KR1 plc - Investment: Karura

KR1 plc - Investment: Karura

PR Newswire

London, June 9

9 June 2021

KR1 PLC

("KR1" or the "Company")

Investment: Karura

KR1 plc (KR1:AQSE), a leading digital asset investment company, is pleased to announce the Company's participation in the Karura crowdloan and upcoming Kusama ("KSM") parachain auction. KR1 contributed a total of 10,000 KSM, equivalent to US$4,169,500 at the time of the contribution, to the Karura crowdloan campaign.

Founded by the Acala Foundation, Karura is a scalable, EVM-compatible blockchain network optimised for decentralised finance services on Kusama. The platform offers a suite of financial applications including a trustless liquid staking solution, a stablecoin backed by cross-chain assets and a decentralised exchange.

The contributed KSM will be time-locked on the Kusama blockchain for a period of 48 weeks and will be returned to the Company following the completion of the respective Karura parachain lease. Upon a successful Karura parachain auction bid, KR1 will receive a to-be-determined amount of Karura ("KAR") tokens in return for supporting the Karura crowdloan campaign. In addition, the Company will also receive a yet-to-be-determined amount of KAR tokens in line with KR1's previous backing of Acala's seed funding round and strategic funding round, all of which will be confirmed in a future announcement.

This method of token distribution involves no direct investment of capital, instead, it is an indirect investment, similar to the Company's previous participations in 'lockdrops', with the opportunity costs being the inaccessibility of the locked KSM funds as well as foregoing any staking yields on the contributed KSM for the time period.

George McDonaugh, Managing Director and Co-Founder of KR1, commented:

"The crowdloans kick-off and initiation of parachain auctions are a historic milestone for Kusama, Polkadot and the wider ecosystem. While delivering bleeding edge technology, the Polkadot and parachain teams are also continuing to innovate in token distribution mechanisms, which will prove to be hugely beneficial for the blockchain community."

Keld van Schreven, Managing Director and Co-Founder of KR1, commented:

"This participation shows our strength of conviction with Bette, Ruitao and the whole Acala team to execute on the vision of Karura. Karura is set to become the primary DeFi hub for the Kusama ecosystem, creating a new platform for innovation and limitless potential for new cross-chain decentralised financial services. This could be the big bang event for cross-chain DeFi."

The Directors of KR1 plc accept responsibility for this announcement.

--ENDS--

For further information please contact:

KR1 PLC George McDonaugh Keld van Schreven Simon Nicol	[phone] [e-mail]
Peterhouse Capital Limited Mark Anwyl Allie Feuerlein	(AQSE Corporate Adviser) [phone]
Nominis Advisory Ltd Angus Campbell	(PR Adviser) [e-mail]

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 on the APX segment of the AQSE Growth Market (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

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation EU 596/2014 as it forms part of retained EU law (as defined in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018).