Polkadot

What is Polkadot? 

• Polkadot is a sharding multichain protocol founded by the Web3 Foundation which consists of over 100 developers including Parity Technologies and ChainSafe.
• It can transfer any data or asset types cross-chain (e.g. BTC to ETH) which was, and still is a pertinent issue in cryptocurrencies that has only been partly mitigated by chain bridges and wrapping.
• Users can simply control a fully decentralized and private web as well as create new applications, institutions and services on Polkadot.
• Polkadot blockchains are fully independent as the protocol connects public and private chains, permissionless networks, oracles and future technologies.
• Polkadot’s native DOT token has three main functions which are providing network governance (determining what changes/developments will happen to the blockchain), staking (securing/validating the network) and bonding (to create parallel chains by locking away DOT tokens) 

Key Metrics

Ticker	DOT
Token Name	Polkadot
Token Type/Protocol	Polkadot protocol
Total Token Supply	1,103,303,471
Current Circulating Supply	See Coinmarketcap
Market Capitalisation	See Coinmarketcap
Token Creation Date	2016
Can it be mined?	No

Who is behind Polkadot?

Polkadot was founded by Dr. Gavin Wood, Robert Habermeier and Peter Czaban, the Web3 Foundation team.

Wood, as the president of the Web3 Foundation, is also the co-founder of Ethereum and the creator of the smart contract coding language Solidity while Habermeier and Czaban, with a wealth of experience across highly specialized fintech industries, are currently helping to develop a new generation of distributed technology.

What is the purpose of Polkadot?

Polkadot’s main purpose is to facilitate a fully functional and user-friendly decentralized web, as an open-source project. Moreover, it aims to improve scalability by processing many transactions on several chains in parallel (parachains).

Insights:

• Polkadot has four core components:
  • Relay Chain: consensus, interoperability and shared security across the network of different chain creators.
  • Parachains: independent chains that can have their own tokens and be optimized for specific use cases.
  • Parathread: similar to parachains but with flexible connectivity based on an economical pay-as-you-go model;
  • Bridges: allows parachains and parathreads to connect and communicate with external blockchains like Ethereum.
• The network enables a common set of validators to secure multiple blockchains providing unprecedented economic scalability to users by spreading transactions across multiple parallel blockchains.
• Polkadot uses Substrate framework to connect users’ chains. Accordingly, users can safely create a custom blockchain in minutes.
• Polkadot can upgrade without hard forks to integrate new features or fix bugs. That means the protocol can easily adapt itself to future technologies.
• DOT token holders have control over the protocol including managing exceptional events such as protocol upgrades and fixes.

Risks:

• There are numerous competitors from other smart contract blockchains with decentralised applications (i.e. layer-1’s) such as Ethereum, Cardano, Tron, etc. As such, Polkadot is in one of the most competitive spaces of cryptocurrency and will have to fight to capture market share.

News and Updates:

• Liquid Crowdloan DOT (lcDOT) was launched by Alaca, Polkadot’s liquidity hub, allowing users to access their DOT liquidity. 
• Polkadot has announced its parachain auctions on Kusama network, since 11th November 2021. The team is set to conduct the first set of auctions on the protocol, to give interested blockchain projects a chance to launch on Polkadot.

Community & Whitepaper Links:

Official Website: https://polkadot.network/
White Paper: https://polkadot.network/PolkaDotPaper.pdf

Disclaimer  

All investments are speculative and involve substantial risk and uncertainty. Investors should understand the nature of digital assets including the terms of return and the risk of assets. We encourage investors to fully understand the assets and the risk associated with them prior to making any investment.