Hello, Polkadot’s devoted community and all crypto enthusiasts! It’s high time we provided you with a fresh biweekly update on the network!
First and foremost, we need to briefly introduce Polkadot to those who might have a vague or incomplete picture of the network.
Polkadot is a scalable heterogeneous multi-chain that connects blockchains. Moreover, it enables new blockchains to communicate in a secure environment. In order to solve the scalability and interoperability challenges facing many blockchains, Polkadot creates a sharded ecosystem that includes a main relay chain and individual parachains. Parachains are the major protocol design innovation of Kusama. This Web3 Foundation project is a canary network designed for developers to run experiments and test implementations in a Polkadot-like environment, before features get merged to the main chain. Kusama enables developers to build and deploy a parachain or experiment with Polkadot’s governance, staking, nomination and validation functionality. Kusama is intended to function alongside Polkadot, supporting ongoing usage and providing long-term value to participants and the ecosystem.
Moving on to the latest updates!
Bison Trails will support Polkadot at launch and will continue to support node operators on Kusama. Bison Trails is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service company specifically focused on blockchain participation. It’s a platform for anyone who wants to participate in new chains effortlessly without having to invest time and resources into developing any of the engineering, protocol, dev ops, or security competencies in-house. When Polkadot launches, Bison Trails will be ready to provide unparalleled infrastructure service with their proven technology including resilient and redundant validators and their distributed software suite. They’ll also be introducing another proprietary innovation in blockchain technology by mainnet launch to ensure that a block is not double-signed.
Chainlink has completed an initial integration with a Substrate-based blockchain. This is the first blockchain ecosystem outside of Ethereum that Chainlink will support. By being the first Substrate-based oracle solution, Chainlink is set to become the first and primary oracle provider for all Substrate-based chains and eventually the entire Polkadot network. Polkadot developers can use Chainlink’s decentralized oracle networks to quickly connect their smart contracts to all the inputs and outputs they need to run securely and reliably end-to-end, while avoiding the major pitfalls associated with trying to deploy your own oracles, such as long time delays, additional expenses, and even fatal security flaws.
In this Biweekly you’ll also learn about Polymesh, an enterprise-grade blockchain built with Substrate for security tokens and capital markets. The foundations of Polymesh are focused on the most crucial regulatory elements and design principles meant to meet the demands of regulators and institutions, while unlocking the true potential of security tokens. These include blockchain primitives for identity, compliance, governance and confidentiality as well as a flexible and extensible framework for asset features and functionality using Smart Extensions.
The Web3 Foundation has awarded Second State, a leading cloud and blockchain infrastructure company, a grant to bring the Ethereum flavored WebAssembly (Ewasm) virtual machine to the Polkadot ecosystem.
What’s more, Figment Networks has been awarded a grant from Web3 Foundation to build Dot Hub, a staking explorer tool for the Polkadot network. Dot Hub will include validator analytics, nominator events and alerts, and rewards reporting.
More news to follow!
Development
Github metrics:
Polkadot Implementations
There are Polkadot implementations developed in Rust, C++, Go, and JavaScript.
Parity Polkadot — The Rust client is developed by Parity Technologies in concert with their work on Substrate.
Kagome — C++ implementation of the Polkadot Runtime Environment being built by Soramitsu, a Japanese digital identity company that previously developed Hyperledger Iroha. They were awarded a grant from the Web3 Foundation. As part of the process they are developing a libp2p networking layer in C++.
Gossamer — A Go implementation being built by ChainSafe Systems, a 23-person development team in Toronto that is also building an Eth2.0 Serenity client. Grant announcement.
Polkadot-JS — A JavaScript client and tool set developed by Polkadot JS.
February Tech and Research Update: Long Days in the Shortest Month
Bill Laboon, the Technical Education Lead at the Web3 Foundation presented the technical side of what the team have been working on.
