26 March 2020

KR1 plc

("KR1" or the "Company")

Investment: Acala Network

KR1 is pleased to announce that the Company has invested a total of 65,000 USD in the Acala Network project. KR1 took part in the Acala seed round and will receive a total of 866,666.67 Acala (“ACA”) tokens at a price of 0.075 USD per ACA token.

The Acala Network is building decentralised finance infrastructure for the much anticipated Polkadot ecosystem. The core offering will be a stablecoin, which will be transferable across different blockchains and collateralised with many digital assets. A stable digital currency for low-cost borderless value transfer is a building block for a wide array of open finance products and creates an ecosystem of business lending with previously hard to achieve predictable risk.

A secondary offering of the Acala Network will be a liquidity protocol for staked digital assets. Utilizing Acala’s to-be-released liquidity protocol, staked Polkadot (“DOT”) tokens that are earning yield can become liquid and tradable. In the current blockchain ecosystem, digital assets that are locked as part of a ‘Proof-of-Stake’ network cannot be traded. Acala improves this process with a new innovative marketplace of staked assets, with market forces determining liquidity and risk premia or discounts.

KR1 took part in the seed round alongside Polychain Capital, P2P Capital, HashKey, SNZ and other prominent investors.

Ruitao Su, Co-Founder of Acala, commented: “We are delighted to be working with KR1 and other partners to develop the DeFi foundation infrastructure for Polkadot and beyond; together we will grow Acala to its full potential."

KR1 also intends to use a small part of KR1’s DOT allocation to support the Acala Network, which might require locking up some DOT tokens for a certain period of time to receive additional ACA tokens. This happens by an auction process called a ‘Parachain Auction’, which is unique to the Polkadot ecosystem. Projects bid for limited amounts of Polkadot ‘Parachain’ slots that facilitate cross-chain transactions.

George McDonaugh, Managing Director & Co-Founder of KR1 commented:

“Stablecoins have become a central pillar in the crypto ecosystem with Maker’s DAI sparking the $1bn USD DeFi movement on Ethereum. With the unique characteristics of the Polkadot ecosystem, a Polkadot native stablecoin based on Substrate could prove hugely significant in forming the basis of new financial products and be a catalyst for Polkadot to thrive. Stablecoins are currently siloed in their respective blockchains, so a stablecoin that works across any chain could be a game-changer for any DeFi product and the basis for rocket fuelling the whole space. The Acala team are highly technical and perfectly placed to bring this essential financial layer to market. We are thrilled to be able to support them at this first stage of their project.”

--ENDS--

For further information please contact:

KR1 PLC
George McDonaugh
+44 (0)16 2467 6716
Simon Nicol
simon@KR1.io

Peterhouse Capital Limited                        
(AQSE Corporate Adviser)
Mark Anwyl / Allie Feuerlein
+44 (0)20 7469 0930

Nominis Advisory Ltd
(PR Adviser)
Angus Campbel
pr@KR1.io

About KR1 plc

KR1 is a leading digital asset investment company supporting early-stage decentralised and open-source blockchain projects. Founded in 2016 and publicly traded in London (KR1: AQSE Growth Market), KR1 has built a notable reputation for generating significant returns by investing in many key projects that are designed to power the decentralised platforms and protocols that are emerging to form new internet infrastructures.

www.KR1.io

Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) Disclosure

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014. Upon the publication of this announcement via a Regulatory Information Service, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.