Polkadot Launch Advances as Parachain Functionality Is Almost Here

The Ethereum competitor Polkadot has announced that it is ready to start the final phase of its launch with the introduction of Parachain functionality, ten months after the start of Polkadot’s first four phases.

Up until this point, Polkadot has functioned as a single chain network despite being intended to be a scalable multichain, which has attracted the attention of private and institutional investors that have transformed the project into the 8th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

With the release of Polkadot version 0.9 last week, Parity Technologies prepared the foundations for the deployment of parachain functionality in the Kusama network, which will occur once a full external audit has been conducted and the Kusama canary network has successfully executed at least one auction that fulfills certain requirements.

With the audit already taking place, the completion of the Kusama requirement is expected to be completed over “the coming days”, according to Gavin Wood’s post on May 17th. This step will take place in 3 stages: The deployment of a shell parachain, its upgrade depending on the governance vote, and finally, the start of the auctions.

With all of these 3 steps already tested on the Rococo testnet, it is expected for the process to go smoothly despite Kusama’s somewhat less uniform foundation. However, the testing is necessary to endure no third-party experiences disruptions when implementing their projects on the network.

The Future of Polkadot

According to Wood’s post, Polkadot’s development team will focus on improving the reliability, refactoring, and performance of the network over the next two months, which should allow them to remove the intentional cap placed in transaction volume.

At this time, this cap allows for 500 milliseconds of work being executed within each block, instead of the estimated 2000 the network could handle according to estimations. This means that as the code is improved and tested, the limits will be progressively lifted to allow an increase of over 75% in the performance of the network.

It is also planned for Parathreads, off-chain XCMP. and Spree to be the focus of the development’s team efforts once this restrictive period has been completed. The deployment of these features will further improve the capabilities of the network.

While the deployment of Polkadot’s parachain capabilities was expected to occur during the first quarter of this year, the testing in the Rococo testnet caused the delay of the integration. No release date has been yet provided for the deployment of the 3 remaining features and the removal of performance caps.

Ethereum Competitors Continue to Grow

With concerns over Ethereums increasing gas prices and performance struggles kickstarting a rise in popularity of its competitors last year, the trend has continued to take the crypto market by storm with Binance Smart Chain, Cardano, and Polkadot being the most benefited projects.

At this time, Binance’s BNB is the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, followed by Cardano’s ADA at 5th place, and Polkadot’s DOT at 8th. Of these 3 currencies, both ADA and DOT have experienced gains of 28% and 12% respectively at a time when 6 of the top 10 projects have experienced drops in value.

Both projects are still in the development phase and are yet to deploy the features that have converted them on the most important competition to Ethereum’s reign, with critics pointing out that speculation around their currencies is based on promises and could mean disaster if they failed to fulfill their promises.

It is also noteworthy that Polkadot with be running its Polkadot Decoded Event on May 19th, which will see personalities like Gavin Wood and Robert Habermeier, as well as developers from the Web3 Foundation and Parity, provide insights on the development of the network and its future.

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