Why we embrace Polkadot ?
Recently, the world of blockchain is overwhelmed with the launch of various DeFi applications on Ethereum and the fast growing of Polkadot’s ecosystem. As an explorer of alternative DeFi products, Konomi has chosen to embrace the trend of cross-blockchain transfer since the founding of the organization. We can connect several chains including Ethereum 2.0, Cosmos and Polkadot. People often wondering what is the difference between them.
People often compare Polkadot with Cosmos. At first glance, both enable the transfer of any message cross-chain, and their functions seem to be similar. In fact, they actually have a very significant difference as Polkadot has a shared security mechanism that does not exist in Cosmos
It is true that adopting the IBC cross-chain protocol like Cosmos has its advantages. However, it also raises some problems in the meantime. Firstly, users cannot stop the validators of other chains from misbehaviors even if there is a follow-up penalty measures. The consequences of misbehavior also need to be borne by all chains connected to the ‘spoiled’ chain. Therefore, the security of the Cosmos cross-chain network is always restricted by the weakest chain. In addition, when the scale of the network becomes huge, it is very difficult for the entire network to digest a ‘spoiled’ link (such as delay, etc.). In that sense, Cosmos has domino effect over its security where one ‘spoiled’ chain may destroy the entire connections. However, Polkadot adopts a shared security mechanism, the security of the entire network is guaranteed by the most valuable Polkadot relay chain. Therefore, it allows startup projects to focus on business development and hand over security to Polkadot. At the same time, since the validator will ensure that the parachain is well-operated. Therefore, the problem with the aforementioned Cosmos will not happen. As a result, when the scale of the network is huge and the connections are complicated, the advantages of Polkadot’s shared security will be fully reflected, and this is the utmost concern for DeFi project.
So what are the advantages of Polkadot over Ethereum 2.0? We know that Ethereum 2.0 is a homogeneous sharding project. In fact, those who know Polkadot well will know that Polkadot is essentially a heterogeneous sharding project. What are the advantages of heterogeneous sharding over homogeneous sharding? On Ethereum 2.0, applications still exist in the form of smart contracts, so Ethereum 2.0 is just a combination of multiple Ethereum 1.0. We can visualize it as a single-core processor becoming a multi-core processor. In the Polkadot ecology, large-scale applications exist in the form of parallel chains. It works like if we want to process images, we will use GPUs, and if we want to mine Bitcoin, we will use dedicated ASIC mining machines. Therefore, Polkadot is a wiser option since it makes use of a better optimized structure to adapt to different calculations. At the same time, the Polkadot ecology also supports smart contracts like Ethereum, or even better (for example, there will be some EVM smart contract parachains, and there will also be some WASM smart contracts parachain) It can be seen that the essence of Ethereum 2.0 is still a single computer, but with more cores whereas Polkadot is more like a Swiss army knife-like computer room that has multiple computers which can adapt to the specific needs of various applications.
In addition, the founder of Polkadot, Gavin Wood is quite an amazing figure in the industry. He was the CTO of Ethereum at the time where he wrote the Yellow Paper of Ethereum and was responsible for the engineering development of Ethereum. Under the leadership of Gavin Wood and the efforts of the developers, Polkadot’s related developments grow really fast in terms of both quantity and quality. Polkadot appears be on the hot search list of GitHub from time to time. Especially worth mentioning is the Substrate development framework. This is a set of blockchain essence abstracted by the Polkadot development team after experiencing the development of many blockchain clients such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Zcash. Polkadot’s relay chain and parachain can reduce a lot of duplication of labor on the basis of Substrate. Even projects outside the Polkadot ecology benefit from Substrate’s ability to quickly develop its own blockchain. We will introduce Substrate in more detail in the next article. At the same time, Polkadot has a very active and engaging community as there are various technical and non-technical activities and seminars ongoing every year. It can be said that the Polkadot ecology is the most prosperous among all emerging ecology. Therefore, for innovators, embracing Polkadot has become the best choice.
Polkadot is such a project that has unprecedented technology and philosophy. Under the leadership of the genius Gavin Wood, we have already seen a thriving Polkadot ecology. We are already in, how about you?
