The first candidate for the highly anticipated blockchain and one of the top 10 ICOs of 2017, Polkadot Network, is live. The relevance of this project lies in its promise to bring much-needed “true [blockchain] interoperability.”
Web3 Foundation, Polkadot’s lead developer has announced the launch of the initial version of this sharded protocol, which will allow the team to “execute critical logic and security audits and calibrate final aspects of the network.” In a separate post, Gavin Wood, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder who started Polkadot in 2016, said that this “CCI” is the first candidate for the Polkadot mainnet, using the governance parameters for the first time with limited functionality, adding that another candidate will be launched if necessary. Importantly, no parachains are active yet.
Polkadot is a shared protocol that enables different blockchain networks to operate together. Per the website, it allows connecting and launching blockchain applications by using parachains to link to different networks. This same principle will enable any type of cross-blockchain transfers, whether these are data or assets, and not necessarily just tokens.
As for parachains, these are sovereign blockchains, or shards, with unique functions, meaning they can be designed for specific use cases. They communicate with each other, but also with external blockchains, such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum, through bridge blockchains, which Polkadot describes as “a cornerstone technology of blockchain interoperability.”
What this means for various applications, businesses, organizations, etc., is that their developers will be able to establish a communication between theirs and other blockchains to share data, and without a need for a centralized element/institution. Also, an application could be built to get permissioned data from a private blockchain and use it on a public one.
CMC Alert: DOT tokens do not exist yet. Allocations of Polkadot’s native DOT token are technically and legally non-transferable. Please see page for more details. https://t.co/yeLRfhIRuo
— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) May 27, 2020
“Polkadot is, in many respects, the biggest bet in this ecosystem against chain maximalism,” said Wood in a video interview. “Even if there were one perfect chain, I don’t think it would stay perfect for very long.”