What is Polkadot?
With thousands of blockchains built, it became expedient that these chains interact and communicate among themselves. That is why you would hear of terns such as interoperability within the blockchain sphere.
Chains that are able to communicate one with another and link with other chains, effectively bringing the nativity of one chain to another are usually in high demand as projects. This is exactly what the Polkadot blockchain does.
It is a new generation distributed ledger technology protocol that makes it easy for cross-chain communication to take place. This is why you would see the network severally described as the blockchain of blockchains. It was essentially built to link the many blockchains that existed independently in isolation within the space.
You would begin to appreciate the importance of this blockchain when you realize that there are thousands of others that exist in isolation even though they have functions and utilities that are in demand and barely harnessed.
Proof of Stake Consensus
Due to the fact that it operates on a Proof-of-Stake model, the electricity or energy demand of the blockchain is not as high as other forms of consensus protocols such as what is obtainable with the Bitcoin network. Polkadot provides an attractive alternative for those concerned over blockchains that are validated via Proof-of-Work.
Features of Polkadot
Scalability
This is a highly scalable network. Polkadot is in a class of its own (Perhaps with Ethereum 2.0) in the drive for scalability of blockchain networks through the introduction of transactional executions through separate shards.
In other words, the transactions on the blockchain is spread through several channels that are parallel to each other making interoperability between blockchains more viable by allowing more blockchains to communicate with each other.
Shared Security Model
On the Polkadon blockchain, this ensures that even with inter-connectivity, that chains aid in the security of the network.
Today at 3pm CET don’t miss the opening ceremony of the #PolkadotHackathon Global series. Tune in to learn about Polkadot and @substrate_io, as well as to hear what’s coming for this 8-week hackathon kicking off in Asia Pacific: https://t.co/dHLODeFrHJ
— Polkadot (@Polkadot) October 22, 2021
Why is DOT getting attention?
Polkadot raised funds through the sale of its DOT token, since then, investors have been able to trade DOT after the August 2020 token sale. Its popularity is such that it has been listed at over 40 exchanges.
It is a progressive project, so the Polkadot community have a lot to look forward to, such as “parachain slot auctions” coming soon.
Former Ethereum executives, Gavin Wood and Jutta Steiner, are the lead developers of the DOT project. They started working on it in November 2017. Its proof-of-concept took off in mid-2018, and token transfers were activated in August 2020.
