{"id":37369,"date":"2021-03-03T15:02:29","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T13:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=37369"},"modified":"2025-08-29T16:01:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T13:01:03","slug":"what-is-polkadot-dot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/what-is-polkadot-dot\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Polkadot (DOT)?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-text-wrappers-cards single_card\">\n<h2 class=\"card_label\">What is Polkadot?<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/polkadot.network\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Polkadot<\/a> is a technology designed to improve interoperability among different blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, by uniting them in a single multichain network.<\/p>\n<p>The Polkadot network aims to solve key problems holding blockchain technology back from mass adoption, namely:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Scalability.<\/strong> First-generation blockchains cannot process the vast number of transactions envisaged in a decentralised future. For now, network nodes handle transactions one at a time, limiting the network\u2019s growth;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Isolation.<\/strong> Blockchains remain discrete and independent, lacking two-way connectivity and operational interoperability.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The network has a native token \u2014 DOT. It not only underpins Polkadot\u2019s base consensus mechanism but also serves three functions:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Governance.<\/strong> Token holders fully control the protocol, with privileges that on other platforms are reserved for miners \u2014 setting transaction-fee structures, deciding protocol changes, and adding or removing parachains;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rewards.<\/strong> Network users are rewarded with the native token.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Parachains<\/strong>. DOT is used by projects to lease slots to host their parachains.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block-text-wrappers-cards single_card\">\n<h2 class=\"card_label\">Who created Polkadot, and when?<\/h2>\n<p>Polkadot was created by Gavin Wood, a pivotal figure in the early <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/i-am-sure-who-hacked-the-dao-an-interview-with-laura-shin-host-of-unchained\">history of Ethereum<\/a>: he was a co-founder, the first chief technology officer, and the project\u2019s lead engineer. Wood wrote the code for the first implementation of the platform, authored its <a href=\"https:\/\/ethereum.github.io\/yellowpaper\/paper.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">formal specification<\/a> and created the <a href=\"https:\/\/ru.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Solidity\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Solidity<\/a> programming language.<\/p>\n<p>On January 11, 2016, Wood <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ethereum.org\/2016\/01\/11\/last-blog-post\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">left<\/a> the team to pursue a project that could meet expectations that, <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@gavofyork\/so-ethereum-is-released-4291da46b770\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">in his view<\/a>, Ethereum had failed to fulfil.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=eP4mT19S_jg&#038;feature=youtu.be&#038;t=1990\">According to<\/a> Wood, the idea for Polkadot came to him in the summer of 2016 as he awaited technical documentation on sharding in Ethereum 2.0 to begin implementing it. In collaboration with Marek Kotewicz, Wood began work on a &#8220;maximally simple&#8221; version of Ethereum and by October 2016 had prepared the first draft of the Polkadot <a href=\"https:\/\/polkadot.network\/PolkaDotPaper.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">white paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>While still at Ethereum, Wood and several colleagues founded EthCore, a commercial blockchain-development company. EthCore later became <a href=\"https:\/\/paritytech.io\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Parity Technologies<\/a>. Its team created the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/paritytech\/parity-ethereum\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Parity Ethereum Client<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/paritytech\/substrate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Substrate<\/a> framework, the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/paritytech\/polkadot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Polkadot<\/a> network and the <a href=\"https:\/\/etherscan.io\/address\/0x863df6bfa4469f3ead0be8f9f2aae51c91a907b4#code\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Parity<\/a> multisig wallet.<\/p>\n<p>In the summer of 2017 Wood and developer Peter Chaban founded the non-profit <a href=\"https:\/\/web3.foundation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Web3 Foundation<\/a> to foster protocols for a decentralised internet.<\/p>\n<p>Although the first token sale in 2017 raised $145m, the funds were insufficient for development. In June 2019 Web3 Foundation conducted an additional sale of 500,000 DOT, lifting the project\u2019s projected capitalisation to $1.2bn. At the end of July 2020 Web3 Foundation <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/polkadot-raises-43-6-million-in-private-token-sale\">raised<\/a> another $43.6m in a private round.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block-text-wrappers-cards single_card\">\n<h2 class=\"card_label\">How does Polkadot work?