Polkadot

Polkadot
Basic data
	https://polkadot.network

Polkadot is the concept of a heterogeneous multichain and translation architecture that enables the connection of individually adapted sidechains with public blockchains . Polkadot enables different blockchains to exchange messages in a secure and trustworthy manner. The protocol was designed by Ethereum founder Gavin Wood and raised $ 144.3 million in its Initial Coin Offering in October 2017 .

The Polkadot Project is being driven by the Web3 Foundation. The Web3 Foundation is a Swiss foundation with the aim of producing and promoting technologies and applications in the field of decentralized web software protocols - especially in connection with modern, cryptographic methods. The aim of the Web3 Foundation in connection with Polkadot is to promote and stabilize the Web3 ecosystem.

protocol

General

The Polkadot protocol aims to be a scalable, heterogeneous multichain. In contrast to other traditional blockchains , which specialize in providing a single blockchain with a certain degree of generalization for possible applications, Polkadot offers a basic relay chain on which a large variety of validatable, globally coherent data structures can be hosted.

Polkadot can be seen as equivalent to a group of traditional blockchains, such as B. the group consisting of Ethereum , Ethereum Classic and Bitcoin , with two key differences: aggregated security and trustworthy interchain portability.

It is believed that Polkadot's design is "scalable". In general, a problem that is to be deployed on Polkadot can be largely parallelized and scaled by dividing it over a large number of parachains. Since all aspects of each parachain can be processed in parallel in different areas of the network, the network basically has the ability to scale.

Polkadot's goal is to provide a fundamental part of the infrastructure, which leaves much of the complexity at the middleware level.

Polkadot is designed to connect private / consortium chains, public / trusted networks, oracles and future technologies that have yet to be created in the Web 3 ecosystem. Polkadot paves the way for a network where independent blockchains can share information and trusted transactions over the Polkadot relay chain with a focus on scalability, governance and interoperability.

From a general perspective, Polkadot tries to solve the following three key problems:

Interoperability: Polkadot was developed to enable applications or smart contracts on a blockchain to exchange data and assets seamlessly with other chains.
Scalability: Polkadot enables multiple sidechains to be maintained, with each sidechain able to process multiple transactions at the same time. This ensures endless scalability.
Aggregated Security: Polkadot aggregates security in the network. This means that individual chains can use the collective security of all chains without having to build their own network and gain trust.

Polkadot network aggregated security infographic

history

Gavin James Wood

Gavin Wood is a co-founder and current director of Parity Technologies . Before that, he was the chief technology officer and co-founder of the Ethereum project, co-designer of the Ethereum protocol and author of its formal specification. In addition, Gavin Wood created and programmed the first functional implementation of Ethereum. He oversees the Solidity programming language , was the project manager of its IDE and developed the Whisper protocol. He holds a PhD in computer science from the University of York .

Gavin Wood published the Polkadot whitepaper on November 14, 2016. It was later decided that the protocol would be overseen by the Web3 Foundation, established in June 2017.

Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

Polkadot started its Initial Coin Offering on October 15, 2017. The token sale took place in the format of a Dutch auction . The ICO ended on October 27, 2017 and raised a total of 485,331 ETH ( Ether , the currency of the Ethereum blockchain). Shortly afterwards, on November 6, 2017, it became known that a good two thirds of the ethers ingested were destroyed by exploiting a code error in a smart contract (parity hack).

Token (DOT)

Functions

The DOT token serves three purposes: governance, operation and connectedness of the network.

Web3 Foundation

By Game Theory token holder will be motivated to act honestly. "Good" actors are rewarded by these mechanisms, "bad" actors are punished by losing their investment in the network. This guarantees the security of the system.

New parachains are created on the network by binding tokens to them. Obsolete or useless parachains are removed by removing the tokens attached to them. This corresponds to a kind of proof of stake .

The DOT token is a native token and is issued in the Genesis block of the Polkadot network.

development

The Web3 Foundation has parity Technologies commissioned to develop the protocol Polkadot. The development is ongoing.

Polkadot's Genesis block is scheduled for release in the third quarter of 2019. Some well-known blockchain protocols , including Melonport , have already expressed interest in developing a polkadot parachain.