Explaining Polkadot

The blockchain that is now among the best of the crypto market

Nicolás Vasquez
2gether
3 min readApr 26, 2021

--

The Polkadot token is one of the 19 available cryptocurrencies in the 2gether app, which you can buy and sell in just one click at market price.

But what is Polkadot?

We have gathered the most relevant information about this popular blockchain to help everyone who wants to know more about this project, how it works, its characteristics and what it can be used for.

Origin:

Polkadot was developed by the Web3 Foundation, led by the co-founder of Ethereum, Gavin Wood. This project is born out of the need to have a platform that could run several chains in a decentralized and parallel way, being able to adapt to the innovations of the network.

For this reason, this open code project has been developed. It allows blockchain networks to operate together.

In this article written we can understand more about how Polkadot works, its relevance in the crypto world and the projects that work with this platform.

What is the goal of Polkadot?

The main goals set by the creators for this blockchain are:

  1. Interoperability between the different blockchains in the network.
  2. Adding scalability.
  3. Giving the network the best possible security.
  4. Independence in the forms of governance of blockchains.
  5. Updating blockchains in a way that they don’t bifurcate.
  6. Providing a validation platform that is more eco-friendly and sustainable.

How does Polkadot work?

The Polkadot platform works with a relay chain that uses a variation of the proof of stake consensus mechanism. The DOT token gives the validators a voting power that enables them to take part in the decisions and evolution of the project. Furthermore, the DOT token can be used to link and incentivise the validators to act with honesty in the network when having a financial interest in the authenticity of the verification process.

This allows anyone who bets for DOT to block the token in a contract in order to carry out one or more of the functions necessary for it to work:

  • Validating roles: they validate the data in the parachain blocks. They also participate in the consensus and vote about the changes proposed in the network.
  • Nominating roles: they protect the relay chain selecting trustworthy validators, and they delegate the DOT tokens they have bet to the validators. This is how they assign their votes.
  • Collecting roles: nodes that store a complete record for every parachain and add data about the transactions of the parachains in blocks to add them to the relay chain.
  • Fishing roles: they perform the monitoring on the Polkadot network and report bad behaviours to the validators.

The best video to understand Polkadot

In this exclusive Polkadot video, you will understand in a clear and simple way what this project is about:

DOT Token:

Polkadot’s native token, known as DOT, is the official network token, like ETH is Ethereum’s and BTC is Bitcoin’s.

The token has these goals:

  • Governance: the owners of the tokens can vote for the protocol updates and proposals for new functionalities.
  • Betting: tokens can be bet in favor of Polkadot’s security model. The honest validators are rewarded for their participation by the network.
  • Linking: the parachains get their position through blocking the DOT tokens.
  • Fees: for the messages between the parachains.

Applications and uses:

The great flexibility of Polkadot allows to create blockchains with a very specific purpose in an application, be it security or a different aspect of a Dapp.
Polkadot also allows to make the most out of the functionalities of other parachains and develop immediately or innovate through trades between developers. Polkadot goes beyond the mere trading of tokens: it also includes innovation and technology.

Operate with Polkadot in the 2gether app:

--

--

Nicolás Vasquez
2gether

Creativity, imagination and a lot of content creation. Social media Manger at 2gether_global