The Moonbeam Foundation has successfully secured a new Kusama parachain lease, enabling Moonriver to continue to operate as a parachain without interruption. The Moonbeam Foundation was able to self-fund this slot extension once again and looks forward to another lease term as a Kusama parachain.
Moonriver won the 67th Kusama parachain auction through a bid for the 28-34 lease period. This bid allows Moonriver to continue operating in its existing slot when its current lease expires, after lease period 27. Notably, this was a bid for a partial lease period (28-34, excluding period 27) which allowed for continued operation without overlap, but also means the new lease period is a slightly shorter 42-week lease. The new lease will expire at block 21,167,999 in approximately 300 days, around December 2023.
Moonriver is a smart contract platform that started producing blocksGo to page https://moonbeam.network/news/moonriver-won-a-parachain-slot-and-is-now-producing-blocks-on-the-kusama-network in June 2021 and was fully launchedGo to page https://moonbeam.network/networks/moonriver/launch on August 26th, 2021 with EVM, staking, and pallets activated and transfers enabled. As the companion network to Moonbeam, and a major layer-one blockchain in its own right, over 200 projects are integratedGo to page https://www.dtmb.xyz/moonriver/explore and operate on Moonriver.
Since launch, XCM has allowed Moonriver to connect to 13 different parachainsGo to page https://moonriver.subscan.io/xcm_dashboard. These integrations allow users to deposit 17 different Kusama ecosystem tokens onto Moonriver as XC-20s and use them to interact with Ethereum-style applications that are deployed there.
By choosing to self-fund this slot acquisition, the Moonbeam Foundation is able to direct existing MOVR reserves to be used for initiatives that help increase activity and adoption on Moonriver, including grants and developer support.