Research work on “Availability and Validity” and “Assessing or incentivising correct mixing without authorities” was presented. Polkadot Wiki was updated, especially Learning Phragmén, Polkadot Builders Starter’s Guide, and the Treasury Guide.
Substrate Recipes
A Hands-On Cookbook for Aspiring Blockchain Chefs
Substrate Recipes is a cookbook of working examples that demonstrate best practices when building blockchains with Substrate. Each recipe contains a complete working code example as well as a detailed writeup describing the code. This book is open source. Check out the contributing guidelines for an overview of the structure and directions for getting involved.
Social encounters
Dan Reecer, Global Community & Growth Polkadot Network and Kusama Network,presents an introduction of Web 3.0, Polkadot, and Kusama Network to the Polkadot Bogotá Meetup in March 2020. The presentation covers Polkadot’s vision, the technical aspects of Polkadot, potential parachains that could be built on Polkadot, and an introduction to Kusama Network.
The main points of the discussion:
- Overview of Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies
- Intro to Polkadot
- Example Parachains on Polkadot and Kusama
- Intro to Kusama Network
- Projects building with Substrate, Polkadot, and Kusama
In this episode of Relay Chain Podcast, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) talks with Sergey Nazarov from Chainlink, a decentralized oracle system bringing external, real-world data to blockchain-based smart contracts.
Oracle systems like Chainlink are a necessary part of decentralized finance (DeFi), for which off-chain data such as market prices are used to trigger smart contract functions. They discuss the inherent challenges in integrating off-chain data with end-to-end security guarantees, the barriers to building smart contracts that go beyond tokenization, Chainlink use cases, the promise of blockchain for social impact, and how Chainlink is planning a Polkadot integration.
Highlights:
- Chainlink overview
- Oracle weakest link problem
- Chainlink use cases
- How to trust off-chain data
- Social promise of blockchain
- Chainlink Polkadot integration
Listen to the whole interview here
Polkadot Ambassador Spotlight: Katie and Nate
Katie and Nate from PureStake, based in Boston USA, discuss their focus at their company and in the Polkadot ecosystem.
follow the link to watch the video
Upcoming events
Web3 Foundation Tech Ed team lead will give the audience an overview on Polkadot & Substrate, new exciting projects!
March 9, 2020
Cambridge, MA 02142, United States
About this Event
The team will discuss the basics of Substrate. Substrate allows anyone to create their own blockchain, setting parameters as they see fit. It also comes with a set of modules, FRAME, which allow you to customize the blockchain with minimal to no coding. If you want add a smart contracts module — just import it! If you want to add a module for on-chain governance — just import it! Building your blockchain with Substrate also allows you to easily join the Polkadot or Kusama networks as a parachain, enjoying the ability to communicate with other parachains as a shard in the larger ecosystem.
They’ll also discuss a few projects that are already being built on Substrate.
Polkadot and the Substrate blockchain framework
March 14, 2020
San Francisco, CA
About this Event
Sub0 brings together developers creating decentralized solutions on Substrate, the blockchain development framework from Parity Technologies. Substrate’s modular and flexible architecture takes care of everything from networking to light clients to off-chain data processing. When it comes time to update your chain, Substrate makes it easy with forkless upgrades. This afternoon of talks and workshops will feature Parity developers and Substrate community members building the next wave of decentralized apps with Substrate. Dive into all things Polkadot and Web 3.0 and learn how to build your own vision with the Substrate blockchain framework and then plug into the Polkadot network.
Follow the link here for more details
Webinar: The Path of a Parachain Block
March 16, 2020
The Polkadot Relay Chain is responsible for guaranteeing the security of all its member parachains. Learn how a parachain submits a block and all the checks that it must clear before Polkadot considers it finalized. In this webinar, Joe from Parity will walk you through all the actors of Polkadot — collators, validators, and fishermen — and all the steps they take to provide strong guarantees.
