PureStake Raises $6M From CoinFund, Binance Labs, Coinbase Venture, and Others

PureStake, a Polkadot parachain developing Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform Moonbeam Network, has closed a $6 million strategic funding round led by CoinFund, including participation from Binance Labs and Coinbase Ventures.

PureStake announced the news in a press release on Tuesday, March 30. According to PureStake, the capital raised will be used to hire development resources, build additional integrations and developer tools, perform third-party security audits, and establish a market presence in Asia as the company is moving towards the launch of its Moonbeam Network in Q3 of 2021.

The $6 million strategic funding round was led by CoinFund, a leading blockchain-focused investment firm, with participation from Binance Labs, ParaFi, Coinbase Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, IOSG Ventures, as well as previous seed investors. Other prominent venture capital firms across the blockchain industry including Hypersphere Ventures, Hashkey, Arrington XRP, A195, KR1, D1 Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Divergence Ventures, and Signum Capital have also invested in Moonbeam.

PureStake, based in Boston, provides protocol implementation services and creates developer tools for next-generation blockchain networks. The company is currently developing a Polkadot parachain Moonbeam Network, an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform on the Polkadot network that allows developers to deploy existing Solidity smart contracts and DApp frontends to Moonbeam with minimal changes.

PureStake launched the testnet of Moonbeam Network, Moonbase Alpha V1, in September of 2020. V2 was launched in October 2020 and V3, as reported, was launched in November of 2020. Currently, the V6 of Moonbase Alpha testnet is underway.

According to PureStake, in the six months since closing a seed round and launching Moonbase Alpha testNet in September 2020, a large number of Ethereum-based projects including SushiSwap, Balancer, IDEX, Seascape, Linear Finance, and Ocean Protocol have begun building on and integrating with the Moonbeam network. That’s why Moonbeam has become one of the most prominent parachains in the Polkadot ecosystem and the team is now all set to launch the mainnet in Q3 of 2020.

The project will be launched in a multi-phased approach similar to the one previously employed for the Polkadot network launch. Moonbeam is currently running as a testnet parachain on Polkadot’s parachain test Rococo. This will be followed by the Moonriver network deployment to Kusama, and finally, a Moonbeam network deployment for Polkadot mainnet.

According to PureStake, the recent funding round will help the team “plan and successfully launch each deployment, including third-party security audits of the code, as soon as the functionality is available.” Derek Yoo, CEO of PureStake and Founder of the Moonbeam project, commented:

“From the beginning, we have prioritized broad and strategic distribution when fundraising. The partnerships forged in this round — which include some of the most well-respected names in the industry — will provide us with the capital, guidance, and global traction we need to launch the Moonbeam network and establish it as a center of DeFi, NFT, and other activity on Polkadot.”