Welcome to Polkadot’s Medium, brought to you by the Web3 Foundation. On this blog you will find updates to our project, FAQs, and highlights from both core team members and guest contributors. We’ve seen a number of blockchain and crypto projects reach significant milestones. Some are highly functional and open such as Ethereum while others provide strong privacy like Zcash. Others are designed to fulfill the permissioning requirements of enterprise and operate in private. In the future, we see a world filled with diverse blockchains all serving specific and unique purposes. Currently, these blockchain networks exist in isolation with no communication or interoperability between them; this is an existential problem that needs to be addressed in order for a truly trustless ecosystem to develop and thrive. Polkadot is a network that connects blockchains. With Polkadot, various blockchains are able to send and receive messages between each other. This incredibly important development will help bring about the new ecosystem of Web3. A world where decentralized apps (Dapps) may leverage many interconnecting blockchains. Private/consortium and public/permissionless networks and oracles, will deliver new, novel and decentralised services. Security is pooled within the Polkadot ecosystem, which means that individual chains can leverage collective security without having to start from scratch to gain traction and trust. Polkadot can also ease some of the scalability issues encountered by isolated blockchains. By running transactions in parallel, Polkadot gives the ability to split transactions between multiple parachains (the name given to ‘parallelised’ chains that participate as part of the Polkadot network). We are creating a blockchain where token holders have complete control over the protocol. All privileges, which on other platforms are exclusive to miners, will be given to the relay chain participants, including managing exceptional events such as protocol upgrades and fixes. This is the groundwork that allows Polkadot token holders to imagine completely new systems free from old models of trust. We aim to create one common network across multiple blockchains. What gets built on top of that is up to you. There’s much more to share, and we look forward to doing so in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for details around community resources, our token sale, and important FAQs. In the meantime, we welcome your thoughts and participation in the development of Polkadot. Chat with us on Riot: Polkadot Watercooler Community discussion on the subreddit: Polkadot_market Follow our official updates via Twitter The Web3 Foundation (W3F) is currently supporting the development of Polkadot. The Web3 Foundation was created to nurture and steward technologies and applications in the fields of decentralized web software protocols, particularly those which utilize modern cryptographic methods to safeguard decentralization, to the benefit and for the stability of the Web3 ecosystem. We will be publishing more information on the W3F in the coming weeks. By clapping more or less, you can signal to us which stories really stand out. Medium account/ publication of the Polkadot Network Show less

Polkadot is a blockchain for scalable decentralized computation and interoperability. In this article, we are going to examine one of the main parts of the network: the parachain. Blockchains today come in a pretty standard form consisting of two parts. The first part is the consensus algorithm, which provides security. The second part is the state machine, which provides the aspects of the chain that are worth obtaining security over. Ethereum, Bitcoin, Zcash, and others are all secured by variants of Proof-of-Work consensus, but the kinds of transactions and accounts they handle — the things that make up their unique state machine — are all different. Picture a developer who comes up with a great idea for a new blockchain, one which can provide efficient privacy or wealth distribution or some other exciting feature. While the developer works on implementing that unique state machine, they also have to implement some kind of consensus algorithm, and when they launch their chain it has to compete with others for security resources. This brings overhead and insecurity to developing new blockchain projects. Let me introduce the parachain. A parachain (parallelizable chain) is a simpler form of blockchain, which attaches to the security provided by a “relay chain” rather than providing its own. The relay chain is called that because it not only lends security to attached parachains, but also provides a guarantee of secure message-passing between them. One key feature of parachains is that the computations they perform are inherently independent. Fully generalized systems of turing-complete smart contracts run into issues in determining which transactions will “collide” with each other, meaning that transactions which could potentially be parallelized are often run in sequence, wasting valuable computation time. Drawing clear boundaries between parachains means that we can execute all of them at once without fear of collision — if we have 10 parachains, we can perform 10 times the work using the same source of security. Highly-specialized parachains have another purpose: they can implement data storage and transaction operations in an most efficient manner for their problem domain, without being shoehorned into a blockchain-specific scripting language or virtual machine. At their core, models like Bitcoin Script and the EVM were designed with the goal of interoperability in mind, but systems making use of these models pay the increased cost of execution for all parts of their implementation, not just those which are meant to be accessible from other systems running on the same network. By contrast, Polkadot parachains communicate with each other by asynchronous message passing, and as such only pay the cost of data uniformity at exactly the boundaries where parachains meet. Note that it’s still possible to create a parachain that provides a framework for fully general, turing-complete smart contracts. A simple example would be a parachain powered by the EVM. Contracts implemented on this parachain would both benefit from and be inconvenienced by the generality and interoperability of Ethereum smart contracts for the reasons given above. The primary difference is that it’s fully opt-in. We consider Polkadot’s ability to integrate focused solutions while retaining the optionality of using extremely general frameworks to be one of its most powerful features. One of the most intriguing use-cases for parachains is as a tool for scalability. It is possible to create parachains which have their own parachains, and so on. This creates a tree-like structure that can be used to perform highly distributed computations without reducing the overall burden on the root relay chain itself. The main problem is ensuring data availability — parachain blocks are meant to be accompanied with a proof of validity that remains available to anyone to check for at least a certain period of time. Validators are responsible for ensuring the proof for blocks they verify remains available. Unfortunately, it’s not possible (or at least very difficult) to prove that messages which were supposed to be sent haven’t been without moving the message on-chain. We can avert this problem with largely reputational guarantees: when relatively trusted parties pinpoint a validator as withholding data, they can be punished. This can also be generalized to a system of coin-votes or multi-layered courts. In order to reduce the effectiveness and practicality of malicious and false reports, each report of misbehavior should be accompanied by a non-refundable burn of funds. When enough people are watching a computation, as in the case of first-level parachains, necessary data will typically be available. Another strategy for mitigation involves designing parachains in such a way that stored value can be withdrawn when a chain appears to be stalled or attacked, although this is difficult when that chain executes smart contracts which lock funds or administer their own expenses autonomously. Perhaps an even more interesting approach to scalability is the use of zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. Modern-day non-interactive ZK proofs like ZK-SNARKs or ZK-STARKs allow us to check a proof that a known program with some known inputs and some unknown inputs was executed correctly, and learn what the output of that program was without leaking any information about the private inputs. Most commonly, ZK proofs like this are referred to as a tool for privacy, but they can also be leveraged for performance: surprisingly, the time to check this kind of zero-knowledge proof is more or less constant regardless of the complexity of the program itself, with some proofs verifying in less time than the corresponding program would take to execute! That means that even extremely complex transactions which might take hours of processing can be verified in a short amount of time by the validators of the chain. Unfortunately, the computational and memory cost to create ZK proofs is still higher than feasible for average users. Until these costs come down, ZK proofs in practice will remain a thing of the future. But the great thing about parachains is that they are so general. By allowing each parachain to define a notion of its own validity, we can seamlessly transition from our current bulky proofs to lighter, more advanced proofs in the future. As sharding research develops, parachains can easily be added which implement the latest techniques. And that’s ultimately what Polkadot’s value proposition boils down to: that it sits at the right level of abstraction to work in both the present and the future without any unnecessary overhead. The system is designed to not only accommodate arbitrary progress, but also to have the extensibility to integrate the latest developments in scalability without a hitch. For more questions, reach out to me on Twitter (@rphmeier ) or as rphmeier on Gitter or Riot: For more info about the tech behind Polkadot, please visit Parity Tech’s website Polkadot is a project brought to you by the Web3 Foundation, visit their Polkadot website By clapping more or less, you can signal to us which stories really stand out. Medium account/ publication of the Polkadot Network Show less

