About Moonriver (MOVR)

To understand MOVR, native token of Moonriver, it helps to know the extensive lineup of relevant related projects.

There’s the layer-1 blockchain, Ethereum – you’ve probably heard of it.

Then there’s the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It’s a developer sandbox and where smart contracts are deployed in the creation of decentralized applications ("dApps"); these are what facilitate decentralized finance (“DeFi”) activities, including decentralized trading, staking, borrowing, lending, etc.

Which brings us to Moonbeam, an EVM-compatible smart contract platform. It runs on Polkadot. Moonbeam, as it turns out, has a more experimental, community-led sister network: Moonriver.

An EVM-compatible parachain, Moonriver runs on Polkadot's canary network, Kusama. (We told you there were a lot of moving parts).

Layer-1 EVM-compatible blockchains have long confronted scalability issues. Unresolved congestion on the Ethereum network continues to underscore these limitations. A testing ground that intends to retain a life of its own, the Moonriver ecosystem inherently finds itself on the front lines of the effort to scale up layer-1 EVM-compatible blockchains, while complementing Moonbeam.

Moonriver’s community of developers, banding together, has propelled it ahead, taking up initiatives (raising $40 million) in the pursuit to win the second-ever Kusama parachain auction.

As a permanently incentivized canary network of Polkadot-based Moonbeam, Moonriver works collaboratively with its sister network to allow developers to create and deploy smart contracts and dApp front-end offices intended for Ethereum, essentially migrating Ethereum technology to the Polkadot network, but with minimal cost. Addressing the issues that have arisen within the layer-1 blockchain ecosystem, Moonriver is regarded as another addition to the Ethereum-killer brigade “mirroring” Ethereum technology with EVM compatibility. But Moonriver goes beyond typical EVM implementation expectations, as stated by Moonriver themselves. Boasting an “Ethereum-like environment,” Moonriver enables dApp projects already operating on Ethereum to replicate and deploy using familiar tools such as Hardhat, Truffle, Remix, among others.

Moonriver has already begun to accommodate over 3,000 respective tokens and projects. The parachain reached a milestone this past November of 2021 by hitting eight million transactions on its network, becoming the leading parachain in Kusama, according to CryptoPotato.

Built upon a multi-faceted, tiered system, Moonriver relies upon DeFi integrations, unified accounts, Web3 RPC, and EVM technology to bridge its own ecosystem with the likes of Chainbridge, Ren, Interlay, Snowfork, and Exelar. With unification prioritized, Moonriver has similarly established bridges with various DeFi protocols to inject further momentum into its cause, as well as those introduced by various projects built on the blockchain.

According to Cryptoslate, in order to mitigate risks within the Moonbeam infrastructure, all new code is passed onto Moonriver first, where it is subjected to trial by fire, and verified under strict economic conditions, but without the burdensome financial pressures of Polkadot. This in turn increases the governance stability of Moonbeam and the experimentalism of Moonriver.

As with any smart-contract-orientated platform, it cannot exist without the integral support of a native token, MOVR. Among the token’s roles: supporting the gas metering of smart contract execution; incentivizing collators, facilitating on-chain governance tasks; and funding transaction costs.  

 Moonriver was conceived by Derek Yoo, a former CPO for Fuze. Yoo has extensive experience across product management, and systems engineering, which led to the birth of the infrastructure-as-a-service specialist firm Purestake and subsequent development initiatives, Moonbeam and its sister Moonriver. Playing a pivotal role in realizing a multi-chain future, Purestake, and the Moonbeam Foundation have worked in tandem under Yoo, following the community focused crowd loan initiative in June 2021, to deliver on a multi-chain vision for DeFi.

With both Moonriver and Moonbeam having identical coding, it is anticipated that Moonriver will later evolve to serve specific use cases that its sister network is unable to accommodate, according to a blog post released by Moonbeam as development began.

Its launch process was divided into four stages. Moonriver as of August 2021 had entered its final stage, enabling full functionality across all areas of the network, as well as distributing crowd loan participation rewards for the 5,977 contributors. The developer-friendly design and implementation of Moonriver have made it a destination for dozens of new and established dApps alike, Cointelegraph said.

In late January 2022, Moonriver announced an alliance with 123Swap, a decentralized financial ecosystem that enables the swapping of crypto assets between peers. 123Swap will integrate Moonriver’s smart contract platform into its decentralized, non-custodial cross-chain architecture, part of an effort to shake up DeFi industry by capitalizing on the “untapped power of cross-chain technology,” according to a 123Swap public statement.