Acala and Manta help launch a $250M fund to support aUSD adoption

• The aUSD Ecosystem Fund brings together several Polkadot parachains, including Manta Network and Acala.

• Together, the projects seek to support early-stage startups promoting the adoption of Pollkadot’s native stablecoin, Acala USD

• aUSD, the main product on the Acala chain, is a decentralised, multi-collateral stablecoin backed by crypto.

Manta Network, Acala and seven other Polkadot parachain have teamed up to launch a $250 million ecosystem fund targeted at supporting stablecoin use on Polkadot and Kusama parachains.

Dubbed ‘aUSD Ecosystem Fund’, the financial initiative is set to help early-stage startups in the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem build strong projects that support the adoption of native stablecoins.

Interoperability benefits the whole Polkadot ecosystem

Apart from Manta and Acala, other parachain teams to contribute to the fund are asset financing protocol Centrifuge, NFT and gaming platform Efinity, WASM + EVM hub Astar Network and Ethereum interoperability protocol Moonbeam. 

Others are DEX chain HydraDX, DeFi multichain Parallel and predictions marketplace Zeitgeist.

Manta Network co-founder Kenny Li, commenting on the importance of the fund to the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems, said:

“We’re excited to be supporting the aUSD Ecosystem Fund and look forward to integrating privacy into the emerging use cases and projects coming out of it. With Polkadot’s native interoperability, every new idea launching in the ecosystem is another value add to all parachains‘ “. 

DEXs and DAOs among targeted projects

The fund is open to startups with Solidity or Substrate-based applications, including payment solutions, money markets, decentralised exchanges (DEXs), derivatives, DAOs, and asset managers among others.

The parachain teams are confident cross-chain activity in the Polkadot ecosystem will push aUSD into broader adoption, benefitting all the parachains in the process. 

Acala Network, Moonbeam, Astar and Parallel are scheduled to outline their respective development milestones since onboarding on Polkadot later on Wednesday. The projects will also share future developments during the Parachains Takeover event.