• Moonbeam is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible blockchain that operates as a parachain on the Polkadot network. Being EVM-compatible allows Ethereum-based applications to deploy on Moonbeam.

  • The network offers developers features, including deploying Solidity smart contracts, Web3-compatible API, oracle data feeds, and Ethereum network bridges.

  • GLMR is the utility and governance token of Moonbeam, used for the following use cases:

    • Transaction Fees: Users can pay gas fees and execute smart contracts with GLMR.

    • Staking: Users can stake GLMR to become a validator or delegate to participate in the network consensus and are rewarded with GLMR.

    • Governance: Enables GLMR token holders to nominate council members and participate in voting on the network.

    • Liquidity Mining: Provide liquidity on Decentralized Exchanges (DEXes) built on the Moonbeam blockchain to earn a portion of the exchange fees.

  • Moonbeam consists of the following major components working in conjunction:

    • Polkadot: Polkadot facilitates cross-chain communication and interoperability by connecting multiple blockchains into one unified network. Moonbeam is the Polkadot ecosystem version of Moonriver (MOVR) in the Kusama ecosystem.

    • Parachains: Parachains are independent blockchains (Shards) that are able to connect to Polkadot.

    • Crowdloans: It is a method for projects to fundraise for a parachain slot on the Polkadot network. Users temporarily lock their DOT in exchange for a reward from the project team, often in the form of the project's native tokens.

    • Slot Auctions: For projects to operate as a parachain on Polkadot, they would have to win a slot in the parachain auction. Moonbeam won the second slot auction via a crowdloan, thus securing a Polkdaot parachain for 96 weeks starting from December 17 2021.

  • The project raised ~36MM DOT tokens from over ~200K contributors in the Moonbeam crowdloan for the Polkadot parachain slot auction.

  • As at January 11th 2022, the total token supply of GLMR is 1,000,000,000. GLMR has an uncapped maximum token supply, and an annual inflation rate of 5%.

  • Learn more about the token distribution of GLMR here.