Acala has teamed up with eight Polkadot parachain teams and several supporting venture funds, to launch a $250 million aUSD Ecosystem Fund. It will be used to back upcoming startups focused on building applications with strong stablecoin use cases on any Polkadot or Kusama parachain. 
$250M ‘aUSD Ecosystem Fund’
The participants of the funds are looking for Solidity or Substrate-powered applications driving yield or utility for Acala’s multi-collateralized stablecoin – aUSD. These include money markets, DEXs, derivatives, asset management, DAOs, payments, and other use cases.
According to the release shared with CryptoPotato , the fund aims to support and facilitate investment in early-stage teams building in the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem with the aUSD stablecoin central to everything.
Additionally, it also seeks to expand the two ecosystems with the help of increased cross-chain activity and growth of aUSD.
Upon acceptance into the aUSD Ecosystem Fund, the Acala team, along with all its partners and supporters, will secure capital from industry-leading funds.
The platforms can leverage Acala’s engineering team or both Solidity and Substrate-based projects and boost its TVL by injecting aUSD liquidity. Projects will be able to expand their ecosystem through the network of the fund and grow their own brand.
Among those supporting the funds are – Alameda, Arrington Capital, 1Confirmation, Alliance DAO, Blockchange Ventures, BlockTower Capital, CMS, CMT Digital, CoinFund, Coinsummer, Continue Capital, D1 Ventures, Digital Currency Group, DFG, GoldenTree Asset Management, Hash3, Hashed, Digital Renaissance Foundation, Kraken Ventures, LongHash Ventures, Pantera Capital, ParaFi Capital, Polychain Capital, etc.
Polkadot’s Native Stablecoin – aUSD
Acala announced the launch of the decentralized, multi-collateral stablecoin – aUSD – in February this year. At its core, aUSD aims to position itself as a stablecoin powering the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems. The idea for the decentralized stablecoin started with the need to power transactions, offer a medium of exchange, and be a default routing asset for Polkadot’s economy of economies.
The stablecoin protocol essentially utilizes a multi-collateral backing system to create a token soft-pegged to the USD. It mints a stable currency from a basket of reserve assets, thereby allowing users to transact, trade, and facilitate services using aUSD without worrying about the volatility factor in the price.