Analyzing top Polkadot ecosystem tokens: Moonbeam and Moonriver
Hello to crypto enthusiasts :) Together with my team, I’m continuing to analyze crypto projects and discover interesting ones. You can check my previous analysis here.
The next couple of publications will be dedicated to the analysis of Polkadot and top Polkadot ecosystem tokens.
Polkadot (DOT) is an open-source sharded multichain protocol that connects and secures a network of specialized blockchains, facilitating the cross-chain transfer of any data or asset types, not just tokens, thereby allowing blockchains to be interoperable with each other. Polkadot was designed to provide a foundation for a decentralized internet of blockchains, also known as Web3.
It’s worth knowing that one of the Polkadot’s founders is Gavin James Wood — an English computer scientist, co-founder of Ethereum, and founder of Web3 Foundation, Parity Technologies, and Kusama.
According to our Github development activity data, DOT is one of the top tickers by the number of contributors.
The interactive version is here.
If we look more closely — it really is. Despite the fact the number of contributors has decreased 2 times from the summer of 2021, they still have more than 500 engineers and programmers to work on the project:
Polkadot’s Relay Chain is capable of managing anywhere from 100 to 250 parachains, and, as mentioned, almost a dozen projects are already built on it. To launch a parachain and gain access to a myriad of benefits the Relay Chain provides, projects must compete for a slot via an auction where the winner is determined by whichever locks up the most DOT tokens.
I was surfing through the CoinMarketCap and found the top for Polkadot ecosystem tokens. Moonbeam (GLMR) and Moonriver (MAVR) caught my attention cause I recently saw Redditors discussing them.
Moonbeam, a Polkadot parachain, is a fully Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform for building interoperable DeFi applications. Its sister chain Moonriver brings the same Ethereum-compatible development environment to Kusama, Polkadot’s canary network. The cool fact is that at the end of 2021, the Moonbeam Network has announced the completion of its three-part launch process, becoming the first fully operational parachain on Polkadot.
How about looking at alternative data metrics for these parachains? Firstly, I would like to mention that they have a strong social appearance and a huge community — 120K Discord members, 40K Telegram members, 10K subreddit members, more than 300K followers on Twitter, and a blog on Medium.
Reddit sentiment has been kept at a neutral level (0.5) over the past few weeks, but the trend is moving to positivity:
Below are some samples of how GLMR and MOVR have been discussed (positive and negative discussion):
What about their development activity? We can see a considerable decrease in the number of GitHub contributors and commits — from almost 700 contributors in December 2021 to only 113 contributors in March 2022:
In conclusion, I would like to underline that Polkadot gives strong opportunities for the development of cool projects such as Moonbeam Network. But are GLMR and MOVR worth investing in? They save a strong social appearance on each well-known social platform, however, the situation with a number of programmers and engineers working on the projects is a bit strange in my opinion. Let’s keep an eye on it and see the data for April to come up with a more balanced decision.
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