi](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/defi), [NFTs](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/non-fungible-token), [DAOs](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-autonomous-organizations-dao), where developers can move beyond infrastructure and focus more on application development. 

The project, which is backed by Binance Labs and Coinbase Ventures, operates on two layers: the first layer is built on the [Substrate](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/substrate) framework, and the second is built using OVM or Optimistic Virtual Machine, for scalability. 


## Who Are the Founders of Astar?

The Astar Network was founded in 2019 by [Sota Watanabe](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sota-watanabe-b962b3110/), a blockchain pioneer who featured in Forbes30 Under 30 Asia in 2022. 

He has a degree in economics from Keio University in Japan. Throughout his career Watanabe has worked as a marketing specialist at Chronicled, at an IT-company in San Francisco, and has founded several companies in addition to those listed above, including Next Web Capital, an investment firm that supports entrepreneurs and their crypto startups.

The Astar Network was known as Plasm Network until 2021, at which point it rebranded to Astar and then launched as a multi-chain smart contract platform on Polkadot in January 2022. 

Astar was developed by Stake Technologies, which is headquartered in Singapore and operates from Japan. Soto Watanabe, Astar’s founder, is also CEO of Stake Technologies.  


## What Makes Astar (ASTR) Unique?

The goal of the Astar project is to become a full-scale multi-chain [smart contract](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/smart-contract) platform that supports various [layer 2](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/layer-2) solutions, blockchains and virtual machines. 

The network is built on Parity [Substrate](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/substrate) - a [web 3.0](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/web-3-0) blockchain-building platform. Networks like Astar that build on Substrate benefit from features like upgradable blockchains, modular architecture, customizable block execution logic, and hot-swappable consensus. In other words, it's a framework built specifically for quick and easy blockchain development.

In addition to the Substrate modules, Astar offers features such as:

Operator trading: a mechanism for buying and selling [dApps](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-applications-dapps) that allows you to tokenize smart contracts, transfer ownership to other users, or assign other users as operators.

Multi-Lockdrop: a modified Lockdrop which lets you distribute tokens across a network. Participants lock tokens from other blockchains for a pre-set time period, and native tokens are distributed between token holders over time. This method encourages users to participate in the life of the network. 

DApps staking & dApp rewards: Astar’s monetization model centers on a reward system for dApp developers who contribute to the growth of the ecosystem and add value to Astar Network. There’s a division of the reward per block, where 50% of the reward is distributed among developers of [dApps](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-applications-dapps) (10% to nominators and 40% to operators aka smart contract administrators), and the other 50% is distributed among validators. This instrument encourages nominators to stake on smart contracts, which in turn increases the value of the ASTR token.


### Related Pages:

Read about [Polkadot (DOT)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/polkadot-new/) and [Kusama (KSM)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/kusama/).

What are decentralized applications (dApps)? Learn more with the [CMC glossary](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-applications-dapps).

Read our step-by-step [guide](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/how-to-add-astar-network-to-metamask) on how to add Astar Network to MetaMask.

New to crypto? Check out [CoinMarketCap's educational portal](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria) to get the latest news and insights.


## How Many Astar (ASTR) Coins Are There in Circulation?

The network's native token, ASTR, operates as a utility token, a governance token and a staking token. Users can use ASTR to pay transaction fees, participate in the governance of the platform (via voting on or proposing referenda), and stake tokens for consensus and receive rewards. 

It has a total supply of 7,000,000,000 $ASTR with a circulating supply of 4,487,130,325 $ASTR, as of April 2023. The distribution of tokens is as follows:

30% to users and early supporters;

5% to the team;

10% to foundation;

5% for marketing purposes;

10% to protocol developments and grant programs;

5% to the on-chain treasury (DAO);

10% to early financial backers;

20% to parachain auction;

5% to auctions reserve.


## How Is the Astar Network Secured?

ASTR was built using a nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) consensus mechanism, and operates as a Polkadot Parachain. It therefore benefits from Polkadot’s scalability and security through Polkadot's segmented design and shared security umbrella. 