<\/h2>\n<p>To achieve scalability and improve cross-chain interaction, Polkadot comprises the following components:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/w3f\/polkadot-spec\/blob\/master\/spec.md#relay-chain\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\"><strong>Relay Chain<\/strong><\/a> (&#8220;linking chain&#8221;) \u2014 the primary Polkadot chain that connects all individual blockchains (parachains) in the network;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Parachain<\/strong> (short for &#8220;parallelised chain&#8221;) \u2014 individual parallel blockchains that execute transactions and pass them to the base chain. Parachains are maintained by so-called collators: they collect users\u2019 transactions and confirm blocks based on a Proof-of-Validity algorithm. Collators are rewarded for their work, with compensation depending on the specific parachain. Their role is analogous to miners in blockchains using Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.polkadot.network\/docs\/en\/learn-bridges\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\"><strong>Bridge Chain<\/strong><\/a> (&#8220;chain bridge&#8221;) \u2014 designed to connect blockchains that do not use Polkadot\u2019s governance protocols (for example, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tezos).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Relay Chain enforces consensus, routes messages between participating chains and facilitates transaction finality. This &#8220;linking chain&#8221; is a blockchain with a pool of validators randomly assigned to add and validate blocks across different parachains. For each transaction they must post a deposit. If a transaction complies with the consensus rules, the deposit is returned and the validator receives a reward. If rules are violated, the stake is forfeited.<\/p>\n<p>Consensus on the relay chain is achieved via two accountability-based mechanisms: one for block production and another for finalisation. Separating block production from finality overcomes scalability constraints in instant-finality protocols (such as Tendermint), enabling fast block production and allowing more validators to participate in consensus.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The two mechanisms are known by acronyms: BABE (Blind Assignment for Blockchain Extension) handles new block production; GRANDPA (GHOST-based Recursive Ancestor Deriving Prefix Agreement) finalises older blocks.<\/p>\n<p>Although parachains share the same finality mechanism, each can implement different block-production methods with characteristics and parameters optimised for particular classes of applications. Depending on those choices, each network\u2019s throughput may vary; overall network throughput can therefore be estimated only approximately.<\/p>\n<p>The first version of Polkadot (active as of April 2024) supports 100 parachains. Assuming each can handle at least ten transactions per second, the lower bound for throughput is roughly 1,000 transactions per second. A future version of Polkadot plans to raise the parachain limit, scaling the network severalfold.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-text-wrappers-cards single_card\">\n<h2 class=\"card_label\">How is Polkadot evolving?<\/h2>\n<p>In 2022 and 2023 Polkadot underwent a series of significant organisational changes. In late 2022 Gavin Wood stepped down as CEO of Parity Technologies, the organisation behind the protocol\u2019s development, to make the project &#8220;more relevant to the wider public&#8221;. In late 2023 the company cut 30% of its staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In July 2023 Gavin Wood <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GIB1WeVuJD0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">announced<\/a> plans for a new concept \u2014 Polkadot 2.0. It envisages scaling the technology by moving to slot leasing &#8220;on demand&#8221; rather than via auctions. In November that year, Web3 Foundation\u2019s new CEO, Fabian Gompf, <a href=\"https:\/\/thedefiant.io\/news\/defi\/polkadot-is-about-to-fundamentally-change-said-web3-foundation-s-new-ceo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">confirmed<\/a> that the project intends to abandon auctions for parachain slots in favour of a new mechanism. In his view, this will allow application developers to rent blockspace as needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Another key update to Polkadot is expected at the end of 2024. Parity Technologies has announced an expansion of the ecosystem\u2019s parachain limit from 100 to 1,000 after the &#8220;asynchronous backing&#8221; upgrade. The implementation is expected to reduce parachain block time from 12 to 6 seconds and increase capacity by five to ten times.<br \/>Despite sweeping restructuring plans, as of April 2024 the Polkadot ecosystem had seen only a couple of third-party integrations. In September 2023 Circle launched the USDC stablecoin on the Asset Hub parachain, opening the way for the &#8220;stablecoin&#8221; to be adopted on other parachains. At the same time, the Polkadot project was<a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/forklog\/33316\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\"> listed<\/a> on Google\u2019s BigQuery platform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is Polkadot? Polkadot is a technology designed to improve interoperability among different blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, by uniting them in a single multichain network. The Polkadot network aims to solve key problems holding blockchain technology back from mass adoption, namely: Scalability. First-generation blockchains cannot process the vast number of transactions envisaged in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2113],"tags":[265,1461],"class_list":["post-37369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptorium","tag-gavin-wood","tag-polkadot-dot"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"37","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37371,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37369\/revisions\/37371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}