Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain on Polkadot. Moonbeam makes it easy to use popular Ethereum developer tools to build or redeploy Solidity projects in a Substrate-based environment. Moonbeam is much more than just an EVM implementation: it’s a highly specialized parachain 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.
Moonriver is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain on Kusama. As a sister network to Moonbeam, new code ships here first, which means it always has the latest builds. Moonriver is also community-led, which means the vast majority of tokens are distributed to the community (and zero have been distributed to founders or early backers). This gives developers and token holders power over the future of the network early on. Like Moonbeam, Moonriver has complete Ethereum compatibility but is built on Substrate and connects natively to the Kusama network. With this architecture, Solidity-based smart contracts can be deployed to Moonriver with minimal changes, while gaining access to the assets built on Moonriver, Kusama, other parachains on Kusama, and any assets bridged into this interoperable ecosystem.