## Where Can You Buy Astar (ASTR)?

Astar (ASTR) can be purchased on [Binance](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/binance/), [KuCoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/kucoin/), [Kraken](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/kraken/), [Gate.io](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/gate-io/), [OKX](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/okx/), [Huobi](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/huobi/), [Crypto.com Exchange](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/crypto-com-exchange/), [BKEX](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bkex/), [CoinEx](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/coinex/), [MEXC](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/mxc/), [Bitbank](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitbank/), [WhiteBIT](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/whitebit/), [XT.COM](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/xt/), [BigONE](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bigone/), [BingX](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bingx/), [CoinW](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/coinw/), [Hotbit](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/hotbit/) and [ZT](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/zt/).

Want to keep track of ASTR prices live? Download the [CMC mobile app](https://coinmarketcap.com/mobile/).


Binance

Astar

Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain on Polkadot. Moonbeam makes it easy to use popular Ethereum developer tools to build or redeploy Solidity projects in a Substrate-based environment.

Moonbeam is much more than just an EVM implementation: it’s a highly specialized parachain that mirrors Ethereum’s Web3 RPC, accounts, keys, subscriptions, logs, and more. The Moonbeam platform extends the base Ethereum feature set with additional features such as on-chain governance, staking, and cross-chain integrations.

Moonbeam’s Ethereum compatibility is unmatched:

Minimal Changes: developers can use existing Solidity smart contracts right away, with no need to rewrite or reconfigure

Use Existing Developer Tools: connect popular tools like MetaMask, Hardhat, Waffle, Remix, and Truffle via a complete set of Web3 RPC endpoints. Use well-known Javascript libraries such as Web3.Js or Ethers.Js.

Unified Accounts, Addresses, and Signatures: use your existing Ethereum H160 accounts & ECDSA signatures to interact with Moonbeam

Tap into the Most Integrations on Polkadot: use existing oracles, bridges, wallets, and other tools that are already building on Moonbeam

Moonbeam provides integration and connectivity between Polkadot Parachains as well as with other chains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin via bridges. Moonbeam was started in 2019 by Derek Yoo of Pure Stake.

Moonbeam

Acala Token

Immutable positions itself as the first layer-two scaling solution for NFTs on Ethereum. According to Immutable, its blockchain does away with Ethereum’s limitations like low scalability, a poor user experience, illiquidity, and a slow developer experience. Instead, users benefit from instant trading and massive scalability while enjoying zero gas fees for minting and trading NFTs without compromising user or asset security.

Thanks to this technology, users will be able to create and distribute assets like ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens on a massive scale. Chris Clay, the game Director of Gods Unchained, a project already building on Immutable, stated that Immutable allows Gods Unchained to implement a new meta-system that was previously impossible. In this fashion, Immutable aims to create a world-class experience for users and developers alike.

Immutable

Optimism (OP) is a layer-two blockchain on top of Ethereum. Optimism benefits from the security of the Ethereum mainnet and helps scale the Ethereum ecosystem by using optimistic rollups. That means transactions are trustlessly recorded on Optimism but ultimately secured on Ethereum.

Optimism is one of the biggest scaling solutions for Ethereum with over $500 million in TVL. It is home to 97 protocols, the biggest being Synthetix (SNX), a derivatives exchange, Uniswap (UNI), a DEX, and Velodrome (VELO), an AMM. Users can begin their journey on Optimism by adding the chain on their Metamask and bridging tokens like ETH to the L2. On May 31, 2022, Optimism conducted a highly anticipated airdrop of its OP token.

Optimism

Sui is a groundbreaking layer-1 blockchain platform designed to support the needs of global adoption by offering a secure, powerful, and scalable development platform. At its core, Sui leverages a novel object-centric data model and the secure Move programming language to address inefficiencies prevalent in existing blockchain architectures.

On top of strong technical foundations, Sui prioritizes user experience by eliminating barriers commonly associated with blockchain interactions. Through innovations like zkLogin, sponsored transactions, and programmable transaction blocks, Sui creates a higher standard for user experience within Web3 by ensuring applications are accessible and user-friendly.

