TLDR:
- Moonbeam’s MainNet went live in January 2022. Since then, ecosystem growth has been astounding – 49M+ transactions, 300+ projects launched, and 200K+ community members. 🎉
- 2022 saw foundational launches of cross-chain innovations like GMP precompiles and Connected Contracts, allowing for unified dapp experiences with cross-chain functionality.
- In 2023, Moonbeam built on interoperability with MRL, offering one-click liquidity flows into Polkadot from Ethereum, BSC etc. Strategic alignments with gaming, RWA, and emerging markets expanded real-world traction.
- Heading into the 3rd year of 2024 and beyond, Moonbeam will boost adoption across verticals from tokenization and blockchain gaming to regional solutions.
Introduction
Moonbeam began as a vision for an open and EVM-based development platform to support cross-chain decentralized applications on Polkadot. Since its Mainnet launch in January 2022, Moonbeam’s network and community have shown incredible growth and resiliency. We are thrilled and humbled to see the original vision thriving. This article celebrates Moonbeam’s remarkable achievements while hinting at what’s to come for Moonbeam in 2024 and beyond!
Today, over 300 high-caliber teams across DeFi, NFTs, infrastructure, and more have launched dapps on Moonbeam, validating Moonbeam’s focus on serving builders. Key achievements like
establishing pioneering cross-chain messaging protocols like XCM, deployments of the dominant GMP protocols, and packaging them in solutions like MRL have all advanced Moonbeam’s goal of seamless blockchain interoperability.
Moonbeam has processed over 49 million transactions, establishing itself as the hub where users access cross-chain capital and liquidity from Ethereum, BSC, Cosmos, Avalanche, and many Polkadot parachains. In 2024, Moonbeam expects to accelerate real-world blockchain adoption, focusing on use cases like real-world assets, gaming, and problem-solving for emerging markets.
The Moonbeam Foundation aims to further blockchain adoption with initiatives like Moonbeam Grants and the Lunar Gaming Festival. With the support of our diverse community and ecosystem partners, we’re confident that the next era of thriving cross-chain applications in the multi-chain world is closer than ever!
2022 – Moonbeam Established as the Premier EVM hub on Polkadot
Moonbeam’s genesis block in January 2022 culminated two years of research, development, and community building to marry Ethereum’s vibrant ecosystem with Polkadot’s trailblazing interoperability, fast finality, and app-specific L1 ecosystem. The launch sequence commenced by onboarding over 20 of Web3’s top-performing external collators to bootstrap a globally distributed decentralized infrastructure network, paving the way for a new chapter in multi-chain history.
Moonbeam’s canary network, Moonriver, demonstrated robust technical architecture and surging adoption on Polkadot’s canary network, Kusama, raising expectations for Moonbeam’s activation on Polkadot mainnet. Just three months after going live on mainnet, Moonbeam reached an astonishing 200K generated wallets, three million transactions, and $225 million in GLMR staked.
Throughout 2022 and continuing, Moonbeam cemented itself as Polkadot’s leading smart contract hub, crossing enduring milestones in adoption, ecosystem growth, and technological innovation. Last year, the network processed over 23 million transactions, peaking in December with nearly five million transactions alone. Moonbeam retains this dominance in 2024 based on parachain TVL, project count, daily transactions, and other metrics – showing no signs of slowing down.
Pioneering Cross-Chain Connectivity
Today, thanks to these cross-chain connectivity frameworks, apps built on Moonbeam can call any contract on any chain, anytime, a pioneering effort using revolutionary connectivity technologies between parachains and external networks. Developers use Moonbeam and Moonriver’s cross-chain features to build cross-chain connected dapps that allow end users to access almost any feature from any blockchain, all from one application experience. These Connected Contracts continue to represent a massive shift in interoperability and usability across the Web3 ecosystem.
Enriching the Ecosystem
Alongside its tremendous technological strides, Moonbeam’s passionate community continued growing and making life easy for builders. New forums for open discussions on governance matters brought greater transparency. Community council members also began vetting governance proposals, further decentralizing decision-making.
Moonbeam also launched a Grant Program targeting builders in key verticals, as did the investment fund, with Arrington Capital announcing a $100m growth fund to expand the Moonbeam ecosystem.
By the end of 2022, the Moonbeam Network reached an astonishing 200+ projects building on top and an average of 7.8k Daily Active Addresses counted by Messari for Q4 of 2022!
2023 – Leading the Way in Cross-Chain Liquidity and Interoperability
Moonbeam entered its second year after MainNet launch, ready for further growth and ecosystem maturity. In 2023, Moonbeam focused on core technological innovation along with our partners Wormhole, Axelar, and Hyperlane. New cross-chain frameworks like GMP (General Message Passing) and MRL (Moonbeam Routed Liquidity) solved some of Web3’s most significant issues: isolated smart contracts, liquidity fragmentation, and development friction.
General Message Passing (GMP) Precompile
Early in 2023, Moonbeam introduced GMP (General Message Passing) precompile functionality through the runtime 2401 upgrade approved and enacted by an on-chain community vote. GMP precompiles included several enhancements to Moonbeam’s interoperability features. It enabled developers on other Polkadot parachains to seamlessly leverage smart contract connectivity and frictionless asset transfers by tapping into GMP functionality. Thus, GMP acts as a middleman between token-bearing messages from GMP protocols and parachains connected to Moonbeam via XCMP. Currently, the GMP Precompile only supports relaying liquidity through Wormhole.
