After partnering with some of the most innovative projects in crypto, we know a thing or two about cutting through noise and paying attention to exceptional projects. These projects usually impact the greater crypto community, similar to the Ethereum 2.0 piece we published a few weeks ago. Here’s why we think Polkadot will play a huge role in coming years and how Ankr is getting involved today.
What is Polkadot?
Polkadot is what we’re calling a “protocol disruptor” as it’s designed to enable seamless interoperability across blockchain networks. Polkadot is the flagship protocol and first project from the Swiss-based Web3 Foundation. Focused on R&D for promising decentralized protocols and applications, Polkadot is a fitting project that embodies Web3’s ethos.
This is achieved through multi-chain technology called “parachains.” Parachains are an application-specific data structure that is globally coherent and validatable by the validators of the Polkadot Relay Chain.
The network scales even further with parathreads that are scheduled on a dynamic basis. These threads allow parachains to share sharded slots, similar to smaller airplanes sharing a gate at an airport. In layman terms, Parathreads are essentially Polkadot’s own shards.
Why is Polkadot significant?
Polkadot have launched their mainnet recently and the DOT tokens can now be claimed. The launch and the first NPoS Validator elections have proven to be a catalyst for investor, community, and developer support. Just like Ethereum 2.0, Polkadot will be a PoS protocol. Critical differences from Ethereum 2.0 include on-chain governance, as well as proposals and chain upgrades to occur without requiring a hard fork.
We believe Polkadot andd Ethereum 2.0 to occupy over 50% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization by the end of 2021, capturing a 135 billion USD market.
Ankr’s involvement in the Polkadot Ecosystem
Many blockchains have been launched with some form of PoS over the past years, whether it’s Vanilla or NPoS (Nominated Proof-of-Stake) in Polkadot’s case.
But the space currently lacks a de facto infrastructure for PoS protocols, like Bitmain has done for the Bitcoin network. Ankr looks to provide this for the PoS landscape. We are using our expertise in node deployment/management to provide the easiest way possible for everyone to access the multi-billion PoS market.
We seek to provide a decentralized and easy way to leverage Web3 solutions and the Polkadot ecosystem, including their Parachains. We hereby present four ways to get involved in Polkadot with Ankr.
- Put your DOTs to work by running a Validator! Optimize your earnings and secure the relay chain by staking DOT tokens, competing for nominations, participating in consensus with other validators and receiving block rewards for good performance. For optimized security, you can protect your Validator by hiding it behind a layer of Sentry nodes. We also provide a custom security package containing one or more Sentry nodes to protect your Validator. For inquiries on the security package, mail to sales@ankr.com
- For data analytics companies and developers we provide easy access to transactions, usage data and insights on the Polkadot network with our one-click full node deployment.
- Ankr will contribute to the Polkadot ecosystem by deploying our own NPoS Validators, which will be available for receiving nominations later this week. Stay tuned for more information on how to easily delegate your DOTs to our Validators!
- We have joined the Web3 Bootcamp earlier this year and connected with many of the Polkadot Parachains developers. We have collaborated on bringing easy node deployment with the teams of Acala Network, Bifrost, ChainX, Darwinia and more to integrate their nodes on our platform. In addition, we already supported the Edgeware and the Kusama Network.
Both the Polkadot Validator and Full node are now available in our Node Market.
Find the step-by-step tutorial on how to prepare your node to become a Validator here. And the Full node here.
Questions?
You can find the most relevant FAQ’s and interact directly with our customer service agents at https://app.ankr.com, or contact the admins in our official Telegram Node Support group
Useful links
- Polkadot official website
- In-depth read on Polkadot and comparison to Ethereum 2.0
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