Taken from Acala's Twitter account
Guess which project is gearing up to compete in Polkadot’s parachain slot auctions
The time for Polkadot to start its parachain auctions may come very soon as signals are on that dapp projects are preparing for the parachain auctions.
Few days back, I noticed an ad on the brave browser about Acala inviting users to register for the Acala Crowdloan waitlist.
Acala invites public to register for the Crowdloan Waitlist. Image Source
This means that Polkadot’s DEFI Hub is preparing for Polkadot’s parachain auctions.
Pretty cool!!
Acala is one of the projects expected to win a parachain slot to build on Polkadot
Acala needs to win a parachain slot in Polkadot’s parachain auctions (that’s yet to be announced) to build on Polkadot. However, everyone is pepped about Acala because its twin Kurara is doing great as a DEFI platform after it’s launch in the Kusama Blockchain.
People already expect Acala to be a well functioning DEFI platform for people to engage in activities of availing decentralised loans, providing liquidity, trading, staking in derivatives and earning lucrative APY’s on their deposits of digital assets.
Acala App's testnet can be tried at https://apps.acala.network/
Therefore, there would be a lot of community support for Acala to win the Polkadot parachain slot auctions whenever that begins.
Much awaited event for the Polkadot community is Polkadot’s Parachain slot auction
Whenever Polkadot is ready for dapp projects to go live on it’s Blockchain, there will be an announcement made about the conduction of the first round of Polkadot’s parachain slot auctions.
Here, projects will contest to win a slot in the parachain slot auctions through bidding. The project that bids the highest wins a parachain slot.
The bidding currency for the Polkadot auctions will be in the DOT tokens of course.
Acala has invited its supporters to enroll for the Crowdloan waitlist
Acala, is preparing for competing in Polkadot’s parachain auctions, by inviting it’s community supporters to register for the Acala Crowloan waitlist, which is a prelude before the actual launch of Crowdloan process.
Registered supporters then would be invited to participate in contributing to Acala’s Crowdloan where Acala enthusiasts would lock their DOT tokens into the virtual Crowdloan vault that’s built as a smart contract inside the Polkadot Blockchain.
These DOT tokens will strengthen Acala’s bid for the Polkadot’s parachain slot auctions.
Crowdloan amounts are locked in a smart contract and are not controlled by the Acala team
As mentioned, the lent Dot tokens are stored inside a Crowdloan vault which is a smart contract inside Polkadot Blockchain, so they are not controlled by the Acala team. These lent Dot tokens are crowdloans lent by the community to support and strengthen Acala’s bid for the project to win a parachain slot in Polkadot’s parachain slot auctions.
Rewards for Crowdloan contributors for their DOT contributions
The supporters who contribute DOT as parachain loans to Acala, get rewarded with Acala’s ACA tokens for the DOT they lent while they get their principal DOT tokens back after 2 years automatically by the smart contract, as they are programmed to release the tokens at this specified time period.
This arrangement ensures that ordinary Acala enthusiasts get early access to ACA tokens and Acala’s various financial dapps, which is an advantage as they benefit by being an early adopter of the Acala protocol while also being an early holder of the Acala’s native token ACA.
Therefore, when Acala launches, the early supporters of the protocol will get a fair share of the Acala Network ownership this way with ethical and fair distributions of ACA tokens.
More details about Acala’s Crowdloan waitlist can be read here…
Conclusion
My last article about Acala, talked about Acala team building Acala EVM+, for EMV based dapps to launch in the Acala Network and benefit with exposure to Acala DEFI.
So Acala has taken steps to be compatible with Ethereum too. I have also read that bridges to Bitcoin and Ethereum would be there so one can expect Acala to be interoperable having cross chain interaction capabilities.
Flowchart depiction of Acala's DEFI framework Image Source
Acala project has been supported with backing from prominent venture capital firms - Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital, Polychain Capital, Hypersphere besides other top firms, which only shows that Acala DEFI platform maybe having what it takes to be a good DEFI platform.
Hopefully, we can checkout the Acala platform and see it for what it is when it launches on Polkadot after the project secures a parachain slot after winning Polkadot’s parachain slot auctions.