Aptos is a Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain that employs a novel smart contract programming language called Move, a Rust-based programming language that was independently developed by Meta (formerly Facebook)’s Diem blockchain engineers.

Aptos’s vision is a blockchain that brings mainstream adoption to web3 and empowers an ecosystem of DApps to solve real-world user problems.

The PoS blockchain can achieve a theoretical transaction throughput of over 150,000 transactions per second (tps) through parallel execution.

In March 2022, Aptos raised $200 million in a seed round led by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Other crypto heavyweights like Tiger Global and Multicoin Capital took part in the funding round. Fast forward to July, the startup raised another $200 million in a Series A round with participation from Dragonfly, Apollo Global, Franklin Templeton, Animoca, Jump Crypto and others.

Two months later, Binance Labs made a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount in Aptos.

On Oct. 18, 2022, Aptos announced the mainnet launch, while the Aptos genesis occurred on Oct. 12, 2022.

Aptos

Mina Protocol is a minimal “succinct blockchain” built to curtail computational requirements in order to run DApps more efficiently. Mina has been described as the world’s lightest blockchain since its size is designed to remain constant despite growth in usage. Furthermore, it remains balanced in terms of security and decentralization. The project was rebranded from Coda Protocol to Mina in October 2020.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Mina Protocol.

The Mina network has a size of only 22 KB, which is miniscule when compared to Bitcoin’s 300 GB blockchain.

Mina

NEAR Protocol is a layer-one blockchain that was designed as a community-run cloud computing platform and that eliminates some of the limitations that have been bogging competing blockchains, such as low transaction speeds, low throughput and poor interoperability. This provides the ideal environment for DApps and creates a developer and user-friendly platform. For instance, NEAR uses human-readable account names, unlike the cryptographic wallet addresses common to Ethereum. NEAR also introduces unique solutions to scaling problems and has its own consensus mechanism called “Doomslug.”

NEAR Protocol is being built by the NEAR Collective, its community that is updating the initial code and releasing updates to the ecosystem. Its declared goal is to build a platform that is “secure enough to manage high value assets like money or identity and performant enough to make them useful for everyday people.”

Flux, a protocol that allows developers to create markets based on assets, commodities, real-world events, and Mintbase, an NFT minting platform are examples of projects being built on NEAR Protocol.

NEAR Protocol

Oasis is the pioneering layer 1 blockchain designed to enable scalability and confidential compute. Oasis is home to Sapphire, the first confidential EVM that empowers Web3 and Decentralized AI developers to build dApps with Smart Privacy natively on Oasis or other EVM-based chains.

ROSE is the native token of the Oasis Network used for gas fees, staking, delegation and governance. With a unique layered architecture, Oasis presents the optimal building and execution environment for DeFi, AI, GameFi, NFTs, the metaverse, data tokenization and DAO governance. Oasis also has native support for rollups at the consensus layer.

Oasis

Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer-two (L2) scaling solution. It uses optimistic rollups to achieve its goal of improving speed, scalability and cost-efficiency on Ethereum. Arbitrum benefits from the security and compatibility of Ethereum. Another benefit is the higher throughput and lower fees compared to Ethereum. That is made possible thanks to moving most of the computation and storage load off-chain.

Arbitrum’s native token is called ARB and is used for governance. Offchain Labs, the developers behind Arbitrum, announced the shift to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) structure — the Arbitrum DAO. ARB holders can vote on proposals that affect the features, protocol upgrades, funds allocation and election of a Security Council.

Arbitrum has an ambitious roadmap for 2023, which includes: Launching its own layer-three solution called Orbit; Enabling developers to deploy programs written in popular programming languages like Rust, C++, and more using Stylus; Expanding its validator set to include more independent institutional validators; Moving its protocol to layer two with Arbitrum One.

On March 16, 2023,  Arbitrum announced their highly anticipated airdrop of ARB. The token will be airdropped to early users and DAOs building on Arbitrum, with 12.75% of the total supply to be distributed. Recipients were rewarded on a point-based system depending on their interaction with the Arbitrum network until a cutoff date of March 1, 2023. The token generation event is on March 23, 2023.

