MoonBeam, Moonriver, or Both: What The Heck Is The Difference and Which One Is Better?
MoonBeam, Moonriver, or Both: What The Heck Is The Difference and Which One Is Better?
For Anyone That Has Ever Needed Clarity
Introduction
The past few days have been hectic with all of the government FUD and the market crash due to fears of the impending collapse of Evergrande – China’s second largest property developer. Truly fun times. However, it’s looking like the Evergrande fear is starting to subside, and now it’s time for us to get back to business. What business am I speaking of? The business of bringing you some of the best deep dives and alpha in the industry.
So, in celebration of the market being on a potential road to recovery, we’re bringing you a Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem deep dive. The Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems are two of the most highly anticipated ecosystems in crypto. Everyone is placing bets on projects that they think will secure a Kusama or Polkadot parachain. One of the most popular (and probably best) projects to secure a parachain is a project called Moonriver. It’s truly a game changing project.
One thing to note is that there are two tokens associated with Moonriver. The two tokens are Moonbeam (GLMR) and Moonriver (MVR), and there seems to be a little confusion around the difference between the two. If the details are murky to you, fret not. We’re about to break it all down. Let’s get started!
What is Moonriver?
Let’s first dive into what Moonriver is...
Moonriver was actually created by the Moonbeam Foundation.
For those that are unfamiliar with what a CanaryNet is, it’s an experimental blockchain environment with real economic conditions. It serves as a proving ground where developers can build and deploy products, services, and other code functionality for the Polkadot ecosystem.
So, in essence, Moonriver serves as the testnet for the Moonbeam Network.
Moonriver allows developers to redeploy their ERC20 dapps in a substrate environment with minimal friction. This will help developers avoid having to rewrite or reconfigure smart contracts for the Karura network.
Moonriver plans on achieving this through EVM implementation, Web 3 compatible API, bridges, and built-in integrations.
What is Moonbeam?
Now, it’s time to talk about Moonbeam and the GLMR Token.
To further elaborate, “it’s a highly specialized Layer 1.5 chain (on the Polkadot Network) that mirrors Ethereum’s Web3 RPC, accounts, keys, subscriptions, logs, and more. The Moonbeam platform extends the base Ethereum feature set with additional features such as on-chain governance, staking, and cross-chain integrations.”
Moonbeam will support Solidity smart contracts, publish-subscribe capabilities, H160 Accounts & ECDSA Signatures, and a complete set of Web3 RPC Endpoints.
Which Token Has More Potential?
Now, it’s time to address the question of the hour...which is, what token should you be paying attention to? In order to answer that question, we need to consider a few variables.
In this thread it was also stated that Moonriver is working on the first cross chain scenario that will allow the first bi-directional movement of $KSM to ERC20.
Moonbeam is still waiting to be launched. So there aren’t many threads praising its existence. However, it is expected to reach mainnet in Q4 of this year.
In the meantime, let’s compare the tokenomics of both:
Moonbeam (GLMR):
Moonriver (MVR)
Judging from the tokenomics, Moonbeam has 100x more Genesis tokens than Moonriver. Also, Moonriver has already secured a parachain and launched the mainnet on Kusama.
Moonbeam is still waiting to secure a parachain slot and launch on the DOT mainnet....even though the Polkadot parachain is imminent.
The token allocations between the two are vastly different as well:
More than 70% of the MVR coins are being allocated to the Parachain Crowdloan and Community Initiatives and Parachain Slot Reserve
Only 16% of GLMR tokens are being distributed to the Take Flight Community Event and Liquidity Program. While 27.4% is going to Seed Funding, Strategic Funding, and Purestake Early backers.
Moonriver already has projects lined up waiting to be deployed.
Not so fast, there’s a bullish case to be made for GLMR as well.
In a sense, it can be argued that the success of Moonbeam and Moonriver is tied to the success of Polkadot and Kusama. Since they mimic the
So, the question we must also consider is whether we are more bullish on Kusama or Polkadot? Naturally, the answer in the short term would be Kusama. The mainnet is already up and running and projects are being deployed.
Conclusion
We’ve compared and contrasted both tokens. If we had to go on tokenomics and traction, we’d have to give it to Moonriver.
Moonriver has also gone through a bit of a cooling off period since its massive run up. So, now may be an opportune time to accumulate.
Though Moonbeam’s mainnet has not yet been launched, nothing less than greatness is to be expected (seeing as how the same team launched Moonriver).
Ultimately, this project is so bullish that we doubt you’ll go wrong holding either token.