26 March 2020
KR1 plc
("KR1" or the "Company")
Investment: Acala
Network
KR1 is pleased to announce that the Company has invested a total
of 65,000 USD in the Acala Network
project. KR1 took part in the Acala seed round and will receive a
total of 866,666.67 Acala (“ACA”) tokens at a price of 0.075 USD per ACA token.
The Acala Network is building decentralised finance
infrastructure for the much anticipated Polkadot ecosystem. The
core offering will be a stablecoin, which will be transferable
across different blockchains and collateralised with many digital
assets. A stable digital currency for low-cost borderless value
transfer is a building block for a wide array of open finance
products and creates an ecosystem of business lending with
previously hard to achieve predictable risk.
A secondary offering of the Acala Network will be a liquidity
protocol for staked digital assets. Utilizing Acala’s
to-be-released liquidity protocol, staked Polkadot (“DOT”) tokens
that are earning yield can become liquid and tradable. In the
current blockchain ecosystem, digital assets that are locked as
part of a ‘Proof-of-Stake’ network cannot be traded. Acala improves
this process with a new innovative marketplace of staked assets,
with market forces determining liquidity and risk premia or
discounts.
KR1 took part in the seed round alongside Polychain Capital, P2P
Capital, HashKey, SNZ and other prominent investors.
Ruitao Su, Co-Founder of Acala,
commented: “We are delighted to be working with KR1 and other
partners to develop the DeFi foundation infrastructure for Polkadot
and beyond; together we will grow Acala to its full potential."
KR1 also intends to use a small part of KR1’s DOT allocation 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.
George
McDonaugh, Managing Director & Co-Founder of KR1
commented:
“Stablecoins have become a central pillar in the crypto
ecosystem with Maker’s DAI sparking the $1bn
USD DeFi movement on Ethereum. With the unique
characteristics of the Polkadot ecosystem, a Polkadot native
stablecoin based on Substrate could prove hugely significant in
forming the basis of new financial products and be a catalyst for
Polkadot to thrive. Stablecoins are currently siloed in their
respective blockchains, so a stablecoin that works across any chain
could be a game-changer for any DeFi product and the basis for
rocket fuelling the whole space. The Acala team are highly
technical and perfectly placed to bring this essential financial
layer to market. We are thrilled to be able to support them at this
first stage of their project.”
--ENDS--
For further information please contact:
KR1 PLC
George McDonaugh
+44 (0)16 2467 6716
Simon Nicol
simon@KR1.io
Peterhouse Capital
Limited
(AQSE Corporate Adviser)
Mark Anwyl / Allie Feuerlein
+44 (0)20 7469 0930
Nominis Advisory Ltd
(PR Adviser)
Angus Campbel
pr@KR1.io
About KR1 plc
KR1 is a leading digital asset investment company supporting
early-stage decentralised and open-source blockchain projects.
Founded in 2016 and publicly traded in London (KR1: AQSE Growth Market), 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.