Roadmap
Polkadot is currently undergoing a series of proof-of-concept testnet releases as new features are completed and rolled out. Additionally, Kusama a canary network that will test the economic conditions of an early, unaudited version of Polkadot is launched to help inform the ultimate goal of Polkadot.
- Polkadot Genesis — Expected early 2020.
There is no launch date set for the launch phase when token transfers will be enabled on Polkadot. Development timelines can always shift. The team will be keeping the community up to date on all things related to the launch process, and they appreciate your patience.
Rumors
Partnerships and team members
Bison Trails will support Polkadot at launch and will continue to support node operators on Kusama.
Bison Trails is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service company, based in New York City, specifically focused on blockchain participation. It’s a platform for anyone who wants to participate in new chains effortlessly (e.g. by running Cosmos Validators, Tezos Bakers, and Libra Validators, etc.) — without having to invest time and resources into developing any of the engineering, protocol, dev ops, or security competencies in-house.
By running ten active Kusama validators, Bison Trails gained deep experience with the network while enhancing their secure infrastructure offering, onboarding processes, alerts, monitoring, graphing, and other services.
When Polkadot launches, Bison Trails will be ready to provide unparalleled infrastructure service with their proven technology including resilient and redundant validators and their distributed software suite. They’ll also be introducing another proprietary innovation in blockchain technology by mainnet launch: double-signing protective software to ensure that a block is not double-signed.
Kusama participants will be rewarded with 1% of DOTs allocated to incentivize participation. These DOTs can be used for validating, bonding parachains, and participating in the governance system.
Bison Trails appreciates Kusama’s long-term value. Kusama will remain relevant as it continues to function as the Polkadot proving ground. New teams with untested projects will be able to launch their parachains and parathreads on Kusama, where experimentation is encouraged. This setup parallels the history of the internet’s evolution, driven by developer iteration.
Because Kusama simulates Polkadot’s economic conditions, it’s also the perfect place for aspiring development teams to prove the value of their ideas, resolve bugs, and add features. A strong performance on Kusama will help teams make a strong case for a parachain deposit from Polkadot community members and token holders.
Polkadot and Chainlink Integration Using Substrate
Polkadot adds market-leading network of decentralized oracles in critical step towards parachain development.
Chainlink has completed an initial integration with a Substrate-based blockchain, marking a major milestone in the mission to bring Chainlink’s market-leading network of decentralized oracles to the Substrate chain ecosystem and Polkadot. This is the first blockchain ecosystem outside of Ethereum that Chainlink will support. By being the first Substrate-based oracle solution, Chainlink is set to become the first and primary oracle provider for all Substrate-based chains and eventually the entire Polkadot network. Polkadot developers can use Chainlink’s decentralized oracle networks to quickly connect their smart contracts to all the inputs and outputs they need to run securely and reliably end-to-end, while avoiding the major pitfalls associated with trying to deploy your own oracles, such as long time delays, additional expenses, and even fatal security flaws.
This initial integration with Substrate will open a pathway towards integrating Chainlink with a dedicated parachain or even building one, following Polkadot’s launch. Prior to launching its parachain on Polkadot, Chainlink will deploy a parachain on Kusama. A Chainlink parachain would let Polkadot’s parachains and dApps access virtually any external, real-world resource. Parity Technologies, the lead development team for Polkadot and Substrate, has contributed significant code to the Chainlink’s open-source repository in Github to accelerate the integration and bring it to our developers.
Substrate, used for the Chainlink integration, is the groundbreaking blockchain development framework from Parity Technologies. Created for maximum flexibility and ease of development, Substrate’s modular and composable architecture abstracts away as much blockchain development as possible, freeing teams to focus on their project’s unique business logic. Using Substrate, projects gain access to pluggable consensus and forkless upgrades. Projects can start building on Substrate today and significantly decrease development time and expense both now and in the future.