Polkadot IntroductionLongHash-DotBlockedUnblockFollowFollowingApr 27As mentioned in the previous paper (link: https://medium.com/@LongHashDot/cross-chain-technology-and-polkadot-2775fd5a8c73 ), cross-chain mechanism has several difficulties. Polkadot is a typical representative of relay cross-chain technology, which aims to interconnect blockchains. How can Polkadot solve these problems? This paper will give a introduction to that.1 ArchitectureThe basic architecture of Polkadot is shown below:Figure 1: Polkadot A2 Interchain Transactions in PolkadotIn polkadot, if parachain A needs to send a transaction to parachain B, the process is below:The Relay Chain groups Validators according to different parachains;The user of parachain A signs and broadcasts transactions;Collectors of parachain A collect transactions, verify the validity of transactions, collate transaction dependent data, package them as a candidate block, and put them into their egress (each parachain has a message output queue named egress and a message input queue named ingress);The corresponding group of Validators selects the candidate block, and verifies transactions, that is, verify the received block contains only valid transactions. If the verification is passed, a bond will be paidafter enough bonds being paid by Nominators, one can submit the block header and the information of the egress of parachain A to the Relay chain;All Validators route interchain messages;All Validators consensus blocks of the Relay chain, and Validators will move the corresponding transaction of parachain A from the egress of parachain A to the ingress of parachain B to complete the message transferB executes the corresponding transaction in ingress queue and modifies its own ledger.3. How to solve problemsHow to prevent double-spendingPolkadot will generate blocks twice in one round. One is the parachain to generate a candidate block, and the other is the consensus block of the entire relay chain for the current block of all parachains. Since the consensus of all parachains occur synchronously, there is no security issue such as double-spending for interchain transactions.How to verify a transactionValidator of Relay chain verifies the transaction by SPV with the block header and related dependency data submitted by the parachain to ensure the validity and consistency of the block. There will give a detailed introduction to SPV and Merkle treetree:Figure 2: Block and merkle treeMerkle Tree has following characteristics:It is a kind of tree, most of which are binary or multi-fork trees. It has all the characteristics of tree structure.The leaf node of the Merkle Tree is the hash value of the blocks.The non-leaf node of the Merkle Tree is the hash value which calculated from all the hash values of all leaf nodes below itIf the number of leaf nodes is odd, you can copy the last leaf node and make an even number.We can find that as long as there is any change in the stored leaf node data, it will be passed up to the corresponding parent node step by step, eventually making the root node hash value of Merkle tree change.SPV:Simple Payment Verification, or SPV. The goal of SPV is to verify whether a transaction payment exists and how many confirmations (blocks) are obtained from the Bitcoin network without running the full node. On the SPV node, it does not save the whole block chain data, but only block head data. This node can not fully verify transactions, but only verify payments (confirming that payments are in the block chain, and how many times they have been confirmed).SPV verification steps:Step1: If the SPV node only cares about a transaction that pays for its bitcoin address, it can limit the transaction that only receives the target bitcoin address by establishing a Bloom filterOnce other nodes detect that a transaction meets the Bloom filter conditions set by the SPV node, the other nodes will send the block as a Merkleblock message (Merkleblock message contains the block header and a Merkle path connecting the target transaction to the Merkle root. The Merkleblock data size is only about one thousandth of the whole block)SPV node validates transactions, checks the existence of the transaction and double-spending of the transactioncheck: SPV node finds the block which contains the transaction through the Merkle path, and verifies whether there is the target transaction in the block (It is also known as Merkle Path Proof);Double-spending check: SPV node checks the number of blocks behind this block to confirm whether there is sufficient probability that no double-spending has occurredpath:For example, if we need to prove whether there is a transaction named tx3 on a block, we only need a Merkle path consisting of the hash values of N4 and N5 to prove it. The process is as follows:Figure 3: Merkle pathStep1: Get the hash value of tx3, N3 = hash (tx3)Step2: Get the hash value of the parent node through the hash values of N3 and N4: N6 = hash (N3 + N4)Step3: Same as above, the hash value of the root node is obtained by the hash values of N5 and N6: Root = hash (N5 + N6)Step4: Compare the root hash value obtained in Step3 with the root hash value of the MerkleTree in the block header. If they are the same, it proves that there is tx3 in the block, otherwise it does not exist.How to guarantee the interconnection of Multi-ChainsHomogeneous Chains: If a new block chain is constructed based on Substrate, it can be directly connected to Polkadot and become a Parachain. The Substrate framework already includes support for consensus, networking, WebAssembly, databases, clients, etc., which reduces the difficulty of Parachain developmentChains: Special Bridges need to be developed to connect to Polkadot. When heterogeneous chains want to interact with Polkadot, the data of heterogeneous chains will be converted to the required patterns of Polkadot through the Bridges specially developed for them.How to transfer assets across chains, and the total amount of assets remains constantThe original chain in the heterogeneous chain mode has a "bridge account" controlled by multiple verifiers. Here, taking Ethereum and Bitcoin systems as examples, we introduce the method of cross-chain asset transfer in the heterogeneous chain modeThe "break-out contract" of Ethereum to deal with the transactions from Ethereum to Polkadot, Ethereum calls a special break-out contract (different parachains, different break-out contracts), the break-out contract charges a fee, and then generates a logging instruction. This instruction can quickly prove the existence of a transaction by SPV, Merkle tree and block header. "Break-in contract" controls and maintains the signatures of 144 Validators. Transactions or messages sent from Polkadot need to collect the required number of Validators' signatures before transactions can be created. Ethereum use the "break-in contract" and "break-out contract" to connect the Ethereum main chain to the Polkadot. The two contracts form a bridge between Ethereum and Polkadot, which allows them to know each other and provide equivalent exchanges (their tokens can be used for payments and settlements). Ethereum wants to transfer assets to other parachains through Polkadot, which means using the bridge as a proxy to negotiate how to pay for the computation cost of the target parachainSome Validators run a multi-signature wallet on the Bitcoin chain and control a "break-out address", which manages the bitcoins and appending informations of asset transfer to enable asset transfer transactions between the Bitcoin blockchainsis the design of Polkadot, which has an ambitious goal of interconnecting various blockchains.by Lichuan Denglichuan Show less

Polkadot is one of the biggest refreshments for the cryptocurrency market in 2020. The project gained lots of popularity quickly so it’s not surprising that many investors are curious to answer the question “Is Polkadot a good investment?” To answer that effectively at least we have to know what Polkadot is and what it is all about. So, let’s give a brief introduction to Polkadot. This protocol is built to allow interoperability between blockchains by providing a multiple chain environment. The Polkadot chain is more than sending tokens from blockchain to blockchain. It also enables the communication of data between these networks. Think of Polkadot as the blockchain that wants to bring us Web 3.0 through the decentralization of the internet. We talk of interoperability earlier and it turns out that not only is Polkadot interoperable within the crypto blockchain but it is also interoperable outside the crypto blockchain. As a result, users can create new blockchains and smart contracts as well as information exchange between blockchains. The Polka blockchain is upgradeable and it has its governance token called DOT. Let’s not forget what we are after with this article which is “Is Polkadot a good investment?” The answer to that will become clearer as we progress with the article. Dr. Gavin Wood founded the Polkadot project in 2016, which is handled by Parity Technologies. The project was built using the blockchain building tool called Substrate. This is a technology built by Parity technologies, which is another tech company co-founded by Dr. Gavin. Many have dubbed Polkadot as the alternative to Ethereum and given that the co-founder of Ethereum develops it, it is easy to see why people draw up that comparison. However, things are not that straightforward. Polkadot was founded to be what Ethereum could not be by introducing a multi-chain environment and interoperability. The protocol itself is a system of multiple blockchains with the main Polkadot chain known as the Relay Chain. So, connected to this relay chain is a series of blockchains called the Parachains and each one has its structure on governance, consensus mechanisms, and tokens. We said earlier that the protocol is built using Substrate, which means that all Parachains built with the same tool can link the Relay chain with ease. However, external blockchains like Ethereum will require a bridge to link the Relay chain. Polkadot relies on a hybrid consensus system to work. The Relay chain uses a type of Proof of Stake known as GHOST-based Recursive Ancestor Deriving Prefix, while the Parachains utilize a type of Proof of Work known as Blind Assignment for Blockchain Extension. The main components of the hybrid consensus include Fishermen, Validators, Nominators, and Collators. Before technical hullabaloo bores us, it is also important we get an idea of the issue Polkadot is trying to solve in the cryptocurrency industry. This help will get an idea of how worthy an investment Polkadot could be or not. The foremost problem that Polkadot attempts to solve in the blockchain industry is the issue of interoperability. The crypto industry is seriously segregated as different blockchains act as an island of their own. This eliminates the chance of one blockchain being able to utilize the data that the other chains have. To solve this, Polkadot introduces a series of signatory technologies that allow the communication of data across several chains. This includes the exchange of data between public and private chains and the other way round. To help determine if Polkadot can be a good investment, we will look at some of the top project’s building on this chain. This could help inform our conclusion on this enterprising blockchain. It is worthy to note that reports have it that investors are quite excited about the potentials of projects building on the Polka chain. That’s not all, reports also have it that throve of new developers are rushing to the platform on the back of cooled interest in blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin. This has understandably driven up Polkadot’s token’s price as well as seen several projects join the protocol. The number of new projects working on the Polkadot chain is close to 253. These projects cover different types of projects from Polka Defi to bridges linking Polka to other chains like Bitcoin, etc. Investors have already announced they are getting a sizable return on their investments. For example, a digital asset firm called KR1 announced a fifteen times ROI on its Polkadot Investment. The co-founder of the company said that the Polkadot ecosystem is full of buzzing projects with clear potential. KR1 is not alone in recognizing the potential that projects on Polkadot hold. Another digital asset firm RockX established