Moonbeam

Basics

• Announced on:
• Testnet release: 9-2020
• Mainnet release: 'will launch the Moonbeam network later this year' (30-3-2021)
• Based in:

• From The Defiant (28-4-2020):

"Blockchain infrastructure company PureStake said its building Moonbeam, a smart contract platform which will be compatible with the Ethereum blockchain. Moonbeam would allow developers to transfer existing Ethereum dapps and create new dapps using Ethereum development tools like Truffle and MetaMask.

“Getting traction for a new developer platform is a numbers game,” wrote PureStake founder and CEO Derek Yoo “By providing Ethereum compatibility, we give ourselves access to the largest market of existing blockchain developers.”

Moonbeam is based on Parity Technologies Substrate blockchain development framework, and would be a parachain —similar to a shard— within the Polkadot network. The platform will be released together with the Polkadot network launch."

• Is still not live on mainnet (12-10-2020). "We are currently targeting Q2 2021 for a Moonbeam launch on Polkadot. We will be launching to Kusama later this year, in Q4 2020."
• Moonriver got deployed on Kusama

Technology

• Whitepaper can be found [insert here].
• Code can be viewed here.

Implementations

• Built on: Polkadot and ChainSafe (the bridge to Ethereum, 27-1-2021). Deployed Moonriver on Kusama.
• Programming language used: "Support for Solidity, Vyper, and anything that compiles to EVM bytecode." (5-4-2021).

Transaction Details

• Capacity (TPS):
• Latency:

How it works

• From Dot Pulse (30-10-2021):

"Moonriver [the Kusama deployment of Moonbeam] supports nearly all features of the Ethereum RPC (basically, the node API), it supports the same H160 addresses and, consequently, it has full support for MetaMask, Truffle and all the other Ethereum development tools. You can deploy Ethereum smart contracts to Moonriver with very few changes, and they will work with existing Ethereum wallets and libraries.

Since it’s still a Substrate chain, Moonriver will also support all major Polkadot features like staking, governance or indices (Polkadot’s wallet nickname system). In fact, you can still use Substrate APIs and Polkadot JS to interact with Moonriver."

Scaling

• From Dot Pulse (30-10-2021):

"The Substrate EVM is based on SputnikVM, which is supposed to be faster than Geth. There isn’t much information available for now, so the jury is still out on this one. In practice, right now Moonriver [the Kusama deployment of Moobeam] is operating with a block time of 12 seconds and a 15M gas limit, which is roughly equal to pre-EIP-1559 Ethereum. The network is still fresh and the team is likely playing it slow, but they are promising to increase the gas limit 4x and reducing the block time by 2x, eventually."

Interoperability

• From CoinDesk (30-3-2021):

"Applications that are built on Ethereum can be deployed in parallel onto Moonbeam without having to reconfigure their code."

• ChainSafe builds the bridge (27-1-2021):

"ChainBridge is the a bridge between Ethereum and the Moonbeam parachain on Polkadot that will allow asset transfers between the two independent chains."

Oracle Method

• Chainlink; announced it integrated (17-12-2020), however, only really went live on 1-12-2021.
• Band Protocol; will integrate it (22-12-2020), still talking about integrating it (9-11-2021).
• Razor Network; will integrate it (1-2-2021).
• DIA; will integrate it (19-3-2021).

Their Other Projects

Moonriver (MOVR)

Basics

• The Moonbeam deployment on Kusama.
• From Dot Pulse (30-10-2021):

"The basic analogy we can apply to Moonriver is that it’s an Ethereum emulator on Substrate. This is a major difference with many other EVM chains that propped up in the past few years, as these will usually be simple Geth forks with a few custom changes to consensus (Geth is the primary Ethereum 1.0 node software, basically what defines the Ethereum blockchain as we know it.)

What this means is that Moonriver is a Substrate blockchain that incorporates all user-facing aspects of Ethereum to make it functionally indistinguishable from it. Underneath, though, it’s a very different architecture."

Token allocations

• From Dot Pulse (30-10-2021):

"MOVR, the Moonriver token, has no team or investor allocation. All tokens are either distributed to the community or held as a general reserve for future parachain auctions and liquidity incentives."

Roadmap

• Can be found [Insert link here].

Audits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].

Usage

Projects that use or built on it

• Alliance Block; (5-4-2021)
• AMPnet; (15-12-2020).
• Balancer; Moonbeam is going after a Balancer grant to port it over (3-3-2021).
• Betprotocol; (5-4-2021)
• ChainSafe; (5-4-2021)
• Covalent; will use MoonBeam (30-4-2021).
• Human Protocol; (5-4-2021)
• IDEX (30-3-2021)
• Injective Protocol; (5-4-2021)
• Kilt; (5-4-2021)
• Linear; (5-4-2021)
• Ocean Protocol (30-3-2021)
• Offshift; (5-4-2021)
• Polkastarter; (5-4-2021)
• PolkaCover; (5-4-2021)
• Poolz; (5-4-2021)
• Solarbeam
• SushiSwap; deployed its contracts on it as part of adding support for 5 new chains (4-3-2021).

Team, Funding, Partnerships, etc.

Team

• Full team can be found [here].
• PureStake, a company that builds blockchain infrastructure for proof-of-stake networks.

Funding

• Mechanism Capital lists them in their portfolio as of 15-5-2023.
• Covalent; the firm was part of a $2M round for Covalent (26-3-2021).
• From CoinDesk (30-3-2021):

"Raised $6 million in a funding round led by investment firm CoinFund, and supported by Binance Labs. Coinbase Venture, ParaFi, Fenbushi Capital, IOSG Ventures, Divergence Ventures, Signum Capital and others also participated in the round."