Read the whole article about Polkadot and Chainlink Integration here
Watch Sergey Nazarov’s interview here: Polkadot to Use Chainlink Oracles for Interoperability Network
Web3 Builders: Polymesh
Polymath’s mission is to unlock global access to wealth creation through a digital economy. Polymesh is an enterprise-grade blockchain built with Substrate for security tokens and capital markets. The foundations of Polymesh are focused on the most crucial regulatory elements and design principles meant to meet the demands of regulators and institutions, while unlocking the true potential of security tokens. These include blockchain primitives for identity, compliance, governance and confidentiality as well as a flexible and extensible framework for asset features and functionality using Smart Extensions.
Polymesh will use the Nominated Proof-of-Stake staking mechanism with the finality gadget GRANDPA, and be supported by POLYX, the native protocol token. With Polymesh, Validators stake POLYX on the network and run authoring nodes, Nominators stake POLYX on Validators, and both are rewarded or fined by the network based on blocks being added to the chain and fulfillment of their roles. All POLY tokens currently existing on Ethereum will be able to be upgraded to POLYX at a 1:1 ratio.
Polymesh will fill the gap between security token technology and the needs of issuers, investors, institutions, and regulators.
Polymath’s Adam Dossa Discusses Polymesh Blockchain Built with Substrate
The future of Polkadot in Golang: Gossamer
Gossamer is an implementation of the Polkadot Host, formerly known as the Polkadot Runtime Environment. To learn more about what exactly that is, watch our introductory talk from DotCon during Berlin Blockchain Week.
The Web3 Foundation highlights the importance of having multiple implementations:
“Multiple implementations of Polkadot improves network resilience and adds to the decentralization of the network. The governance of the network is more democratized when multiple teams build clients which run the nodes in the network. By building the next implementation of the Polkadot protocol, ChainSafe is helping develop a robust network — meaning that if there’s an issue with one client, it won’t impact network availability — thus ensuring a healthy, resilient Polkadot ecosystem.”
As such, once Gossamer is complete, they will use it to build node implementations of Polkadot & Kusama. In addition, for any blockchain that is built using Substrate, building an additional node implementation using Gossamer is trivial; just take your existing runtime (a Wasm blob) and plug it into Gossamer.
By using Gossamer, you can focus on building the state transition function (i.e the logic) of the blockchain, since the networking and consensus components are already built for you. These components will be modular and configurable. If significant customization is desired, any of the modules, including networking and consensus, can be modified or reimplemented directly in Go.
Learn more about Gossamer here
OAX Foundation to Build on Polkadot Network Opening Opportunities for Future with DeFi
OAX Foundation announced a strategic initiative to build a parachain within the Polkadot network, opening doors to DeFi opportunities and expanding the potential that decentralized exchanges hold in digital asset trading.
Having released OAX Layer 2 Protocol (L2X) during the course of last year, which addressed fundamental issues within decentralized exchanges, namely speed, scalability and trust, the OAX Foundation team continued to explore opportunities resulting from the ever-changing environment with its partners.
“The OAX community has long been passionate about supporting the future of the digital asset economy, and the parachain that we are working on will open up doors to so many opportunities in the future,” said Amanda Liu, General Manager of OAX Foundation.
The decision to build a parachain within the Polkadot network also underscores a crucial objective by the OAX team — increasing utility for the OAX token. The parachain will serve as one of the first key milestone by the OAX team, and will bring a broad range of opportunities that exist within the DeFi market, with its rise fueled by an explosive growth in lending with more than USD1bn worth of ETH locked in lending smart contracts according to DeFi Pulse.
Learn more about OAX Foundation by visiting their website
Related news, recent updates on the collaboration
Second State awarded a grant to bring next-gen Ethereum infrastructure to Polkadot ecosystem
The Web3 Foundation has awarded Second State, a leading cloud and blockchain infrastructure company, a grant to bring the Ethereum flavored WebAssembly (Ewasm) virtual machine to the Polkadot ecosystem.