an investment program worth $20M that will provide support to worthy projects. The funding can be accessed in Polka native token, DOT, and each project can access up to $500,000 worth of DOT. RockX will get the projects’ tokens or equity as ROI. Let’s have a brief look at the top projects that caught the eye. One of the projects that got on the RockX investment fund is Acala. A DeFi app that is built on Polkadot. It’s potential even got the attention of the RockX cofounder Alex Lam. The project is a parachain and as we have explained before it can communicate with other parachains as well as transfer value and collaborate with them. Acala is seen as a key provider of Defi infrastructure built on Polka, backed by a stablecoin with staking liquidity and decentralized exchange. The interoperability of Polkadot allows Acala to transfer data on its parachain to other networks like Ethereum as well as the other way round. That means you can move your asset, which is in Acala stablecoin to the Ethereum network to purchase Ethereum-based tokens through an exchange like Uniswap. Another top project that has found its way to the Polkadot chain is Moonbeam. The project goal is to provide users with a similar experience to Ethereum as closely as possible. This doesn’t mean it will sacrifice the prized functionality of Polkadot. It simply means that the team behind Moonbeam will have contracts with Ethereum’s solidity code running on Polkadot with just little changes here and there. The use of existing tools like Truffle and Metamask is still applicable. There is also access to features specific to Polkadot like integration across several chains and on-chain governance. The project has gathered around $1.4M in funding so far, notably from a venture firm belonging to the cofounder of Polkadot as well as other sources too. Another notable investor, KR1, expects that the incredible growth of smart contracts on the Ethereum chain will spur high adoption and growth rate on Moonbeam. The focus of the project is delivering verifiable Internet-based identity credentials. It will be mainly utilized on an industrial level in areas like IoT. Thereby bringing the concept of decentralization to these industrial applications to involve several companies. One of the key reasons behind the team building the project on Polkadot is the cheaper gas price compared to Ethereum. KILT is built by BOTLabs, a developer team based in Berlin. So far, the team has secured its first client in the mold of Energy Web. Energy Web is tasked by Germany’s federal energy agency with providing a digital registry to store its distributed energy resources like batteries, thermostats, etc. The product KILT offers will provide decentralized identities that can aid resource optimization. Also, KILT will make up part of GAIA-X, which is a German government initiative to investigate use cases in the blockchain industry. There are also notable mentions like Plasm that uses the Polkadot chain. The three projects we have briefly discussed so far shows that investors are buying into the Polkadot project. This is a good indication that we can consider Polkadot a good investment. How does DOT the Polkadot native token bring value to the project?  The token functions as a governance tool and DOT holders can participate in the decision-making process on the network. It is also used for bonding, and staking on the blockchain. The Fishermen, Nominators, and Validators use DOT to stake on the blockchain. The Collators use the DOT to bond the parachains to the Relay chain. From an initial total supply of 10 million DOT to the current max supply of 1.01 billion coins, Polkadot allows this change in max supply to induce inflation for incentivizing users to participate in the network. The target is to get a participation rate of 75 percent to correspond with an inflation rate of 10 percent. We also have the new DOT and the old DOT. The initial 10 million DOT is what we call the Old DOT and the new DOT was derived by multiplying the old DOT by 100 leading to the 1 billion coins we now have. The latest price of DOT as of November 7, 2020, is $4.23, this is about 100 times less than the old DOT price. Given that the Polkadot team replaced the old DOT with the new one, the data on the price for the old one is gone and no longer available. So, we don’t have much history on the price of DOT after the replacement. However, the price has been rising steadily since then and currently, it is ranked number 8 on Coingecko by market cap placing it in the top ten cryptos. However, the question for the future is if we will get to see Polkadot reach $100? If the token continues to perform well, it is a possibility. We have talked about how the cofounder of Ethereum decided to come up with another project that will be what Ethereum is not. That project is Polkadot and we have been discussing what makes Polkadot a good investment. Polkadot was designed to be a more comprehensive network, more of a shard form of Ethereum. Sharding allows the redistribution of workload that nodes work with, in a way that each node deals with their shard of data, and these shards can be communicated across the nodes’ network. This makes several blockchains interoperable, however, heterogeneous sharding maintain the uniqueness of each blockchain. The parachains in the Polkadot network are heterogeneous shards, which are linked to the Relay chain. Sharding has attracted a lot of people to Polkadot, which has boosted the profile of the project. Arguably, Polkadot is a better investment than some well-known newly launched coins also making waves in the crypto market. Another reason why Polkadot has quickly risen in the rank of top projects is the ability of the parachains to issue its token – something similar to what you will find in Ethereum based protocols. The parachains can also link external blockchains through the bridge, which depends on Polkadot shards to connect and communicate to these external chains. A good example is a DApp planning to build on the Polkadot chain, which can issue PolkaBTC token. The token is a form of BTC that is tokenized on the Polkadot network. For people that could still be struggling to comprehend the idea of Polkadot, you can look at it via the eyes of Ethereum. The parachain can be compared to the ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. It seems investors were already eager to dig in even before the PolkaBTC project is launched into the market. That tells you a thing or two about how valuable the Polkadot network can be and what makes a better investment. Funds like Spartan Black already see the Polkadot project hitting the top-three ranking in terms of market cap in the future. The project is being dubbed as the most crucial project after Ethereum. The DOT is finding favor with investors and increasing in value due to the lure of interoperability that Polkadot offers. This also pinpoints the advantages of sharding as we mentioned earlier. There is no crypto project that doesn’t have an issue or two to deal with and Polkadot is no different. One pressing issue is user familiarity with the platform given the project’s complexity and it seems that the Polkadot team is not too concerned about that yet. Another issue of note is the interoperability of the Polkadot chain. Although the network stresses the interoperability of the chain, in reality, that applies directly to blockchains built on the Polkadot chain. However, an outsider like BTC or Ether will need to be bridged to the Relay chain on Polkadot. Although we talked about some issues that are present around the Polkadot project, the potential of the project and the value it offers means it really could be worth any investment made into it. Is Polkadot a good investment?  Well, given that it has crept into the top ten crypto projects in the world, we can say it is pretty much a worthy investment to add to your portfolio. Related Topics:ethereumpolkadot Up Next The Best Monero Wallets: Top 8 Most Secure XMR Wallets of 2021 Don't Miss Is Fusion (FSN) a Good Investment? Show less

MoonBeam wants Ethereum developers to feel comfortable on Polkadot. 7753 Total views 46 Total shares Listen to article 0:00 News The MoonBeam project is planning on setting up a custom parachain that emulates the Ethereum Virtual Machine environment, effectively recreating Ethereum () on Polkadot (DOT). Developers on Polkadot and some other interoperability projects usually need to set up an entire blockchain to host their decentralized apps. While Polkadot’s Substrate framework is intended to make this process simpler, not all DApps need that level of control over their environment. MoonBeam seeks to become a kind of Ethereum emulator for Polkadot, running on the same virtual environment that is currently powering all smart contracts on Ethereum. The team says that this allows Ethereum DApp developers to only make minimal changes to their code and maintain use of developer tools like Truffle and Metamask. At the same time, the integration with Polkadot would allow for easy interoperability with the rest of the Polkadot ecosystem. Other Substrate modules will still be available, allowing developers to implement on-chain governance, social recovery for wallets, and other features with ready-made code. The team claims that MoonBeam is a more affordable smart contract platform with strong on-chain governance — as a necessity for blockchain systems. MoonBeam will also be interoperable with Ethereum and Bitcoin (), thanks to. Nonetheless, the competition in the DApp scalability space is tough, as multiple layer-one chains. While DeFi largely cemented Ethereum’s dominance in the smart contract space, the limitations of its blockchain. MoonBeam and Polkadot are some of many projects looking to capitalize on this by providing an alternative platform. Other names include Solana, Binance Smart Chain, Near Protocol and Cosmos. MoonBeam’s launch date is yet to be determined, as it depends on. While most expect it to happen around Q1 of 2021, no clear launch date is set. Show less

