Will Polkadot become a new continent for developers? What if the parachain auction fails?
Original title: "Will Polkadot Become a New World for Developers?" What if the parachain auction fails? "
Original source: PolkaWorld
The much-anticipated trans Chain superstar Polkadot has often been compared with Ethereum since its establishment in 2015. Both Ethereum and Polkadot hope to provide developers with a comfortable development environment. Only some structures and functions of Ethereum and Polkadot overlap. Ethereum is a platform for deploying smart contracts and logic that can be used to control native assets on the Ethereum chain. In contrast, Polkadot provides a framework for building blockchains that can connect different blockchains to each other. Despite some differences, both platforms are designed for developers to build decentralized applications.
As the "king of public chains" Ethereum, Ethereum undoubtedly occupies a dominant position and has the largest developer community. However, due to the constraints of various factors, the latecomer Polkadot is catching up.
What are the advantages of Polkadot? Can it impress developers and become a new continent for developers?
Part 1: Comparison of Ethereum and Polkadot Development Environment
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Q: On October 29, when talking about the differences from Ethereum, Polkadot founder Gavin Wood spoke at the Web3 Conference Said that Polkadot has indeed passed the era of smart contracts. Polkadot is not a smart contract platform, it is a platform of platforms, and each platform is using high performance, high efficiency and the best way to do its own thing. What they are good at without having to worry about being charged for gas or having their users pay in the currency of the underlying platform. These platforms will not be bundled to sell anything Polkadot. May I ask, in your opinion, what are the respective advantages and disadvantages of the development environments of Ethereum and Polkadot? How should developers choose?
Xiaojie: There is an essential difference between Ethereum and Polkadot in the underlying architecture, which directly It determines the difference in the respective development environments of the two blockchains.
Ethereum is a single-chain structure, Polkadot is a multi-chain structure. If compared with the computer age, we believe that the single-chain structure can be compared to the stand-alone network in the Internet era, and the multi-chain can be compared to the local area network in the Internet age. Developers can develop stand-alone games like Tetris on a stand-alone computer, but in the local area network there is With the information management system, with the online game, with the communication.
The design of Polkadot 2.0 Para Relaychain is to allow different consensus The independent chains abide by the same cross-chain protocol, communicate with each other, and form a chain network structure of ten thousand chains interconnected. Then this can be compared to our current Internet era. In the Internet era, we have developed more online games, Apple systems, Iphone mobile phone, this is the meaning of cross-chain that everyone often asks! There is no so-called respective advantages and disadvantages, but two different positions. I am looking forward to the Web 3.0 era that Polkadot can bring to the Internet of Ten Thousand Chains!
Q: In mid-October, according to a report released by cryptocurrency venture capital firm Outlier Ventures, In the past year in the blockchain field, Polkadot developer activity has increased significantly, with an increase of 44%. In contrast, EOS developer activity has dropped significantly, with a drop of 86%, followed by BCH with a 63% drop, and Tron development. Business activity fell by 51%. It can be seen that the number of Polkadot ecological developers and the number of projects are growing rapidly. Compared with networks such as EOS, what is the reason for the large increase in the number of Polkadot developers?
Xiaojie: The biggest reason is that Substrate, a blockchain framework, is "useful" of. I think that if a public chain wants to develop, it must be that the framework and tools you provide are helpful to developers. Bitcoin can exist for 11 years because developers continue to want to develop secondary development based on it. We all know Litecoin, Lightning Network, various forked chains, etc.; Ethereum provides smart contracts erc20 protocol, Developers can issue coins with one click and deploy contracts to develop dapps, all of which are helpful to developers.
Similarly, Polkadot provides Substrate development framework, Substrate is a modular blockchain framework, which includes various tools and supports A blockchain infrastructure that allows developers to issue chains with one click according to their own business logic, helping developers to develop a chain very efficiently and at low cost. This is the most useful help for developers. Polkadot has such attributes that developers can continue to develop based on Substrate and access Polkadot. The developer community of Polkadot is bound to grow stronger and stronger!
Q: Polkadot is a heterogeneous multi-chain system developed based on the Substrate blockchain development framework. At the 2018 Web3 Summit, Gavin Wood used the Substrate blockchain development framework for the first time, and completed a customized blockchain in only 15 minutes. It is reported that more than 85% of Polkadot's code is completed using Substrate, and of course there are some independent modules that are completed in the Polkadot code base. What are the features and characteristics of Substrate that attract so many teams to develop?
Xiaojie: Overall, it is highly modular and customizable. Specifically, Substrate provides many interesting modules, such as offchain worker, Forkless runtime upgrade, treasury module, etc. Interested developers can come and have a try!
Q: A very interesting phenomenon is that in the last POW held by the Mars blockchain At the 'ER 2020 DEFI Innovators Conference, there was a view that the coldness of DeFi was caused by the performance of Ethereum, and the Polkadot DeFi ecosystem is most likely to usher in an explosion. Do you agree with this view? ? Why?
Xiaojie: Performance is one aspect, more is my first question As mentioned, Ethereum is a single-chain structure with limited resources. This is also the reason for performance. It can only play stand-alone games. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin that have 80% of the market value cannot participate in the current DeFi. The realization of the chain will first involve Bitcoin. If the relatively small market value of Ethereum can have the current popularity, then 80% of the market value of Bitcoin entering DeFi will definitely explode! And it won't be very far away. PolkaBTC, which is officially developed by Polkadot, will be launched on the test network in the first quarter of next year. You can pay attention!
Q: What do you think is the biggest challenge Polkadot is currently facing?
