What is Moonbeam (GLMR)?
Glimmer (GLMR) is the native token for Polkadot’s parachain Moonbeam. The sub-network aims to facilitate Polkadot and Ethereum integration. It helps users avoid the trouble of developing their own parachains to work on decentralized applications (dApps) by allowing them to build directly on Moonbeam.
Who is the Moonbeam Team?
Moonbeam was founded by Derek Yoo, a researcher, and the company’s CEO. The core team also includes Chief Operations Officer Stefan Mehlhorn, VP of Blockchain Engineering Alan Sapede, VP of Engineering Tim Baldwin, Ecosystem Development manager Nate Hamilton, and Marketing Manager, Katie Butler.
The Moonbeam project began in 2019. It came with the idea to tackle Ethereum’s scalability issues. As one of the biggest blockchains in the world, Ethereum requires high energy and storage resources. Moonbeam aims to counter that by employing Ethereum-like development environments to create apps that are compatible with several chains.
The Moonbeam crypto platform completed the final phase of its launch process in January 2022. At the time, the GLMR price was listed at $11. The token was highly volatile from its inception, with its value nearly halving within two weeks from the launch date.
The market trends did not significantly change within the first six months. The Moonbeam price kept fluctuating, moving upwards and downwards, with the general trend of the value falling lower. The asset was strongly impacted by the crypto market crash in June 2022, when its value dropped below $1 for the first time.
What Are the Main Features of Moonbeam?
The Moonbeam protocol describes the GLMR token as essential to its utility. It’s used for transaction fees, network security, and decentralized governance processes.
Upon its genesis, the Moonbeam token supply was 1 billion GLMR. However, the asset is not deflationary, and the supply is expected to increase by 5% each year. The maximum supply is uncapped. To ensure some market regulation and maintain a more stable Moonbeam price, 80% of the transaction fees are automatically burned.
The use of Moonbeam tokens for transaction fees is referred to as gas metering. The gas fees are required to execute the smart contracts built on the framework. From the taxed Moonbeam price, 20% is sent to the network treasury. These funds can later be allocated to parachain projects and upgrades.
Network bridges are used to connect Moonbeam to other blockchains, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Moonbeam provides full support for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Developers can take advantage of familiar Ethereum tools, such as MetaMask, that are made available thanks to the remote procedure call (RPC) endpoints.
Moonbeam uses the Substrate blockchain framework. Substrate is used to develop custom-built, autonomous blockchains and Polkadot parachains. It’s similar to Ethereum, allowing developers to easily work with pre-existing smart contracts. Moonbeam supports the development, deployment, and redeployment of Solidity applications.
Developers are not required to alter pre-existing Solidity projects as they can be fully accessible in the Moonbeam environment. These applications can then be accessed on multiple chains, including Polkadot. In addition to Solidity, the platform also supports popular Javascript libraries, including Web3.js.
From the Polkadot side of network support, Moonbeam has access to tools that enable blockchain interoperability. They include accessibility of off-chain data via oracles, multi-chain bridges, and other dev toolkit essentials. Additionally, the Moonbeam sub-network can also connect to other parachains built on Polkadot.
The Moonbeam sub-network is secured using the Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) consensus mechanism. The validators are rewarded as an incentive to continue their network contributions. 1% of the GLMR price from the 5% annual inflation is allocated to be used as rewards. Additionally, stakeholders receive 2.5% of the inflation funds.
The Moonbeam coin also allows users to participate in the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Using GLMR, the community can propose protocol changes and cast their votes. Moonbeam has a council whose members are also selected via a governance vote.