A brief summary of everything Substrate and PolkadotFabian SchulzBlockedUnblockFollowFollowingMar 18At Parity, we are currently focused on developing three main technologies: Parity Ethereum (Eth 1.0 as well as Serenity), Parity Substrate, and the Web3 Foundation’s project, Polkadot. Ultimately, our goal with these projects is to enable the vision of Web3, “an inclusive set of protocols to provide building blocks for application makers. These building blocks take the place of traditional web technologies like HTTP, AJAX and MySQL, but present a whole new way of creating applications. These technologies give the user strong and verifiable guarantees about the information they are receiving, what information they are giving away, what they are paying and what they are receiving in return. By empowering users to act for themselves within low-barrier markets, we can ensure censorship and monopolization have fewer places to hide.” (Gavin Wood)Read more about the vision of Web3 in Gavin’s original blog post from 2014 and the follow-up article from 2017.By now, there is already an extensive knowledge base on both Polkadot and Substrate. This article intends to cut through the material and take a deeper look at where we are going with the two technologies and why, while also showcasing how public networks such as Ethereum or Zcash fit into the picture.OriginsDr. Gavin Wood conceived the original idea for Polkadot in 2016 while waiting for a new Ethereum specification that would include sharding. Already back then, it was clearly necessary for a main beacon/relay chain to link the shards and coordinate message passing.A first-hand narration on how Polkadot came into being can be found in Epicenter’s episode 259.Taking the thinking process a step further, Gavin ideated a system where the shards connected to the relay chain were not all the same, but allow for different nodes to run different application logic, making each chain its own platform.This would increase the overall system’s complexity and be much more difficult to build.The missing key to realizing this vision was found in WebAssembly: a generic and abstract machine specification that could mediate between blockchains with different runtimes (the chains’ application logic).Creating a system in which blockchains could coexist and complement each other had the potential to overcome chain maximalism, where blockchains compete to be the best end-all, be-all blockchain.If all the shards in a sharded system could have different tasks, they would enable a landscape of very specialized shards (that is, blockchains), without the usual trade-offs that come with specialized blockchains and also systems in general. Let’s have a closer look at this.Interoperability as the key to specializationRight now, a lot of blockchains try to be the ‘chief cook and bottle washer’, incorporating everything from smart contracts, a currency, governance, and more. If you construct your application on one of these blockchains, you’re bound to the platform’s limitations, bottlenecks and governance decisions. On the other hand, you might benefit from that blockchain’s user base.By letting specialized chains exchange messages with other specialized chains, we are able to recover the network effects that would usually hinder specialized chains.Polkadot uses the relay chain to enable arbitrary message passing between blockchains in its ecosystem. The relay chain is generic enough to allow adjacent chains — we call them parachains — to have their own application logic. You have freedom to write your parachain in any language (Rust, C/C++, C#, Go, etc). You merely need to implement a specific function interface that Polkadot can call into, handling the messages passed to the chain.Polkadot connects a range of blockchains, from general to app-specific, to create a platform that enables more advanced applications. Some examples of such advanced applications that harness cross-chain arbitrary message passing:Oracle service that puts real-world data on-chainIdentity management system to link user identity in multiple appsDecentralized exchange order books and escrowIoT network that receives messages from other networks or controllersCross-chain smart contract callsMessage passing between private and public chainsScalabilityWhen we solve the dilemma of specialization vs. generalization by introducing interoperability, we also remove scalability bottlenecks. Besides transaction throughput, fully generalized, independent smart contract platforms have a problem with transaction collision. Consequently, transactions often run in sequence instead of in parallel. Through a deliberate delegation of tasks to different parachains, we are able to run transactions in parallel, without fear of collision.In Polkadot’s version one, this means that dozens of blockchains can run in parallel, connected through one relay chain. The development process is still in progress; we currently estimate that the relay chain will be able to host about one hundred parachains, but anything between ten and one thousand slots is imaginable. In the case of dozens of blockchains able to run in parallel, that system would have about one hundred times the scalability of a current PoS system.Potentially, a version two of Polkadot could have multiple relay chains attached to the root relay chain (level zero). This is especially possible given that the Polkadot relay chain is itself developed with Substrate, the same technology stack that most parachains will be built with. With these level-one relay chains, we are looking at 1,000x to 10,000x scalability compared to current PoS systems. However, this will only be assessed at a later point in time.Security aspectsOvercoming inherent limitations of individual blockchain designs sounds promising so far, but we have not yet discussed the aspects of synchronization and consensus in such a system. Polkadot enables the deterministic understanding of messages passed between parachains, but how is the order of transactions in the overall network determined? How is security in every parachain, but also in the whole system, attained? At first glance, it might not seem like an issue. If you connect different chains, each one brings its own validator set to secure the chain, as is the case in well-known multi-chain scenarios like sidechains or Cosmos.Shared securityThe first problem that comes to mind when brokering two chains might be the following scenario. A transaction is sent from one PoS chain to another. Chain 1 has weaker economic security guarantees over its finality. In an attack, the transaction is reverted and the block containing it is abandoned. Chain 1 lives on in a different fork, with the corresponding block not including this transaction anymore.But its actual value has already been transferred to chain B. The weaker security of chain 1 has directly affected chain 2. Effectively, this opens up the possibility of double-spend attacks.Imagine not two, but one hundred interconnected chains with individual levels of security exchanging value. The chain with the weakest security will ultimately define the security of the overall system, representing the weakest link. It is therefore preferable to have the same security guarantees for all parachains. This can be achieved by pooling their security and delegating it to the Polkadot relay chain.The security model of Polkadot pools resources, countering the problem of the weakest link in the network.In addition, each validator can only commit a certain amount of resources — computational power in PoW, or financial stake in PoS — exacerbating the weakest link problem. When validators start securing different chains, some chains — first and foremost the ones with less appealing incentive structures — will end up with less economic security, posing an easier target for malicious actors.Another benefit with pooled security is that you won’t have to bootstrap a validator community to secure your blockchain, but can completely focus on your chain’s task (i.e. the runtime), leaving part of the security aspects to the Polkadot relay chain.Making blockchain development easyWhat we’ve learned so far is that Polkadot is a heterogeneous multichain protocol, allowing for blockchain interoperability and pooled security of parachains. Let’s now explore how we can take full advantage of Polkadot’s possibilities by making the actual development of parachains as easy as possible.When we began building Polkadot at Parity, we realized that we were repeating a lot of development that we had done for our Ethereum and Bitcoin clients, such as writing RPC and database components. Even the most specialized blockchains have many attributes in common: a hashing algorithm, a database, networking, etc.While the ideation or design of a single blockchain is a conflict of versatility and specialization, the creation process of many different chains leads to another type of trade-off. In a system with homogeneous shards, the system can be scaled by duplicating shards. With heterogeneous shards as in Polkadot, each of them has to be designed and implemented individually, making the development process per se non-scalable.Substrate: a framework to efficiently build different blockchainsIn order to efficiently build many different blockchains, Parity developers put all the functionalities needed to build a blockchain into a framework called Substrate. The idea was to take everything learned building Ethereum and Bitcoin implementations and make creating a blockchain as easy and flexible as possible. Substrate was created in a modular way to give technical freedom but also make functionalities like accounts, balances, governance, and smart contracts as easy as plugging in a library.In Polkadot cofounder Robert Habermeier’s words, Substrate is, “a set of libraries for doing all the things that are really annoying about writing blockchains.” Substrate effectively separates the individual functionalities of a blockchain as modules and generalizes them enough so that they can still be used effectively for different scenarios, while their manageability enables near instant implementation. Substrate has been developed to create blockchains that will easily connect to Polkadot.From factory-sealed laptop to a fully-specced blockchain in 30 minutes — Dr. Gavin Wood presenting Substrate on stage at Web3 Summit 2018, Berlin.Designed for maximum technical freedom and easeSubstrate’s multilayered architecture lets developers choose between ease of development and technical freedom. The three layers are Substrate Core (with Polkadot-Core-integration), Substrate SRML, and Substrate Node.Developers are free to choose how much of the Substrate framework they want to use.To create a blockchain and connect it to Polkadot, on a technical level, you could build your own blockchain from scratch and equip it with a block validation function in WebAssembly. From scratch means that you have to implement your own node, RPC synchronization, networking, cryptography, database, storage, consensus, as well as extended features such as a light client and telemetry. This bare-bones approach is known as Polkadot Core.If you don’t want to create all of those for scratch, you can start with Substrate Core. Substrate Core provides you with all the above functionalities, only requiring you to code your own runtime (state transition function), but also offers the possibility to customize networking, block authoring, and the transaction queue functionality.If you decide to use the Substrate Runtime Module Library (SRML), then all you have to do is pick the modules you need from the library and configure them with your desired parameters. Your blockchain will work with tools such as event tracking and a blockchain explorer. Additionally, you are able to modify the existing modules or write your own ones, if needed.The blockchain development equivalent of room service is Substrate Node. With Substrate Node, you get a complete smart contract blockchain just by providing a JSON config file.Substrate gives you tools to develop your blockchain quickly without having to handle the complexity behind every functionality. Learn more about what you get with Substrate.Polkadot is not Substrate is not PolkadotThough Substrate makes it very easy to build blockchains ready for Polkadot, blockchains in the Polkadot network don’t need to be built with Substrate. And even if you don’t want your blockchain to connect to Polkadot, you will still find Substrate a very useful framework for creating a state-of-the-art blockchain.In the future, there might be frameworks redundant to Substrate, also optimized to integrate with Polkadot, that give developers an alternative or you could still build your parachain from scratch.For more information on how Polkadot and Substrate relate, watch Fabian Gompf’s talk from the Devcon IV