Moonbeam moved.

Moonbeam began in 2020 as a smart contract platform on Polkadot — an Ethereum-compatible parachain built so applications could reach across chains instead of being stranded on one. For six years that meant remote execution, cross-chain messaging, and connected contracts for a few hundred teams. GLMR paid for it: it bought block space and secured the network through collator staking.

In July 2026 the network relaunched on Base. The GLMR token migrated one-for-one from the Moonbeam parachain to a Base ERC-20, and the parachain era closed. The full announcement, republished verbatim, is in the newsroom: Moonbeam Strategic Update: Moonbeam Network Relaunches on Base.

Why

The counterparties changed. They are no longer only applications — they are autonomous AI agents, transacting with each other faster than any human can review. Base now provides the security GLMR used to buy, so the token takes the job the agent economy actually lacks: assurance. GLMR is the native token of Moonbeam Protocol — used for operator staking, network governance, and protocol fee distribution.

What carried over

The token (one-for-one), the community, and six years of cross-chain engineering. What changed is what GLMR carries: block space became assurance. The new network's design — escrowed jobs, independent judges, coverage pools — is laid out across the rest of these docs, and the sequence it ships in is the roadmap.

This page records history; it is not an action item. Phase 1 of the roadmap closes the migration's remaining accounting in public, with receipts.