This is a new series of our Biweekly updates on Polkadot and their ecosystem!
The majority of the readers probably know that Polkadot is a platform built to connect and secure blockchains, independent of design and purpose. The Polkadot network relies on a sharded model. Polkadot’s parachains have unique state transition functions. Polkadot has a Relay Chain — the main chain of the system, which handles validation and finalization of blocks proposed by parachains.
The highlight of this report is the news on the BTC-Parachain. The Web3 Foundation has given a grant to Interlay to work on a trust-minimized Polkadot-Bitcoin bridge. The BTC-Parachain uses XCLAIM (Cross-chain Message Passing) to enable issuing and redeeming of tokens 1:1 backed by Bitcoin: PolkaBTC. The underlying XCLAIM framework itself is not specific to Bitcoin or Polkadot and can be used between any two suitable blockchains. XCLAIM is financially secure, dynamic and permissionless, fast and efficient. XCLAIM is on average 95% faster and 65% cheaper than using HTLC atomic swaps with Bitcoin. The team are now implementing a PoC for a BTC-Parachain in Substrate and Rust.
Polkadot mainnet is about to go live, as the first Chain of substrate, ChainX has been fully prepared for it. ChainX is planning to cooperate with Polkadot to develop ChainX’s parachain on Polkadot. All code of ChainX will be open-source when Polkadot goes online. What’s more, the team are committed to promoting the development and implementation of Bitcoin applications. ChainX is also planning to access more inter-chain assets, Ethereum, EOS, ADA, etc.
Earlier this year 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. OAX Foundation aims to remedy the limited utility of OAX ERC20 tokens by building OAX’s own blockchain, built on Substrate as part of the Polkadot network. The parachain should support DeFi APIs and allow for the creation of UX friendly DApps. At present, the team is focusing on four key features: ERC20 functionality, atomic swap, fee delegation and MultiTransfer.
We’ll also focus on The Polkadot Tech Stack, a subset of the Web 3.0 Tech Stack, which consists of the open-source technologies contributing to and relying on Polkadot, Kusama and Substrate. It is meant to be used for decentralized application (Dapp) development within many possible verticals including DeFi, Gaming, Provenance and many others not pictured below. At the moment it’s a work-in-progress.
Last but not least! It’s time to claim DOTs! Check out a step-by-step guide to connect your DOT allocation on Ethereum with a native Polkadot address. You’ll find tools to verify your claim and then check the balance of your Polkadot address. This site is only for holders of DOT allocation indicator tokens.
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 Host being built by Soramitsu, a Japanese digital identity company that previously developed Hyperledger Iroha. They were awarded a grant from the Web3 Foundation and plan to release Kagome by November 2019. 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.
Mandala Festival Prize Drops
Acala’s Mandala Test Network was live on 17th Feb and upgraded to Mandala TC-2 on 4 March. The team will host a Mandala Festival to celebrate and reward supporters and festival-goers.
Acala — a first-of-its-kind decentralized finance consortium, with a vision to create cross-chain open finance infrastructure for the Polkadot ecosystem. The Acala Network is a dual-protocol network, with a decentralized cross-chain capable multi-collateralized stablecoin protocol — Honzon, and a trust-less tokenized staking liquidity protocol — Homa. Acala aims to bring stability and liquidity to the crypto world and beyond. The Acala Stablecoin Project is supported by the Web3 Foundation.
The Mandala Festival started on 6th March (GMT+12), and will give out approx. 100,000 ACA & 5,000,000 KAR (Karura Canary Network token) to festival-goers and contributors.
The Acala network tokens — ACA will be minted in full on genesis with a fixed supply of 100,000,000. A portion of the ecosystem allocation will be deployed to support this festival Upon Mandala TC-2, the airdrop module will record two new balances: ACA and KAR*, which can be used to claim the prize tokens on Karura Canary network and Acala mainnet.
This festival marks the beginning of fostering a great Acala community, whether you are a node runner, an end-user, a blogger, a developer, a thinker or a curious, there is something just for you.
Please, refer to this article to get more information on the Mandala Festival
Open Source Polkadot Stack
The Polkadot Tech Stack is a subset of the Web 3.0 Tech Stack, which consists of the open-source technologies contributing to and relying on Polkadot, Kusama and Substrate. It is meant to be used for decentralized application (Dapp) development within many possible verticals including DeFi, Gaming, Provenance and many others not pictured below. At the moment it’s a work-in-progress.
The Web3 Foundation’s General Grants Program and Open Grants Program are focused on funding development work to build out all layers of the Polkadot Tech Stack.
Interlay Receives W3F Grant to Build Trustless BTC-Polkadot Bridge
BTC-Parachain
With the Polkadot network, parachains can seamlessly communicate via trust-free message passing (XCMP). To interact with external blockchains such as Bitcoin, Polkadot uses bridge parachains that offer two-way compatibility — for example the BTC-Parachain. The BTC-Parachain uses XCLAIM to enable issuing and redeeming of tokens 1:1 backed by Bitcoin: PolkaBTC.