Parity & Polkadot meetup.Integrating existing blockchainsSubstrate and Polkadot are not intended to replace existing infrastructure. Rather, they serve to connect it and fill the gaps regarding engineering possibilities. Polkadot parachains require more effort than smart contract-based Dapps and some applications don’t justify setting up a whole parachain, while others do. This depends on the scope of each application and has to be evaluated on an individual basis. In contrast to parachains, smart contracts represent a sandboxed environment and require less safety measures. One could argue that parachains are optimized for interoperability (communication between separate applications/chains), while smart contracts are optimized for intraoperability (communication within a chain runtime).A bridge chain from a 10,000 foot view of the Polkadot architecture.Parachains, blockchains in the Polkadot network, are secured by Polkadot’s relay chain and thus are not able to select their own consensus mechanism. If a blockchain wants to use its own consensus mechanism, it can use a parachain as a “bridge” to connect to Polkadot’s network.A bridge chain allows an independent blockchain such as Ethereum, with its own particular consensus mechanism, to connect to the Polkadot network. As opposed to parachains, where security is pooled, a network like the Ethereum mainnet will stay independent.Possible manifestations of Substrate-based chains.The parachain functionality with pooled security in this case only extends to the bridge, whereas Ethereum, connected to the other side of the bridge, resembles more of a sidechain with the chains’ mutual ability to interpret each other’s block headers, state transition, and finality.Finality in a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain refers to the condition where reverting to a previous state would result in a significant amount of staked tokens being slashed because a supermajority of the chain’s validators had approved the final state. Although reverting a finalized block is technically possible, it would represent a large error by the validator set. It is not possible to have this type of finality — where reversion represents an error by a supermajority of the validators — in a PoW chain because the set of validators (miners) is theoretically infinite. PoW chains, therefore, have “probabilistic” finality, because at some point the probability of reversion is considered negligible.Bridging chains that have probabilistic finality will also have implications on latency. This means that it will be reasonable to wait an appropriate time period to consider a transaction coming from e.g. Ethereum to the relay chain as final. Transactions within, and coming from, the Polkadot network with its adaptive, progressive finality can be considered final much faster,almost instantly. This results in waiting time for a transaction exiting a bridged chain, but almost no waiting for all the other transactions in the Polkadot network.Forkless runtime upgradesSo far, the implications of Polkadot’s interoperability on scalability and security have been highlighted. However, there is also the question of what happens in case of a fork. Once blockchains become interdependent, a fork has tremendously larger impact than in the case of a siloed network splitting in two individual siloed networks. This is true for the relay chain as well as parachains and brings us to one of Substrate’s most exciting features, the forkless runtime upgrade.Updating the network — the usual wayThe common practice for upgrading a blockchain network is to change the rules of the underlying protocol. This is done to introduce new features or alter the existing rules. If the upgrade is not compatible with older versions, this forces nodes to update in order to continue participating in the current version of the network. Nodes who do not update will be unable to understand the new rules and will be separated from the network, possibly forming an alternative network. While temporary forks happen due to the network finding consensus, planned, permanent forks happen due to intentioned network updates. This is essentially updating the network by resetting it, which is impractical in an interoperable environment. Polkadot’s relay chain is the turnstile of a heterogeneous multichain ecosystem. It is easy to imagine the problems caused by having two versions of the relay chain.Updating the network — the Substrate waySince Polkadot is built on top of Substrate, we can utilize a handy feature of Substrate to circumvent forks in the relay chain and also every other blockchain built with Substrate. How do Substrate on-chain updates work?If a block is produced and propagated through the network, the Substrate nodes will execute that block after performing various generic checks on it. Executing a block is fulfilled by the Substrate nodes, but the impulse to do so comes from the chain runtime.What does executing a block imply? Once the block is determined valid by consensus, a node will start to execute the state transitions it contains. If successful, the node will store the block. While processing the state transitions, the node will effectively access its merklised storage database, which is basically a key-value store. Substrate operates on this key-value store with the basic functions set_state and get_state. Now Substrate can be provided with a special case for set_state, namely with the key :code. In this case, Substrate expects to be provided with a WebAssembly (Wasm) runtime. Since the blockchain runtime runs in Wasm itself, it can be presented with a new binary blob of Wasm code. This piece of code will be executed as part of the state transitions, causing the runtime to update as specified in the blob.Every time Substrate executes a block, it checks its version of the code, being able to switch from native runtime to the Wasm runtime on-chain in case the node is not running the most recent version.On-chain governance will play an important role in Polkadot. Mechanisms to govern the network are under design and will be centered around stake-based voting schemes. Several additional measures such as a council as well as vote weighting, alternative vote counting schemes, and delegated voting will ensure that governance processes are efficient, practically feasible, and sufficiently respect minority opinions in the network. But if governance is supposed to be binding, decisions coming from the referenda have to be directly enacted on-chain, requiring the Polkadot runtime to update.A chain’s governance mechanism can be responsible for the :code key. This means that runtime updates could only be triggered by governance decisions. For example, in case of a positive voting outcome, the predefined key is automatically entered into the set of state transitions, making the governance decisions on the chain binding.Wrapping upThe article has picked up on the core concepts behind Polkadot and Substrate, how they came into being, and what they can mean for the blockchain ecosystem as a whole. As we’ve seen, Substrate and Polkadot perfectly complement each other. While the latter makes it possible to connect otherwise disparate chains with different characteristics, Substrate lets us create these chains in an efficient, safe, and comparatively easy manner.TL;DRPolkadot is a heterogeneous multichain protocol. This means that the shards connected to the relay chain are not all the same, but allow for different nodes to run different application logic, making each chain its own platform. If all the shards in a sharded system can have different tasks, they enable a landscape of very specialized shards (that is, blockchains).By letting specialized chains exchange messages with other specialized chains, we are able to recover the network effects that would usually hinder specialized chains. Polkadot connects a range of blockchains, from general to app-specific, to create a platform that enables more advanced applications.When we solve the dilemma of specialization vs. generalization by introducing interoperability, we also remove scalability bottlenecks.The security model of Polkadot pools resources, countering the problem of the weakest link in the network. Parachains, blockchains in the Polkadot network, are secured by Polkadot’s relay chain and thus are not able to select their own consensus mechanism. Another benefit with pooled security is that it is not necessary to bootstrap a validator community to secure your blockchain.If a blockchain wants to use its own consensus mechanism, it can use a parachain as a “bridge” to connect to Polkadot’s network.In order to efficiently build many different (heterogeneous) blockchains for the Polkadot ecosystem, Parity developers put all the functionalities needed to build a blockchain into a framework called Substrate. Substrate’s multilayered architecture lets developers choose between ease of development and technical freedom.Though Substrate makes it very easy to build blockchains ready for Polkadot, blockchains in the Polkadot network don’t need to be built with Substrate.Substrate comes with the ability to conduct forkless runtime upgrades. Once blockchains become interdependent, a fork has tremendously larger impact than in the case of a siloed network splitting in two individual siloed networks.Next StepsStay tuned for the next Polkadot milestones by following Polkadot on Twitter.If you want to try out Substrate, check out the Substrate Developer Hub. Show less

Polkadot is a next generation blockchain protocol that connects multiple specialized blockchains to a unified network. It was conceived as a way for the Web to restore control of individuals "Internet monopoly, building on the revolutionary promise of early blockchain networks and offering several fundamental benefits. Multi-chainnetwork Blockchains can only handle a limited amount of traffic in isolation and even then only for a very limited number of users at the same time. Polkadot is a fragmented multi-chain network, which means it can handle many transactions simultaneously, eliminating bottlenecks that have occurred. This parallel computing power significantly improves scalability and creates increased acceptance. The separate chain connected to polkadots is called a parachute because it stores all its transactions in a separate database. Specialize When it comes to blockchain architecture, not everything fits neatly into a block, and blockchain architectures need to be compromised to support different functions and use cases. At Polkadot, each blockchain can have a new design optimized for a specific use case. For example, a chain could optimize identity management, while file storage could be optimized, and so on. This means that blockchain can provide better services by improving efficiency and security by eliminating unnecessary code. The team develops and adapts its blockchain with a substrate development framework based on the open source blockchain platform Ethereum and the open source codebase. Interoperability Unlike previous networks, which were largely operated in a stand-alone environment, Polkadot offers interoperability and chain communication. Instead of relying on a single sales device such as a computer, network or smartphone, the network and applications on PolkADot can exchange information and functions such as apps and smartphones across multiple devices. This allows users to transfer information across chains and opens the door to innovative new services. For example, a chain that provides financial services can communicate with another that provides real-world data, known as the oracle chain, which feeds prices into stock prices and symbolic trading. Customize blockchain Teams can customize and optimize blockchain management to meet their needs, and build prefabricated modules to deploy them faster. The municipality of Polkadot has its own blockchain governance model for its citizens. It can be perfected and improved when needs and conditions change over time, such as the number of inhabitants, the size of the municipality or the type of infrastructure. Upgrade easily Together, these core features open up new services that give people control over their own digital lives. Like any software, blockchains need upgrades to stay relevant and improve over time. Upgrading a traditional chain requires a so-called hard fork, which creates two separate transaction processes that can split a community into two, often taking months of work. Polkadot enables forkless upgrades, allowing the blockchain to evolve and adapt easily as better technologies become available. For some projects, its unique design offers a unique combination of security, scalability, privacy and a high level of transparency.   Show less