The GMP precompiles set the path for the next interoperability upgrade in line, MRL, a powerful new way to bring liquidity to the entire Polkadot ecosystem.
Moonbeam Routed Liquidity (MRL)
Due to Polkadot’s Substrate base and lack of EVM compatibility, most parachains cannot easily bring outside crypto liquidity into the ecosystem. MRL allows parachains to tap into bridged liquidity using native interoperability standards. Developers can summon bridged assets from anywhere in the Polkadot ecosystem. These capabilities are made possible by this upgrade’s general message passing precompile and other interoperable capabilities available on Moonbeam, like Polkadot’s XCM and Moonbeam’s XC-20 technologies.
MRL enabled the easy flow of crypto liquidity into and across the Polkadot ecosystem from other ecosystems like Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, and Avalanche. With MRL, users today can move their liquidity to and from Polkadot with a clean and straightforward user interface. Part of what powers MRL is a new feature in which any ERC-20 created in the Moonbeam EVM can be moved around the Polkadot Ecosystem via XCM, thanks to the implementation of XC-20s.
First Steps Toward Killer Cross-Chain Apps
GMP and XCM unlocked the door for Moonbeam’s revolutionary Connected Contract architecture that emerged as a powerful tool for cross-chain dapp development. One example covered above is MRL, which combines cross-chain protocols to turn Moonbeam into a coordination hub, allowing smart contracts and liquidity on other chains like Ethereum, Equilibrium, and Astar to interoperate seamlessly with Moonbeam. This innovation has paved the way for unified multi-chain experiences beyond what is possible in isolated blockchain environments.
Teams like Prime Protocol have embraced this functionality for cross-chain lending/borrowing flows, while other projects are building censorship-resistant social networks, real-world data analytics, and more using such cross-chain composability.
Community-Driven Governance Deepens
Moonbeam’s governance matured in 2023, with the community taking an even more significant decision-making role. Open and transparent forums hosted active discussions around proposals like upgrading the dynamic fee mechanism, enacting the GMP precompile, and determining treasury spending. We saw the introduction of OpenGov to Moonbeam and Moonriver, providing a safer on-chain governance mechanism.
Snapshot voting and the delegation dashboard enabled broader token holder participation and allowed users to delegate voting powers to chosen community representatives. These initiatives demonstrate Moonbeam’s commitment to on-chain governance based on the ethos of crowd-sourced wisdom.
State of Moonbeam Ecosystem 2024
As 2024 ticked in, Moonbeam reached over 300 projects building on the chain. In addition, the Moonbeam Foundation has strategically expanded integrations and collaborations to demonstrate real-world traction aligned with high-potential use cases. These span frictionless cross-chain connectivity with cross-chain GMP protocols like Wormhole, next-generation gaming experiences, and Tokenized Assets in emerging markets through partners like Transfero.
Transfero is creating a stablecoin for the Brazilian Real on the Moonbeam network. Such partnerships showcase Moonbeam’s ability to serve as the premier regional and vertical innovation hub tailored to local needs.
Looking Ahead to 2024 and Beyond!
As Moonbeam enters its third year since MainNet launch, we are eager to continue pushing boundaries and supporting innovation across several key areas. The Moonbeam Foundation is passionate about enabling actual use cases and further solving problems through Moonbeam’s capabilities –
- Expanding cross-chain functionality
- Supporting next-generation dapps with new protocol capabilities & tooling
- Boosting tokenization
- Real-world assets
- Gaming
- Enabling enterprise adoption through protocol capabilities and abstraction
- Adoption in emerging markets like Brazil and Vietnam
- And even faster finality
Whether tokenizing real-world assets, abstracting blockchain complexity for gaming, or enabling asset flows across isolated chains, Moonbeam aims to create traction and solve actual problems through its strategic alliances. In the past few months, we announced partnerships with Transfero, W3block, Curta and others. We’re excited to announce new partnerships in GameFi, SocialFi, ReFi and other areas soon.
These alliances position the platform to lead Web3 adoption beyond speculation toward meaningful utility. By aligning with high-growth verticals projected to drive new crypto users, the Moonbeam Foundation seeks to realize Web3’s true potential. Moonbeam is progressing towards unlocking the global economy on-chain. Tokenization unlocks accessibility, liquidity, and automation across countless assets, and we are just beginning to tap into this disruptive potential.
Conclusion
As Moonbeam celebrates its second anniversary, we’re thrilled with our progress, and we know none of it would have been possible without our 200,000+ community members as co-travelers on this odyssey to the decentralized future! Your overwhelming support through crowd loans, grants, and participation is why Moonbeam has grown into an ecosystem leveraging Ethereum compatibility and Substrate flexibility.
The Moonbeam Foundation sees immense opportunity in this next era of Web3 maturity, where real-world solutions emerge, and a Web3-based internet becomes more widely adopted.
With 300+ projects and 49+ million transactions, the last two years for Moonbeam have been ripe with activity and adoption. We look forward to an even more exciting future.