On a high level, XCLAIM follows three main phases:
- Issue: Create Bitcoin-backed tokens, so-called PolkaBTC on the BTC-Parachain.
- Transfer: Transfer PolkaBTC to other users or migrate to other Parachains within the Polkadot ecosystem.
- Redeem: Burn Bitcoin-backed tokens on the BTC-Parachain and receive 1:1 of the amount of Bitcoin in return.
XCLAIM
XCLAIM guarantees that Bitcoin-backed tokens can be redeemed for the corresponding amount of Bitcoin, or the equivalent economic value in DOT. XCLAIM is:
- Financially Secure: intermediaries pledge collateral and cryptographically prove correct behavior. Any attempt of theft is automatically punished, while users are reimbursed.
- Dynamic and Permissionless: any user can become their own intermediary — simply, anytime, and without asking for permission. No need to rely on someone else, or any special hardware.
- Fast and Efficient: XCLAIM is on average 95% faster and 65% cheaper than using HTLC atomic swaps with Bitcoin.
The underlying XCLAIM framework itself is not specific to Bitcoin or Polkadot and can be used between any two suitable blockchains.
For more detail check out the following sources:
technical paper describing XCLAIM
The specification for the BTC-Parachain provides an in-depth guide of how to implement XCLAIM between Bitcoin and a Polkadot parachain. It defines the data model, provides step-by-step function sequences, and describes how to implement the mechanisms necessary for secure operation.
Next steps:
- development of BTC-Relay in Rust using the Substrate framework, followed by an implementation of XCLAIM(BTC,DOT).
- integration of PolkaBTC into other parachains.
Cross-chain Message Passing (XCMP)
Social encounters
Polkadot Presentation at Stanford
February 20, 2020
Leaders from the Web3 Foundation, Parity Technologies, and Polkadot teams were in San Francisco to discuss Substrate, Polkadot, and Kusama Network and the part each will play in a multi-chain future.
Agenda:
1. Polkadot Technical Discussion — Alistair Stewart, Web3 Foundation Lead Researcher
2. Fireside Chat with Alistair Stewart and Fredrik Harrysson, CTO of Parity Technologie
Follow the link to watch the whole video
Web3 Builders: Polymesh
Polymath’s Adam Dossa Discusses Polymesh Blockchain Built with Substrate
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
Webinar
Presenting on this webinar are Cassidy and Philip from Centrifuge. The Centrifuge Operating System is a decentralized platform to support a new generation of applications for the financial supply chain. It enables businesses to exchange financial documents such as invoices, and tokenize those assets to have greater access to financing — thereby unlocking value that has previously been inaccessible. The team are building Centrifuge Chain on Parity Substrate to hold the shared truth of off-chain assets, and are looking forward to a future of many, connected blockchains.
Follow the link to watch the webinar
Upcoming events
Webinar
Substrate Democracy for Kusama and Polkadot
18 March
Logan Saether from the W3F Technical Education team will walk through the Democracy pallet of Substrate and how it can be used to propose new changes on Kusama or Polkadot. The Democracy pallet is one of the core pieces of on-chain governance and the most relevant to the public token holder. Besides voting, it also contains logic for how to delegate a vote or create a proxy voting account.
Don’t miss a chance to join the webinar!
Webinar
Electronic Frontier Foundation Presents: The History of Net Neutrality
23 March
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. They work to ensure that rights and freedoms are enhanced and protected as their use of technology grows.
Hosted by Polkadot
Meetup
Come learn about Substrate, Kusama, and Polkadot ahead of Polkadot’s upcoming mainnet launch!
16 April
About this Event
Joshy Orndorff and Dan Reecer from Parity Technologies and Web3 Foundation, the two organizations driving Polkadot and Kusama Network, will be in D.C. to chat about all the new technologies their teams have launched and will be launching soon. Dan will start with an overview of Polkadot and Kusama, the two next-generation, scalable, sharded blockchain networks created in 2016 by Gavin Wood, CTO and Co-Founder of Ethereum and inventor of the Solidity programming language. Then, Joshy will give a more technical talk about Substrate, the modular framework for building custom blockchains that are capable of joining Polkadot or Kusama.
Meetup
Boston Blockchain Association Presents
23 April
Join Boston’s #1 professional organization for the blockchain industry. It’s a collaborative community of lifelong learners who are committed to helping each other, improving the world, and pushing blockchain forward.
Boston Blockchain Association’s Mission:
- 1. Establish Greater Boston as an international hub for blockchain innovation.
- 2. Support, educate, promote, and advance blockchain technology.
- 3. Support and connect entrepreneurs with useful resources.