What is Polkadot (DOT)? A quick overview 9 min read is a global network of interoperable chains , a networking solution for blockchains to operate with each other in a safe and reliable way. With Polkadot, you will be able to communicate with other existing chains that have been ported on the Polkadot layer but also create new chains that will be able to send transactions and messages with each other. Compared to other networking protocols, Polkadot not only allows the transfer of value across chains but also transfers of any kind of data, such as messages .Ultimately, Polkadot enables the creation of networks of blockchains. Because one chain does not fit all applications, in network of blockchains, you can have various chains with their own characteristics and parameters adapted to the problem these are solving e.g. permission-based, public, private, different number of validators, inflation, governance system, their own token or not, oracle chain, and any kind of application-specific blockchain.The Story behind Polkadot An internet where users are in control of their own data, identity and destiny.Polkadot was conceived about 4 years ago by. Co-founder and initial CTO of Ethereum, Gavin had finished building and writing the code for the first implementation of Ethereum and was looking for ways to take this to the next level and make it scalable. In January 2016, Gavin announced its intention to leave Ethereum and decided to focus on a new venture that would achieve its vision of a truly decentralized internet: the Web 3.0.In the summer of 2016, while waiting for a new Ethereum specification that would include sharding, the idea of Polkadot came to Gavin. Taking the thinking process further, Gavin originated an idea where the shards connected to the relay chain would have their own business logic and specificities: a heterogeneous multichain protocol. On November 2016, following these reflexions, of Polkadot was published.Following that, in June 2017, the was created, with the role to develop technologies and applications in the fields of decentralized web software protocols. Since then, Polkadot raised various rounds of fundings (including one affected by the Parity wallet hack) for more than $140m. The project contracted with multiple development agencies and is now approaching Mainnet launch scheduled for Q419.Where are we now? In October 2017, the Polkadot pre-sale started and raised 485,331 ETH raised (at 1 dot = 0.109 ETH), amounting to around $140m based on ETH prices at that time. Some of these funds were lost to the Parity multi-sig wallet hack, however, it appears that mechanism may provide some relief for Polkadot (which owns of the ETH frozen following the hack).A few weeks later, the first codes were published on. After several months of coding , was here in May 2018 and Gavin showed a test of a governance-based dynamic runtime-upgrade for Polkadot.In July 2018, was launched through an on-chain governance-based upgrade, and the first parachain was deployed. This upgrade also introduced staking rewards and slashing for validators, and was the first real-world use of .In January 2019, was launched, which includes the GRANDPA algorithm, enabling near-instant finality for blocks.In April 2019, started with some new staking features to make running a validator safer and more secure.In August 2019, , an experimental network within the Polkadots ecosystem, was launched. It is based on the unaudited version of Polkadot and it is a highly experimental network.In the last quarter of 2019, Proof-of-Concept 5 should launch with specs including interchain message passing, and parachain auction module. 1.0 release candidate and genesis should follow soon after PoC 5 has been tested. At the time of this article, these are expected to launch by the end of 2019 as well.Key characteristics Interoperability : Polkadot allows blockchains to interact in a trust-free fashion. Through Polkadot, all connected blockchains will be able to transmit value including messages or any kind of data in a way that they can trust one another .Scalability : There are two ways to enhance blockchain scalability: vertical and horizontal stability. Vertical scalability consists of increasing transaction throughput (TPS). However, TPS cant be infinite and even a network with high TPS might reach its limits if it is successful. Thus, Polkadot, like other networking protocols, focuses on horizontal scalability : an architecture with multiple interoperable chains running in parallel, making the network theoretically infinitely scalable. The idea is that by making blockchains interoperable and having the ability to communicate with each other, you create a scalable network of application-specific blockchains that can each have their own business logic. Within the Polkadot networking platform, you can imagine that there will be smart contract platforms (like Ethereum), oracle chains and privacy protocols, all connected and interacting with each other.Shared security : This model, where the system shares the same pool of validators, allows the whole system to move together in one step if there is one transaction on a parachain, and improves trust within the ecosystem. With shared security, all blockchains have the same security guarantees and youcan immediately trust the validity of a parachain and of the whole network, which is secured by the same tokens, the DOT tokens. You can trust that everything has been recorded correctly on the parachains and that there is no double spend in any of the chains of the network.Governance : The idea is that Polkadot is a self-amending chain that can evolve without forks over time through new features and bug fixes. Initially, DOT holders will have complete control of the network, and stakeholders can modify the network through governance, and how governance is defined can also change (stake-weighted referendum with staked DOTs). This governance model, still under design, might evolve over time to include other stakeholders such as parachains. In addition to public referendum voting, additional measures will be set up such as a Council and other voting schemes.Making blockchain development easy with Substrate : Polkadot is a developer-oriented protocol with a focus on making its ecosystem thrive with other blockchains and applications connected to the network. With , an optional modular framework and development kit for building applications on the blockchain , developers can save a crucial amount of time when building their own chain or app, and focus on their own business logic (consensus mechanism, token or not, governance mechanism, etc.). Thanks to Polkadots shared security model and Substrate, developers can focus on what makes their chain or app unique and benefit from built-in security and connectivity, and do not have to even bootstrap a validator community around the project. Nonetheless, Substrate, the built-in shared security or even connectivity to Polkadot are optional: one can create a solo-chain and later on plug-in into Polkadot and transform it into a parachain, one can use Substrate for whatever blockchain-oriented developments, and one can build a parachain without using Substrate.Components of the ecosystem Polkadot is a global network of blockchain designed around key components:Relay chain : in charge of checking the validity of all the parachains and making sure they operate correctly and securing them. Anyone can connect their chain to the Polkadot network and benefit from this shared security and interact with the other chains.Validators : Staked full nodes that are responsible for verifying and adding blocks to the relay chain. They can also be fishermen.Parachains : Parachains are application-specific blockchains built to interact with Polkadot. A parachain could be for example a privacy coin connecting to the network, a Dapp with its specific chain, an oracle chain, or a smart contract focused chain. It attaches to the security provided by a relay chain and its validator pool rather than providing its own.Collators : Bundle (collate) transactions on the parachain they monitor into blocks, and send a proof of this block to validators. They can also be fishermen.Nominators : In Polkadots NPoS (Nominated Proof-of-Stake) consensus algorithm, nominators elect validators by delegating their voting power to them, and share the risks and rewards of maintaining the network decentralized and secure.Fishermen : Fishermen monitor bad behaviours, if able to prove invalid block, whoever submitted that block will have their DOTs slashed and given to the Fishermen who will receive part of the staked DOTs from the malicious actor.This role may be filled by validators and collators, which are expected to police themselves for a share of the slashing rewards in case of misbehaviours.Solo-chains with Bridge : Solo-chains are completely sovereign chain such as Ethereum and can be bridged into Polkadots network to communicate with its various blockchains, a bit like sidechains.What can you build on Polkadot? Polkadot is a networking multi-chain protocol and as such developers and companies can build both blockchains connected to the ecosystem but also various kind of DApps. The optional Substrate SDK can it very easy for any builder to kickstart their development process, would it be a parachain or a specific app.As of January 2019, including , and had announced their intent to build on Polkadot. Another interesting project being built is , a self-improving smart contract blockchain with PoS consensus and built-in governance.The Kusama initiative: Expect Chaos Kusama is an experimental network within the Polkadots ecosystem. It is not a testnet, but an unaudited network built on Polkadot v0.5.0, whose goal is to understand and test the technology under real economic conditions.Kusama was launched in August 2019 and began as a Proof-of-Authority network, but validators can already issue their intention to operate on the network.For more details on Kusama, you can check .Whos behind Polkadot? Web3 Foundation is the primary entity behind the Polkadot project, it acts as treasurer and council for Polkadot, and ensures the development of the project and of its ecosystem. Web3 does not only back Polkadot, but also other protocols such as Kusama (Polkadots experimental network), a decentralized messaging protocol, community events (Web3 summit), and funds other protocols as well such as Ethereum, where a lot of team members are from.Web3 contracted about 5 development teams to help build the protocol: Parity Technologies, Chainsafe Systems, Soramitsu, OpenNetSys and Polkadot JS.Want to discover more about Polkadot? Theres so much to tell about Polkadot and the great tools and frameworks that have been and are being built that we have taken some shortcuts in this article. Please feel free to browse through their and have a look at their or our links above. Additionally, your comments are welcomed. Show less

