What is Polkadot? Polkadot is a multi-chain, heterogeneous, and highly scalable blockchain platform. Polkadot enables scalability by allowing different blockchains to communicate with each other in a secure environment. So what makes Polkadot stand out? How does it work? Join the Weakhand team to find out below in this article!
To understand more about Polkadot, you can read the following articles:
- What is Multichain? The Difference Between Multichain & Cross-chain
- What is Cross-Consensus Message Format (XCM)? Will XCM Help Polkadot Overtake Cosmos
- What is Solana (SOL)? Solana Cryptocurrency Overview
- What is Avalanche (AVAX)? Avalanche Cryptocurrency Overview
What is Polkadot?
Polkadot is a fully sharded blockchain platform that is a multi-chain environment. Polkadot enables scalability by allowing different blockchains to link together securely and heterogeneously, forming a decentralized network.
The Polkadot protocol connects public and private chains, permissionless networks, oracles, and future technologies, allowing these independent blockchains to securely share information and transactions through a relay chain Polkadot.
Mechanism of action
Polkadot main core components:
- Relaychain: As the heart of Polkadot, consensus, interoperability, and security are shared across the network of different chains. Relaychain will have Validators and Parachain connected, Validators will stake DOT on Relaychain to protect the network and manage the network. Fees on Relaychain will be higher than Parachain
- Parachain: Independent chains can have their own tokens and be optimized for specific use cases. Projects can build on Parachain and connect to Relaychain to enjoy the effects of the Polkadot network, helping to speed up development. Parachains can be dApps or Data Structures, which can provide evidence that can be authenticated by Validators assigned to that Para Chain.
- Parathreads: Similar to Parachain but with flexible connection capabilities based on the pay-as-you-go model. Parathreads are not constantly connected to the main chain, so this is a cost-effective option for projects that do not regularly connect to the main chain.
- Bridge: Allows Parachains and Parathreads to connect and communicate with external blockchains such as Ethereum or Bitcoin.
- Cross-Consensus Message Format (XCM): XCM is a “cross-consensus” messaging format, instead of just “cross-chain”. XCM is a messaging format, not a messaging protocol, that enables unlimited interoperability between Parachains mounted on Polkadot. XCM aims to be the language for communicating ideas between consensus systems.
Highlights of Polkadot
Polkadot is a sharded multi-chain network, it can process multiple transactions in parallel across several parachains. This parallel processing capability increases scalability.
Custom blockchains quickly and easily develop the Substrate framework and can connect to the Polkadot network within minutes. The network is also flexible and adaptive, allowing information and functionality to be shared between participants similar to mobile applications. Polkadot can upgrade automatically without a fork to implement new features or remove bugs.
This network has an extremely complex user-facing administration system, which also makes it more secure. Communities can customize their blockchain governance mechanism on Polkadot depending on their needs and development conditions. Each individual participating in the network can contribute to the system.
Development Roadmap
Currently, the project has not updated the roadmap with a fixed time but will need to resolve some of the following issues:
- Deploy PoA mechanism.
- Deploy NPoS.
- Sudo Administration and Removal.
- Activate balance transfer.
- Upgrade after launch.
Core Team
The project was built by the Web3 Foundation team, a Swiss organization founded to support a fully functional and user-friendly decentralized web.
Gavin Wood – Founder & CEO (middle person)
Gavin Wood was the former Co – Founder & CTO of Ethreum. He is the founder of the blockchain industry, he invented applications for blockchain such as PoA, developed the Solidity programming language, Gavin Wood is also the chairman of the Web3 Foundation.
Robert Habermeier – Co Founder (person on the left)
Robert Habermeier is a Thiel Fellow with a research and development background in blockchain, distributed systems, and cryptography. A longtime member of the Rust community, he has focused on leveraging the language’s features to build highly parallel and efficient solutions.
Peter Czaban – Co Founder (person on the right)
Peter Czaban is CTO of the Web3 Foundation, where he works to support the development of the next generation of distributed technology. Grandfather He did his Master of Engineering at the University of Oxford, reading Engineering Science, where he focused on Bayesian Machine Learning. He has worked in the defense, finance and data analytics industries, working on networks, distributed knowledge bases, quantitative pricing models, machine learning and business development.
Investors
The current project has successfully called for $336.7M from 29 investors through 12 funding rounds, but only 2 rounds have announced the remaining investment amount hidden.
- July 24, 2020: The project successfully called for a Funding Round with an amount of $43M from an anonymous investor.
- July 27, 2020: The project continued to successfully raise capital in the ICO opening round with an amount of $43.7M from 2 investors.
Tokenomics
Overview information about Polkadot token
- Token name: Token Pokladot
- Ticker: DOT
- Blockchain: Polkadot
- Contract: Update, ..
- Token classification: Update, ..
- Total supply: 1,331,482,367
Token Allocation
- Auction Investors: 50%
- Web3 Foundation: 30%
- Future Sales: 11.6%
- Private Sale Investors: 3.4%
- SAFT Investors: 5%
Token Release
Currently, the DOT token has been completely unlocked. Polkadot has no limited maximum supply and rewards are distributed through betting mechanism of protocol. DOT supply is expected to reach 1.5 billion tokens by January 2025.
Token Use Case
Currently, DOT tokens are used for the following 3 purposes:
- Used for project management.
- Used for staking.
- Used for Parachain auctions.
Project Information Channel
- Website: https://polkadot.network/
- Discord: https://polkadot-discord.w3f.tools/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Polkadot
- Youtube:
Summary
Thus, the Weakhand team has provided you with general information about Polkadot. Polkadot is known as the first multi-chain blockchain, which enables scalability by allowing different blockchains to communicate and be heterogeneous. Polkadot serves as the foundational layer of a decentralized web, where users control their data and are not limited by trust limits in the network.