Moonbeam is a smart contract parachain based on Polkadot and compatible with Ethereum. Parachains are full-fledged and independent blockchains that can have their own tokens and tools for solving specific problems. They will be created by third-party developers and connected to the general Polkadot network.
The contract was created in 2019 by Derek Yoo, CEO of Pure Stake. Pure Stake is a platform that offers secure public blockchain infrastructure to developers of blockchain apps, projects, and enterprises.
Moonbeam eases the usage of popular Ethereum developer tools that allows building or redeploying Solidity projects in a Substrate-based environment. Moonbeam increases the number of the basic Ethereum features with on-chain governance, staking and cross-chain integrations.
Moonbeam is a highly specialized parachain that mirrors Ethereum’s Web3 RPC, subscriptions, accounts, logs and keys. It also supports bridge integration and connection between Polkadot parachains and with other chains, including Ethereum and Bitcoin.
The platform has its own token Moonbeam, also known as Glimmer (GLMR). It was issued via Take Flight, a private Community Event, to the amount of 100 million GLMR tokens, which is just 10% of the total supply. Although the GLMR’s supply is supposed to be limited to one billion, it won’t be capped with an annual inflation rate of 5%.
Glimmer is required for the functioning of the Moonbeam platform. It can’t be removed so that it won’t negatively affect Moonbeam’s essential functionality. These are some use cases of the token:
- It supports gas metering when executing a smart contract.
- It stimulates collators and enables the mechanics of creating a decentralized infrastructure of nodes on which the platform can run.
- It enables the governance mechanism of the network, including proposing referendums, electing council members, voting, etc.
- It’s used to pay for the network’s transaction fees.
GLM to USD price is low. The GLM/USD pair lost around 98% within four months since its all-time high of 11.94 US dollars on January 11, 2022.
Risk warning: Trading in FX and CFDs entails high risk of losing capital.