  Dapp.com is pleased to announce that we are adding support for Polkadot and Kusama parachains, ecosystem components, tooling, and DApps. The current landscape of both, including over 100 projects could be discovered under Polkadot Projects and Kusama Projects.        It’s The Dawn of A New Era   Polkadot and Kusama are independent, standalone networks built on very similar codebases. They are both scalable, multichain networks built for radical innovation, autonomous governance, and empowering developers.     Polkadot’s initial phase launched on May 26th, 2020. The network is designed for stable execution of risk-averse, high-value applications.      While Polkadot is more conservative, prioritizing stability and dependability, with slower, more methodical governance and upgrade processes, Kusama is wild and fast.      Kusama launched on Aug 23rd, 2019. The network has faster governance parameters and lower barriers to entry. It is excellent for bold experimentation and early-stage deployment.  (Source: Polkadot blog)     Dapp.com is the largest marketplace for blockchain apps and services, which provides trusted on-chain data analytics of over 3,500 decentralized apps built on 15 Layer 1 blockchains.      Dapp.com intends to list and track all current and future products around Polkadot, Kusama, and Substrate-based blockchains. Dapp.com plans further integrations to provide analytics of apps built on different Substrate-based sovereign blockchains.       Value of Dapp.com Support   Dapp.com will help expose Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem components, chains, and DApps to its worldwide blockchain adopters. Our ability to track, visualize, and analyze the on-chain user performance of DApps will be useful to the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems.      Teams building on Polkadot or Kusama can submit their projects here: https://www.dapp.com/submit-your-product     Dapp.com is the leading blockchain-based application and on-chain analysis platform. Offering a suite of metrics, market reports, and data insights into 15 different smart contracts platforms, Dapp.com is on the bleeding-edge of an emerging market for decentralized applications.      Discover the latest blockchain apps on dapp.com.      Buy DOT:   (Powered by Moonpay. Support 6+ payments, credit cards acceptable.)          Show less

Parity Technologies has released the second version of its blockchain building kit, Substrate 2.0, according to a blog post shared Wednesday with CoinDesk.  The new release gives developers additional tools to customize a blockchain “precisely for your application or business logic,” the post reads.  Parity Technologies is the developer of the Polkadot blockchain with ambitions for developing a Web 3.0, undergirded by a meshing of various blockchains. By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms & conditions and privacy policy.The centerpiece of that multi-blockchain vision is Substrate. It acts as a tooling kit for developers making their own blockchains with Polkadot – also built on Substrate – working underneath as a communication and economic layer of sorts between Substrate-based blockchains. For example, Parity Tech’s “canary” network Kusama and security token platform Polymesh are two Substrate blockchains. Both chains should be able to communicate with each other, if everything pans out as co-founder of Parity Tech Gavin Wood foresees. Read more: Polymath Moves Security Token Platform Off Ethereum and Onto Parity’s Substrate The new release adds a few core functionalities as Polkadot continues rolling developments after its May debut, said Parity Technologies head of public affairs Peter Mauric to CoinDesk in a phone interview. Most important, the code shipment includes 70 composable “modules” for blockchain architects to plug and play various design ideas. Parity developers call these modules “pallets.”  Read more: Polkadot Releases Rococo, Its Test Environment for Interoperable ‘Parachains’ For example, pallets exist for managing an on-chain developer treasury or for allowing smart contracts on a Substrate-based blockchain to speak with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).  Substrate 2.0 also includes modules for bringing off-chain data onto the blockchain using what it calls “off-chain workers.” These remove the burden of intensive processes and massive data sets from specialized nodes on the network, and communicate with the main chain to ensure all network participants are kept up to date automatically. Addressing what is generally referred to as the “oracle problem,” these off-chain workers help bring data from the real world, such as prices or temperatures, onto a blockchain and are “ideal for Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices or real-world data inputs via oracles,” the blog states. Parity TechnologiesInteroperabilityPolkadotSubstrateDisclosureThe leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.What is undefined? Show less

Cryptocurrency News & Your Guide to the Blockchain EconomyPolkadot is an upcoming multi-chain framework platform — similar to Cosmos — designed to facilitate interoperability and scalability of blockchains that can plug into its ‘Relay Chain.’ Polkadot is an ambitious project that leverages a form of proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus for the broader ecosystem of blockchains that are connected to it and is scheduled for official launch in Q3 2019.Importantly, Polkadot allows data structures — outside of solely blockchains — to connect to the network as ‘parachains.’ Originally conceived by Gavin Wood — creator of the Solidity programming language –, Polkadot is a heterogenous multi-chain framework where parachains operate through a trust-minimized federation structure.The scalability problems of blockchain networks are well-documented, and platforms like Polkadot are striving to become the next generation of networks that foster enhanced scalability and interoperability through expanding the design concepts of public blockchains and standardizing the transfer of data.Polkadot explicitly identifies three primary areas that current blockchains struggle with to realize their full potential for providing practical applications:Polkadot employs a relay chain which functions as the hub through which the parachains connect to and coordinates the consensus as well as transferring of messages and data between the parachains. Notably, both public and permissioned blockchains can connect to the network, with the ability of permissioned chains to isolate themselves from the rest of the system while still retaining the ability to transfer data to other chains and leverage the network’s security.Parachains can be blockchains or other data structures that plug into the relay chain for pooled security and interoperability with other chains. However, they must meet the following criteria to be compatible with the Polkadot network:Parachains process their own transactions, which allows the network to scale based on concurrent independent processing of transactions per parachain which are secured via the broader network consensus.The consensus of Polkadot is heavily inspired by Tendermint and HoneyBadgerBFT, but uses PoS as the primary method for incentivizing validators to be honest in the network.Read: Beginner’s Guide to Tendermint: Byzantine Fault Tolerant Blockchain EnginePolkadot can also form ‘bridges’ with other chains that have their own consensus — such as Ethereum.The bottom layers of the Polkadot protocol are known as the Polkadot Runtime Environment and are common throughout all the parachains on the network. These 3 layers consist of the Wasm interpreter, consensus, and networking.The upper layers are unique to each connected parachain. Substrate — from Parity Technologies — is the first implementation of the Polkadot Runtime Environment (PRE). Parachains will be written using the PRE, which is built on the Web3 technology stack.An important aspect of Polkadot is that it employs the Libp2p networking stack, and is the first real-world use of its Rust implementation.The dynamics of how Polkadot works are complex, so it is best to visualize the platform through the four primary participant roles in the ecosystem.Validators finalize the blocks in the Polkadot network and play the most critical role in the ecosystem. Validators are required to run the full relay chain client and need to stake a significant ‘bond’ (in the native DOT token) to qualify. However, validators can nominate other validators to act in their stead.Validators receive candidate blocks from collators — who propagate selected blocks to validator subgroups from parachains — and finalize the blocks on the relay chain through a deterministic selection process and final round of validating ratification.Nominators are parties that also hold a stake in the network, but function as a mechanism for selecting trustworthy validators through contributing their bond to a select validator’s bond. Their role is very straightforward and helps strengthen the pooled security of the relay chain.The collators work on the parachain level rather than directly with securing the relay chain. They gather transactions from the parachains, produce a proof along with an unsealed block, and send it to the appropriate validator charged with finalizing a parachain block. The Polkadot white paper notes that the role of collators may evolve, and eventually they may be contracted to work closely with specific validators for verifying blocks from certain parachains.Collators can also work to prove malicious behavior to validators on the network as an added layer of security. The general role of collators is similar to the work of miners in PoW blockchains.Fishermen are independent of the block verification process and seek out malicious behavior on the network that they report to validators about bad validators. They are motivated as ‘bounty-hunters’ looking for substantial one-off rewards by proving that a bonded party (i.e., validator or collator) acted maliciously outside of the rule set.Fishermen post small bonds to the network too, however. This is to prevent Sybil attacks, but is not nearly as high as validators and can be withdrawn at any point.Polkadot achieves a standardized communication across the network through its interchain communication protocol. Transactions between parachains or between parachain and relay chain are fully asynchronous, and all data transfers (even between parachains) are referenced on the relay chain.Blockchains that are ‘bridged’ to Polkadot rather than directly plugged in as a parachain can leverage the standardized