The virtual machine is a key infrastructure component for public blockchains. It allows any user from the public to submit untrusted code to the blockchain platform, in the form of smart contracts, and pay for its execution based on resource consumption. The Ethereum flavored WebAssembly (Ewasm) virtual machine is posed to be the dominant virtual machine in the upcoming Ethereum 2.0 blockchain platform.
Through the Web3 Foundation grant, Second State will create extensions to its high-performance WebAssembly virtual machine, the Second State VM (SSVM). Those extensions would allow the SSVM to function as a blockchain virtual machine in accordance with the Ewasm specification. It will develop the necessary software to bootstrap and load SSVM as a Substrate module. The SSVM-Ewasm Substrate module will allow developers to create blockchains that can deploy and execute Ethereum smart contracts in the Polkadot ecosystem.
This project will add value to both the Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems. Ethereum developers will have more choices in deploying their applications, and the Polkadot ecosystem will be able to directly leverage efforts from the large Ethereum developer and tooling communities.
Figment Networks Receives Grant from Web3 Foundation
Figment Networks has been awarded a grant from Web3 Foundation to build Dot Hub, a staking explorer tool for the Polkadot network. Dot Hub will include validator analytics, nominator events and alerts, and rewards reporting.
Figment has demonstrated expertise in building tools for networks such as the Cosmos Hub, Tezos, Terra, and Kava, each of which use the Hubble Platform. Our software is important for validators, token holders, and developers to access information and to interact directly with these networks.
Figment Networks is operating validators on the Kusama network in preparation for validating on the Polkadot network. If you own DOTs, you also own KSM. Learn how to stake your KSM here. They are also running validators on Edgeware, a parachain connected to Polkadot. Learn how to stake your EDG here.
Flex Dapps, an Australian Blockchain Startup Joins the Polkadot & Substrate Ecosystem
The team has been interested in getting into the Polkadot and Substrate ecosystem since 2018 when we saw Gav’s presentation at the Web3 summit. Flex Dapps have primarily built solutions using Ethereum, and with their new product, they’ve selected the Polkadot & Substrate ecosystem to build on.
Flex Dapps is building Gantree, a product that speeds up blockchain development for companies creating Substrate chains. Companies can focus on developing their custom blockchain logic and leave the node infrastructure management to Gantree. Flex Dapps have a working demo. You select your desired cloud platform such as GCP or AWS, enter in some configuration options and it deploys!
Polkadot ambassadors in China：the most powerful thing is Substrate framework！
PolkaWorld interviewed the first group of official ambassadors of Polkadot in China recently to share why they chose Polkadot, how they became ambassadors, and what they have done in the community for Polkadot! This is the first part.
Join the Polkadot Ambassador Program
And if you become a Polkadot Ambassador, from day one, you’ll have the chance, very practically, to write the next chapter of Web3. Contributing for the sake of being a contribution is its own great reward, but you’ll also enjoy these benefits:
- FUNDING — You’ll get first-call, early access to bounties, and be eligible to receive funding to host local meetups and workshops
- SPECIAL ACCESS — You’ll be invited to exclusive events, an Ambassadors-only Riot channel, and behind-the-scenes phone calls with core-team members
- FREE STUFF — You’ll stand out with cool Polkadot swag, marking you as an extra-special member of the crew
- TRUE COMMUNITY — You’ll be working closely alongside some of the most notable figures in the Web3 space, while forging ties with others who are equally as passionate about architecting a better future for everyone
What are the expectations of an Ambassador?
Anyone is more than welcome to join the Polkadot community, but to become an actual Ambassador requires a bit more commitment, and a few extra steps. An Ambassador is a self-starter who is keen to demonstrate their dedication to the project. Ambassadors should contribute significantly each month to tasks and actions designed to help Polkadot grow.
Find out all the details and the process of becoming an Ambassador here.
Social media metrics
Social media activity:
Social media dynamics:
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Polkadot Twitter followers. The information is taken from Coingecko.com
This is not financial advice.
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