Arbitrum

Ethereum-based DYDX ($ethDYDX) is a governance token that allows the dYdX community to truly govern the dYdX Layer 2 Protocol built on Ethereum ("dYdX v3"). ethDYDX is currently undergoing a migration from Ethereum to the dYdX Chain. More information is available here. If you want to migrate ethDYDX to dYdX Chain DYDX, to enable staking, security and governance of the dYdX Chain you can follow the how-to-bridge guide here.

If you want to read about the new token utility for dYdX Chain DYDX you can read the blog here

ethDYDX (dYdX) is the governance token for the layer 2 protocol built on Ethereum. By enabling shared control of dYdX v3, ethDYDX allows traders, liquidity providers, and partners of dYdX to work collectively towards an enhanced dYdX v3.

Built on StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine, layer 2 is used for trading of cross-margined perpetuals on the platform. The scaling solution allows dYdX to increase transaction speed, eliminate gas costs, reduce trading fees and lower​​ minimum trade sizes on the protocol.

A total of 1,000,000,000 ethDYDX have been minted, and started to become accessible over five (5) years, on August 3rd, 2021, at 15:00:00 UTC.

dYdX (ethDYDX)

The Graph is an indexing protocol for querying data for networks like Ethereum and IPFS, powering many applications in both DeFi and the broader Web3 ecosystem. Anyone can build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, that applications can query using GraphQL to retrieve blockchain data. There is a hosted service in production that makes it easy for developers to get started building on The Graph and the decentralized network will be launching later this year. The Graph currently supports indexing data from Ethereum, IPFS and POA, with more networks coming soon.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of The Graph.

To date, over3,000 subgraphs have been deployed by thousands of developers, for DApps like Uniswap, Synthetix, Aragon, AAVE, Gnosis, Balancer, Livepeer, DAOstack, Decentraland and many others. The Graph usage has been growing at over 50% MoM and hit over 7 billion queries during the month of September 2020.

The Graph has a global community, including over 200 Indexer Nodes in the testnet and more than 2,000 Curators in the Curator Program as of October 2020. To fund network development, The Graph raised funds from community members, strategic VCs and influential individuals in the blockchain community including Coinbase Ventures, DCG, Framework, ParaFi Capital, CoinFund, DTC, Multicoin, Reciprocal Ventures, SPC, Tally Capital and others. The Graph Foundation also successfully completed a public GRT Sale with participation from 99 countries (not including the U.S.). To date as of November 2020, The Graph has raised ~$25M.

The Graph

SingularityNET is a blockchain-powered platform that allows anybody to easily "create, share, and monetize" AI services, thanks to its globally-accessible AI marketplace.

Through the SingularityNET marketplace, users can browse, test and purchase a huge variety of AI services using the platform’s native utility token — AGIX. Moreover, the marketplace represents an outlet AI developers can use to publish and sell their AI tools, and easily track their performance.

With the benefits of LLMs and generative AI are increasingly exciting, their limitations are also becoming increasingly apparent. The convergence of structured knowledge with neural networks is emerging as the key to overcoming their shortcomings.

Uniquely positioned at the heart of this convergence, SingularityNET will prioritize the integration of Knowledge Graphs (KGs) and comprehensive Neural Symbolic tools for LLMs, with the goal of empowering developers to create the next generation of AI systems on the SingularityNET Platform.

SingularityNET is strategically positioned to become the Knowledge Layer of the Internet, leading the evolution of the emerging AI landscape while also laying the foundations for the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) of tomorrow.

The team behind SingularityNET pioneered the development of an AI known as Sophia, which is described as the "world's most expressive robot". SingularityNET’s goal is to enable Sophia to be able to fully understand human language, and continue developing “OpenCog” — an AI framework that is hoped to eventually achieve a state known as “advanced general intelligence,” i.e. human-level artificial intelligence (or beyond).

The platform was first announced in 2017 and completed an initial coin offering (ICO) in December the same year, raising $36 million in just one minute.

SingularityNET

Celestia

Flow

Lido DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) which provides staking infrastructure for multiple blockchain networks.

