What Is Moonbeam (GLMR)?

Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible parachain on the Polkadot network. Moonbeam makes it easy to build applications on the Polkadot blockchain. The Moonbeam-based applications make token economic models, issuance schedules, governance, or incentivizing nodes secure and easy to execute. The Ethereum compatibility allows developers to leverage existing Solidity smart contracts and dApp frontends to Moonbeam with minimal changes.

Moonbeam aims to be both interoperable and compatible with Ethereum. It combines the best of both, the familiar and easy-to-use tool of Ethereum and the scalable, interoperable architecture of Polkadot.

As per the whitepaper of Moonbeam, the traditional smart contract platforms are designed to service the assets and users on a single, specific chain. Moonbeam provides cross-chain (across blockchains) smart contract functionality that allows developers to shift existing workloads to Moonbeam and enhance the reach of their applications to new users and assets on other chains.

Further, users can leverage Moonbeam’s full connection to the Polkadot Relay Chain, which the Moonbeam economic model pays for on an ongoing basis. Also, this is comparatively less expensive than paying for parachain- or parathread-based access on its own. An even upgrade path from a Moonbeam smart contract or dApp is provided to become a full-parachain or parathread. Parathreadsare like applications that are on disk and can be copied into memory when needed.

Glimmer (GLMR) is the native utility token of Moonbeam. GLMR serves the Polkadot functionalities such as staking and on-chain governance functions. GLMR is also used to pay transaction fees and support network operations. Holders can delegate their tokens to earn GLMR on the Moonbeam dApp.

Additionally, Moonbeam has its own consensus mechanism. The collator node operators that support Moonbeam produce blocks, and these blocks are verified and finalized by validators on the Polkadot relay chain. Bridges are the connection between Ethereum and Moonbeam. One end of the bridge is linked to the Moonbeam consensus mechanism, while the other side is linked to the Moonbeam consensus mechanism. 

History of Moonbeam (GLMR)

Moonbeam launched on January 11, 2022, after completing its three-phase launch process. Moonbeam won the second parachain auction on Polkadot.