Xiaojie: At the current stage, the biggest challenge is the smooth launch of the parachain. That is, the XCMP protocol can be developed on schedule; in the community, I think it may be how to let everyone know what Polkadot is doing, instead of just measuring a project by the currency price, but this may also be the case of all blockchain public chains. the problem we are facing!
Part Two: Polkadot’s latest progress
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Q: On September 23, a community member asked when the Polkadot parachain slot auction would start. Polkadot founder Gavin Wood replied It is said that the Kusama parachain auction will be conducted before the Polkadot parachain auction. First of all, please let the guests briefly talk about what is a parachain? What is the latest progress?
Xiaojie: Parallel chains are slices on Polkadot. Each parachain They are all a blockchain, and then verified by the verification nodes of the Polkadot relay chain. Due to their parallelism, they are able to process transactions in parallel and enable the scalability of the Polkadot system. They share the security of the entire Polkadot network and can communicate with other parachains via XCMP.
Polkadot has launched the Rococo v0 version of the parachain test network in early August this year, and is currently promoting the consensus code of the V1 version of the parachain, which is different from the prototype code on Rococo. The next step will be to deploy the V1 version code of the parachain to Rococo, which means that it will be upgraded to Rococo V1 soon. It is currently being sorted out on a 3 node testnet and will be expanded to a multi-node testnet in the next few days, once everything works as expected and looks stable, then the deployment on Rococo can begin.
Q: It is reported that Polkadot will open at the end of this year or early next yearparachain slot auction< /a>, the parachain auction method seems to allow all project parties to participate fairly, but at the specific operational level, it is difficult to avoid the possibility of being hyped. Some participants use more chips to obtain slots, not necessarily for the purpose of building an ecology. For example, if it is sold at a higher price, for the project party, there are actually many choices now, so why does the project party have to bid for the parachain slot? What if the election fails?
Xiaojie: I personally predict that the system-level parachain will be launched at the end of this year or early next year, and That said, there may not be an auction for slots until the end of the year. For the project side, I think not all ecological projects have to bid for slots in the first place. For example, for some ecological projects that are still on the test network, have not yet launched the main network, and do not have their own validators, it is definitely necessary to conduct slot auctions at the first time, because these projects can only be auctioned if the slots are auctioned. Launch the main network, then use Polkadot's validators and share security.
If the election fails, there are several options:
· Let’s bid for parathreads again, which means that although they can’t provide the same throughput as parachains, they can share the security and interoperability of Polkadot. Pay as you go model.
· Go to Kusama to bid on it. Kusama's parachain auction cost may also be lower than Polkadot.
· Deploy their applications or services on parachains that already have sockets, through smart contracts in Solidity or ink! This has a higher development cost, but is an option for those projects looking to take advantage of parachains.
· Deploying applications on the smart contract chain that gets the slot, the development cost and use cost will be lower.
· Go live on the mainnet yourself, recruit and incentivize validator nodes with native tokens, run as a separate chain, and connect to Polkadot through a bridge.
Q: With the approach of Polkadot and parachain auctions, Polkadot parallel slot auctions The announcement of the details of the PLO (Note: previously known as IPO) plan means that Polkadot PLO is close to the real landing. On October 7, Polkadot officially disclosed the details of the implementation of the "Initial Parachain Issuance" scheme in its official blog, and stated that half of the parachain slots will be pledged by DOT holders. As soon as the news came out, the industry paid attention to it. What is the innovation of Parachain Slot Auction (PLO)? What kind of market effect will it cause?
Xiaojie: The biggest advantage is that it can provide asset protection for DOT holders, through PLO tokens are all pledged on Polkadot’s relay chain, and parachain projects cannot be withdrawn, and will be automatically returned to the user’s account after the lease period of the slot ends.
For market effects, you can think about it. Personally, I think there may be some directions, the first one is the release of DOT liquidity, so DeFi around providing liquidity for DOT will be a hot direction; the second is that each parachain has its own way to release liquidity Tokens, so cross-chain DEX is also a direction; the third is that small teams do not have enough influence and funds to bid for slots, so capable project parties, capital parties or exchanges may participate in the auction , and then share it with other project parties by charging a handling fee.
Part Three: Future Outlook
Q: What role does Polkadot play in the historical trend of Web3.0?
Xiaojie: As mentioned above, Polkadot has a multi-chain structure, which is equivalent to the The basic protocol of LAN and the Internet, Substrate is actually very similar to Linux, and Linux is also modular. With Linux, there are Android, Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung mobile phones, etc. For the same reason, only with Substrate can there be excellent Blockchain innovative products. So Polkadot is a basic framework protocol in the Web3.0 era. According to Dr. Xiao Feng's words at the Web3 conference, Polkadot is the best blockchain framework for building a complete set of commercial infrastructure, and Substrate is to provide you with Tools for developing Web3.0 applications/products!
Q: Is now the best time to invest in Polkadot? How can ordinary investors participate in the Polkadot parachain slot auction?
Xiaojie: I personally don’t know how to invest, but I need to see some trends and invest Everyone can make their own decisions. Ordinary investors can directly participate in the slot auction of the parachain through PLO, but the DOT you participate in PLO has some opportunity costs in it, because if you don’t participate, you may have 10% Staking currency standard income or the secondary market The random income brought by fluctuations, but at the same time, if you participate, you may have the income brought by the parachain project itself, and you will also have the income of releasing liquidity.
But whether it is Polkadot investment or parachain slot auction investment, it is best for ordinary investors to understand clearly before investing, and not to blindly follow the trend Liu, understand what Polkadot is, understand what the parachain project you want to PLO is, and what the rules are, because this is not a barbaric era, I hope everyone treats it with caution!
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