Most notably, the platform provides a liquid staking solution for Ethereum, allowing users to stake their ETH and receive stETH (Lido staked ETH) tokens in exchange, which represent the user's staked ETH and staking rewards.

Lido DAO is secured by a mix of decentralized governance, audited code and smart contracts. The Lido protocol runs on Ethereum with help from smart contracts that process user deposits and distribute staking rewards, among other functions. Several third-party security firms have audited Lido’s smart contracts in order to identify and address potential vulnerabilities.

The platform’s native token is LDO - which also serves as the governance token for Lido DAO. Holders can participate in governance proposals and vote on key decisions such as board adjustments, new integrations and platform updates. LDO holders have the right to determine the development and operation of the platform.

Lido currently supports staking for Ethereum and Polygon only with the recent sunsetting of Solana.

Lido DAO

Osmosis (OSMO) is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for Cosmos, an ecosystem of sovereign, interoperable blockchains all connected trustlessly over IBC, the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol. Osmosis also offers non-IBC assets bridged from the Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems. Originally based on Balancer-style pools, Osmosis is moving to a more sustainable concentrated liquidity model that provides a superior trading and liquidity provision experience.

As an appchain DEX, Osmosis has greater control over the full blockchain stack than DEXs that must follow the code of a parent chain. This fine-grained control has enabled, for example, the development of Superfluid Staking, an improvement to Proof-of-Stake security. Superfluid staking allows the underlying OSMO in an LP position to add to chain security and earn staking rewards for doing so. The customizability of appchains also allows for the development of a transaction mempool shielded with threshold encryption, which will greatly reduce harmful MEV on Osmosis.

Osmosis's vision is to build a cross-chain native DEX and trading suite that connects all chains over IBC, including Ethereum and Bitcoin. To build out the trading functionalities, Osmosis has invited external developers to create a bespoke DEX ecosystem that includes lending, credit, margin, fiat on-ramps, Defi strategy vaults, NFTs, stablecoins, and more – all the functionalities of a centralized exchange and more, plus the trust-minimization of decentralized finance.

Osmosis

Injective (INJ) is a blockchain built for finance. It is an open, interoperable layer-one blockchain powering next-generation DeFi applications, including decentralized spot and derivatives exchanges, prediction markets, lending protocols, and more.

Injective uniquely provides powerful core financial infrastructure primitives that applications can leverage, including a fully decentralized MEV-resistant on-chain orderbook. In addition, all forms of financial markets such as spot, perpetual, futures and options are fully on-chain. The decentralized cross-chain bridging infrastructure is compatible with Ethereum, IBC-enabled blockchains, and non EVM chains such as Solana.

Injective also provides a next-generation, highly interoperable smart contract platform based on CosmWasm, with advanced interchain capabilities. Injective is custom built with the Cosmos SDK and utilizes Tendermint-based Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, providing instant transaction finality with the ability to sustain lightning-fast performance (25,000+ TPS).

The Injective ecosystem includes 100+ projects and over 150,000 community members globally. Injective is backed by a group of prominent investors such as Binance, Pantera Capital, Jump Crypto and Mark Cuban.

Injective

In a nutshell, Cosmos bills itself as a project that solves some of the “hardest problems” facing the blockchain industry. It aims to offer an antidote to “slow, expensive, unscalable and environmentally harmful” proof-of-work protocols, like those used by Bitcoin, by offering an ecosystem of connected blockchains.

The project’s other goals include making blockchain technology less complex and difficult for developers thanks to a modular framework that demystifies decentralized apps. Last but not least, an Interblockchain Communication protocol makes it easier for blockchain networks to communicate with each other — preventing fragmentation in the industry.

Cosmos’ origins can be dated back to 2014, when Tendermint, a core contributor to the network, was founded. In 2016, a white paper for Cosmos was published — and a token sale was held the following year. ATOM tokens are earned through a hybrid proof-of-stake algorithm, and they help to keep the Cosmos Hub, the project’s flagship blockchain, secure. This cryptocurrency also has a role in the network’s governance.