Following five years of research and development, Polkadot’s multi-phase rollout that began in March 2020 is finally complete. The first five winning projects of the Polkadot parachain slot auctions have started their lease periods and are currently producing blocks on the network.
The winning parachains of the first five slots, Acala, Moonbeam, Astar, Parallel Finance, and Clover have been onboarded onto the network. All of these projects will lease their slots for a total of 96 weeks each.
As part of this significant milestone in Polkadot’s roadmap, the Polkadot team also launched an online celebration broadcast live on Twitter. The event featured Polkadot founders Gavin Wood and Robert Habermeier, the winning parachain teams, and several surprises for the community.
Setting Foundation for Web3
With Polkadot’s first set of parachains up and running, the range of products built on the ecosystem now ranges from DeFi to investments and loans. Developed by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, Polkadot is a proof-of-stake consensus blockchain designed to improve the interoperability between individual blockchains while ensuring faster transaction speeds and lower gas costs.
Stressing the importance of the Polkadot Relay Chain, Wood noted, “as the ecosystem grows, especially with nascent emergence of metaverses, dozens of protocols will become increasingly visible. In that scenario, there will not be a single blockchain, but we will have several interconnected chains.”
He further added, “The parachain model was created with the belief that the future of Web3 will involve many different types of blockchains working together. Just as the current version of the internet caters to different needs, blockchains need to be able to provide a variety of services. Parachains solve this.
Eventually, the Polkadot ecosystem aims to expand to a total of 100 parachains, which is the maximum capacity for the Relay Chain. However, the Polkadot team has clarified that not all slots will be allocated via ongoing parachain slot auctions, with some slots set to be dedicated for “governance-enabled common-good parachains and parathreads.”
Polkadot emerged as one of the fastest-growing blockchain ecosystems this year. While Ether’s problems mounted, Polkadot positioned itself among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
The next batch of Polkadot parachain slot auctions begins on December 23, 2021. It will feature six auctions, the winners of which will join the network by March 11, 2022.
Furthermore, several upgrades are set for rollout over the coming months to expand the network’s capabilities after approval by the ecosystem’s on-chain governance community.
Disclosure: At the time of publication, Reuben Jackson did not have a position in any of the securities mentioned in this article.
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