intercommunication of the network without sacrificing their own consensus. However, these chains forgo the shared state and security guarantees of the Polkadot network. Ethereum will be the first example of such a bridge on the platform.Polkadot employs an on-chain governance model that is entirely controlled by the relay chain stakeholders. Stakeholders (i.e., validators) stake the native DOT token and can control everything from direct protocol upgrades to bug fixes.Like other PoS consensus models, the native token is used for bonding and to incentivize validators to act honestly through having a financial stake in the authenticity of the verification process. Further, parachains connect to Polkadot through bonding and can be removed via withdrawing their stake from the network.Polkadot is currently in its testnet POC-2 phase, where testDOT were used to upgrade the protocol from the POC-1 network and introduced several other features, including using the Rust implementation of Libp2p.On-chain governance is a fascinating concept and is not only employed by Polkadot, but by other networks that are already live such as Tezos and Decred.Since Polkadot does not make assumptions about the parachains connected to the network, it offers a wide range of flexibility for developers to build application-specific blockchains such as privacy-oriented ones or some focusing explicitly on certain dapp development.Polkadot is also designed to facilitate faster innovation cycles. Features of one parachain can be leveraged on another, sharing innovation between chains and not simply just token transfers as the sole form of interoperability. Parachains are also free to focus on application building rather than having to focus on their own security. Parachains explicitly designed to function within Polkadot are part of the larger pooled security, creating a crucial abstraction of one of the more complicated components of blockchain networks for developers.An intriguing example that Polkadot provides is the ability for users of a decentralized exchange on one parachain to deposit BTC onto the exchange using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) by leveraging a ZCash parachain.The potential applications of multi-chain frameworks are enormous and should help foster much more experimentation with new technologies born out of the sheer power of interoperability. However, consensus — particularly PoS — is complex and tricky to design around and has yet to be proven at a large scale in a decentralized network over considerable time, especially within a multi-chain environment.Polkadot offers another promising glimpse into what the future generation of blockchains will look like, and may prove a gravitating setting for public and permissioned blockchains to come together and mutually benefit each other.Blockchain writer, web developer, and content creator. An avid supporter of the decentralized Internet and the future development of cryptocurrency platforms.All content on Blockonomi.com is provided solely for informational purposes, and is not an offer to buy or sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any security, product, service or investment. The opinions expressed in this Site do not constitute investment advice and independent financial advice should be sought where appropriate.Your email address will not be published. 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Polkadot has gone live with its first “chain candidate,” a nearly-complete version of its blockchain. The blockchain has been under development since 2017, at which time it raised $140 million in one of the year’s most successful ICOs. Polkadot is focused on interoperability: it connects different blockchains together through sharding, parachains, and bridges. These capabilities allow blockchains, and the applications built on those chains, to communicate with each other and process transactions in parallel. There are several notable projects that are building on Polkadot, including Polymath (a security token platform), Chainlink (an oracle platform), and Aragon (a DAO platform). Though Polkadot’s parent company, Parity, has distanced itself from Ethereum, Polkadot will still support connectivity with Ethereum through various bridge features. This version of Polkadot is a chain candidate, meaning that it has many of the features that will be part of the blockchain’s mainnet. Most importantly, this version of Polkadot supports token claims and staking. Though rewards are not being paid out yet, users who stake their tokens will be able to serve as validators in the next phase. This means that Polkadot is being run as a “Proof of Authority” blockchain right now under the governance of the Web3 Foundation—not by a decentralized network of staking nodes. Parity founder and lead developer Gavin Wood has also given a timeline for other features. He notes that identity features will be introduced on Thursday, and adds that support for parachains is “weeks away.” Polkadot’s governance features are also on the way. This will allow participants to vote on matters such as development and spending. Polkadot is controversial due to issues around its DOT token. Of the $140 million raised in Polkadot’s 2017 token sale, $98 million worth of those tokens have been frozen due to an Ethereum bug. It is not clear if those tokens will ever be unlocked. Despite those issues, the DOT token is still available on several exchanges as an IOU. Coinbase Custody also added support for the DOT token as a staking option in April. Any DOT tokens that remain unfrozen will begin circulating in the near future. Users will be able to transfer those tokens freely as soon as community governance decides to allow it. That will happen toward the end of the launch process later this year. Disclaimer Read More Read Less The information on or accessed through this website is obtained from independent sources we believe to be accurate and reliable, but Decentral Media, Inc. makes no representation or warranty as to the timeliness, completeness, or accuracy of any information on or accessed through this website. Decentral Media, Inc. is not an investment advisor. We do not give personalized investment advice or other financial advice. The information on this website is subject to change without notice. Some or all of the information on this website may become outdated, or it may be or become incomplete or inaccurate. We may, but are not obligated to, update any outdated, incomplete, or inaccurate information. You should never make an investment decision on an ICO, IEO, or other investment based on the information on this website, and you should never interpret or otherwise rely on any of the information on this website as investment advice. We strongly recommend that you consult a licensed investment advisor or other qualified financial professional if you are seeking investment advice on an ICO, IEO, or other investment. We do not accept compensation in any form for analyzing or reporting on any ICO, IEO, cryptocurrency, currency, tokenized sales, securities, or commodities. See full terms and conditions. Show less

Reading: Ethereum Just Shot Up $250 But Don’t Bet on That Resistance Breaking Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications are now the primary focus within the crypto space. Many believe this might be the killer use case of blockchain technology—an opportunity to... Bitcoinist | 5 days ago Decentralized finance, better known as “DeFi,” has taken the cryptocurrency industry by storm over recent months. This industry sector has gained increasing traction as... Bitcoinist | 5 days ago Moonbeam has released its Alpha v3 test net, and the latest build throws a bone to Ethereum developers who’ve been eyeing the Polkadot space with interest. Newly rolled out... Show less

Menu Reading About NewsTechnologyPolkadot is now officially a thing as mainnet goes liveBy 2 min readMay 26, 2020May 26, 2020Ethereum and Polkadot cofounder Gavin Wood. Image: Wikipedia Polkadot, a that connects other blockchains together into a single network, is now live. The launch of the network has been about four years in the making—at points placing its creators in conflict with the network they helped nurture. Polkadot is a network that uses sharding to tackle thorny scalability issues and enable increased network usage. According to a press release from the Web3 Foundation, which launched the network today, its sharding capability works hand in hand with its other core feature, interoperability:  "[Polkadot] connects several chains together in a unified network, allowing them to process in parallel and exchange data with strong security guarantees between chains. By parallelizing the workload, Polkadot solves major throughput issues." Though it conceivably allows room for Ethereum, Polkadot's launch represents yet another severing of linkages between the networks' creators and the Ethereum network. The Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies, which developed Polkadot, are led by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood and former Ethereum Foundation security chief Jutta Steiner, respectively. After several confrontations between Ethereum devotees and the Parity team over alleged conflicts of interest, Parity Technologies stated in December that it would the Ethereum codebase and developing Ethereum 2.0 to instead focus on Polkadot. For his part, in today's release Gavin Wood said, “Polkadot is, in many respects, the biggest bet in this ecosystem against chain maximalism. Even if there were one perfect chain, I don’t think it would stay perfect for very long. I would argue that it's really not such a good plan to be so focused on backing one winner above all others.” Polkadot has been inching toward mainnet release over the past year. Web3 , an experimental network that goes beyond the bounds of a traditional testnet, in July 2019. In February, it Polkadot's native DOT tokens on Coinbase Custody. https://decrypt.co/30177/polkadot-now-officially-a-thing-mainnet-goes-liveTop stories, original features, rewards & more. Get the best of Decrypt where you want it most. Want to grow your company or brand 🚀? Learn more about partnering with Decrypt. Menu About Show less

On Aug. 20, Blockchain.com it will integrate its Blockchain Wallet with the Polkadot Network in order to drive the adoption and decentralization of Polkadot tokens (DOTs).Once the integration is complete, users of Blockchain.com will be able to store, send and receive DOTs and vote on proposed amendments to council members and the network protocol.The new partnership aims to promote the idea of decentralization. Peter Smith, co-founder and CEO of Blockchain.com, said Polkadot is exactly the type of purpose-driven network that the company supports. He added that the team behind Polkadot share Blockchain.coms vision for more decentralization and increased user control.Announced in 2017, Polkadot is the first project launched by the Web3 Foundation. The project is being developed by the founders of Parity Technologies, Polkadot founder and Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, and Ethereums first security chief Jutta Steiner.In June 2019, Polkadot announced that it sold 500,000 DOTs at an unspecified price in keeping with the firms $1.2 billion valuation. Following the distribution of tokens, Polkadot introduced Kusama, its experimental version of the protocol. 1Comment Editors Choice Show less