KR1 plc - Investment Update: Acala Network
PR Newswire
London, August 28
28 August 2020
KR1 plc
("KR1" or the "Company")
Investment Update: Acala Network
KR1 plc (KR1:AQSE), a leading digital asset investment company, is pleased to announce that Acala Network ("Acala" or "ACA"), a portfolio project of KR1 and one of the most prominent projects building infrastructure on Polkadot, has completed a successful US$7 million 'Series A' funding round led by Pantera Capital at a fully-diluted network valuation of US$65 million. The funding round included participation from previous backers, such as Polychain and Hypersphere, as well as new backers, including Coinfund and Zee Prime Capital amongst others.
KR1 is also pleased to announce the Company's participation in the recent funding round, investing a further US$100,000 into Acala in exchange for 153,846.15 ACA tokens at a price of US$0.65 per token. This investment comes in addition to KR1's seed round participation, announced earlier this year. Across both funding rounds, the Company now holds a total of 1,020,512.82 ACA, which represent an interest of approximately 1.02% in the Acala Network.
The Acala Network is a cross-chain finance hub for the Polkadot ecosystem and beyond, offering a suite of financial primitives: a multi-collateralized stablecoin backed by cross-chain assets like Bitcoin ("BTC"), a trustless staking derivative and a decentralized exchange to unleash liquidity and power financial innovations. As such, Acala's current testnet has become one of the most prominent and active platforms in the ecosystem, with approximately 14,500 new accounts and 142,000 meaningful transactions during a 3-week testnet campaign. There are many other projects also integrating with Acala or building on top of Acala's products.
As previously announced, KR1 also intends to use a small part of KR1's Polkadot ("DOT") position to support the Acala Network, which might require locking up some DOT tokens for a certain period of time to receive additional ACA tokens. This happens by an auction process called a 'Parachain Auction', which is unique to the Polkadot ecosystem. Projects bid for limited amounts of Polkadot parachain slots that facilitate cross-chain transactions. Acala Network is expected to initiate its parachain campaign on Polkadot, as well as on Kusama, in the near future.
George McDonaugh, Managing Director and Co-Founder of KR1, commented:
"We're very excited about the next part of Acala's journey. The progress the team has made over the past months is extraordinary and they continue to deliver groundbreaking technology at a rapid pace. Their latest successful funding round is testament to this hard work. Acala's stablecoin, staking derivative and exchange products are laying the foundations for the emerging Polkadot DeFi ecosystem and we are going to see them gain evermore traction as Polkadot evolves."
For further information please contact:
| KR1 PLC George McDonaugh Keld van Schreven Simon Nicol | +44 (0)16 2467 6716 simon@KR1.io |
| Peterhouse Capital Limited Mark Anwyl Allie Feuerlein | (AQSE Corporate Adviser) +44 (0)20 7469 0930 |
| Nominis Advisory Ltd Angus Campbell | (PR Adviser) pr@KR1.io |
About KR1 plc
KR1 is a leading digital asset investment company supporting early-stage decentralised and open-source blockchain and DeFi projects. Founded in 2016 and publicly traded in London (KR1:AQSE), KR1 has built a notable reputation for generating significant returns by investing in many key projects that are designed to power the decentralised platforms and protocols that are emerging to form new internet infrastructures.
www.KR1.io
Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) Disclosure
The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014. Upon the publication of this announcement via a Regulatory Information Service, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.
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