Mainnet DOTs
Web3 Foundation will distribute up to 20% of mainnet DOTs prior to network launch in early 2020 (see the Light Paper or the Polkadot Network FAQ). As Gavin Wood, one of the project’s founders, said in his year-end recap, there may be a generally available public sale for some portion of that amount at some point this year. Subscribe to the Polkadot newsletter on polkadot.network for further updates.
Warning: Mainnet DOT tokens are not transferrable until mainnet launch, expected in early 2020. Therefore any transfers of Mainnet DOTs are illegitimate and unauthorized. DOTs can not be moved from a current allocation address. Individuals with an allocation of DOTs who transfer their DOT address to someone else can always keep a copy of their private key, therefore there is extreme risk for individuals participating in transfers of DOTs before mainnet launch.
Testnet dots are freely available now — see below for various ways to obtain them.
Testnet DOTs
DOTs are required to make transactions on the Polkadot network. Testnet DOTs do not have any value beside allowing you to experiment with the network.
Follow the link to learn more about DOTs and their function
Time to Claim Your DOTs!!!
This site includes a step-by-step guide to connect your DOT allocation on Ethereum with a native Polkadot address. You will find tools to verify your claim and then check the balance of your Polkadot address. This site is only for holders of DOT allocation indicator tokens.
Some major information on the claiming process:
Kusama Claims
The Kusama network is Polkadot’s experimental, community-focused R&D network. If you hold the DOT indicator token, you are entitled to claim an equivalent amount of KSM on the Kusama network. This is so that the Kusama network is aligned with the existing DOT holders and community.
You can claim KSMs by signing a message with the Ethereum account that holds your DOT indicator tokens.
Roadmap
Polkadot release is expected around the end of the year.
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.
Other
Partnerships and team members
ChainX’s Follow-up Plan After Polkadot Mainnet Goes Live
Four things that ChainX has planed to follow after the Polkadot mainnet goes live are:
- to cooperate with Polkadot to develop ChainX’s parachain on Polkadot. In the future, all inter-chain assets on the ChainX main network can be inter-chained to the Polkadot network and circulated in the Polkadot ecosystem.
- all code of ChainX will be open-source when Polkadot goes online.
- ChainX is the first Chain of substrate ,which was substrate 1.0 ,and ChainX has been going on very well with it. However the substrate has been updated to 2.0. After the code is open source, a series of adaptations will be made to be compatible with substrate 2.0.
- Third, with the development of the BTC smart contract ecology, the team are committed to promoting the development and implementation of Bitcoin applications
After more than four months of public testing, the smart contract platform test network of ChainX will be officially deployed to the main network of ChainX when Polkadot goes online. At present, they provide corresponding browsers, APIs, wallets, etc. In addition, the ChainX version of metamask has also been developed and will be tested in the community soon.
ChainX aims to be the eco-portal of Bitcoin.
- ChainX will plan to access more inter-chain assets, Ethereum, EOS, ADA, etc., and with the Filecoin mainnet launch of the IPFS incentive layer, they plan to access FIL first.
OAX Foundation to Build on Polkadot Network
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.
Polkadot’s structure design allows multi-chain application environments that can enable highly scalable systems. Polkadot is designed to enable scalable decentralized applications and smart contracts on one blockchain to seamlessly transact with data and assets on other chains, while benefiting from shared security.
OAX Parachain Technology Summary
OAX Foundation aims to remedy the limited utility of OAX ERC20 tokens by building OAX’s own blockchain, built on Substrate as part of the Polkadot network. The parachain should support DeFi APIs and allow for the creation of UX friendly DApps.
At present, the team is focusing on four key features: ERC20 functionality, atomic swap, fee delegation and MultiTransfer.
• ERC20 functionality: representing other tokens on the OAX Parachain, To support DeFi use cases such as lending or swaps, this will be akin to ERC20 on Ethereum or eosio.token on EOS.
• Atomic swap: allowing swap between two tokens with one single transaction
In the case of a swap between two ERC20 tokens, the chain for both tokens would be Ethereum, but still require two transactions. A native swap substrate runtime module (SRM) would provide the same guaranteed execution, but in one transaction rather than two.
• Fee delegation: allowing the gas cost to be paid by a third-party
This feature eases adoption for DApps because users do not need to have native OAX tokens in order to transact with the OAX Chain. Ideally, this feature allows the opportunity for users that do not have a particular token, to still pay for gas fees, thereby removing a significant hurdle for DApp adoption.
• MultiTransfer: allowing developers to batch multiple transactions into one By avoiding repeated fields (such as the “from:” address which would be identical for each inner transaction), minimizing duplicate fields would allow for batched transactions to be smaller, hence resulting in a lower gas cost.
The team hope that these features will the only serve as the initial functionalities of the OAX chain, and will include more in the future. The also believe that they will improve UX and DApps to attract users, a step towards reaching mass adoption.
Learn more about OAX Foundation by visiting their website
Related news, recent updates on the collaboration
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:
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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