You know how we have covered a ton of different Blockchains, like Solana and Tezos and Cardano and Monero, and it just seems like there’s a never-ending list of these coins and platforms for you to throw your money at. Each one does something a little different, but they say they’re the next new and crazy idea that will solve the scalability trilemma. Well, Polkadot offers itself as something new.
1. Polkadot
In crypto, we see an awful lot of emphasis given to names, and sometimes they can seem a little odd. The Polkadot Blockchain name can be a huge asset to help beginners visualize. What it’s actually about. You can probably guess where this is going. Polkadot is kind of similar to you know: Polkadots, the fabric pattern featuring a blank background with scattered dots, is a good starting point to visualize this project. That’s because right now, crypto is a little unfriendly.
We have a lot of these competing projects. Doing similar things using similar Blockchains working in isolation, each of these Blockchains can be seen as one individual dot, but that’s just the start. The reason Polkadot is important is that it lets us connect all these chains.
2. Interoperability
So imagine you have this huge field of Polkadots, but you could draw lines in between all the dots and start to connect them. Each dot would represent an individual blockchain and drawing lines between them all connects to all of these different projects. Now you might be wondering what problem this solves well, one of the biggest problems we constantly see in the crypto space is a lack of interoperability.
The problem is like the problem in early personal computers, before we even had the internet, we have all these Blockchains hanging out like stars and space drifting around without any actual way to interact with each other. Polkadot is a way to make it easy to create and connect Blockchains. Along with our example, computers were great, but the ability to send and receive information between two different computers got people on board.
3. Blockchains
Polkadot is betting that the same thing is going to be true for Blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and Cardano, and all the other big chains might be great on their own, but they need to be able to interact with each other easily. This is where we get into the Polkadot Blockchain, which serves as what they call a layer Zero function. Think about it like a neighborhood, we have our little crypto neighborhood with all our Blockchains, basically like individual houses, but how do all these houses all get electricity, water, and roads so that they’re all connected. Polkadot wants to get even more fundamental than layer. One individual Blockchains and just give them an easy way to connect them all. This layer, zero foundation, is intended to make building and using Blockchains easier. So now we kind of understand how it works.
4. Proof of Stake
Polkadot works at its core, Polkadot is just a proof of stake, a Blockchain that connects other Blockchains. They’re all connected, but how do they become connected? How do they maintain their connection and what does being connected do for those Blockchains, we’re going to answer each one of these questions by talking about two main components of Polkadot the Relay chain and the many different Para chains that exist on the network. Think about it like this, the Polkadot network works as a hub and spoke model for those unfamiliar with this analogy. This means that there is one center and many different branches coming off of the center for Polkadot. The hub or center is the relay chain.
5. Para Chains
This is the basis of the network where all the different Para chains come to achieve consensus. As we mentioned before, Polkadot is a proof of stake Blockchain and requires that validating nodes, or, people that want to participate in the network, stake at least ten thousand dot coins, which is pretty much the token used on the Polkadot network kind of like ether on Ethereum. This ensures that those validating the Blockchain are financially invested in its future and will not attack it or cheat.
6. Validators
So when all these validators come together to achieve consensus, it happens right in the relay chain. But if the point of Polkadot is to connect different Blockchains and dabs, which are decentralized applications, then how do these things maintain their individual, unique rules and use cases. Well, that is where Para chains come in Para chains are the spoke part of the hub and spoke model that we mentioned earlier.
The pair of chains goes and does their own thing, whatever that use case of their specific Blockchain is, and then they come back to the relay chain for everything to sync up. Gavin Wood, who is the founder of Polkadot, describes this process as an office. The employees in an office will have the specific jobs that they do by themselves, but every so often they come together and sync up and coordinate their work with meetings or phone calls. Para chains are simply timed to meet up with the relay chain.
7. Secure and Popular
Every so often to make sure that everything is secure and on the same page, this shared security is a huge part of what makes Polkadot attractive. Instead of having to secure your network, secure funding, and figure out a million other details, Polkadot makes it easy to set up Para chains quickly and easily, which reduces the feedback loop time. You can see that Polkadot is set up to be very responsive to new ideas and experiments, which makes it very robust and in some ways anti-fragile.
8. Test Network
The two main tools that allow Polkadot to change and adapt quickly and thoroughly are the treasury and its test network Kusama. Now, according to Gavin Wood, Kusama has a “live fast die young” attitude and embraces chaos. Normally, Blockchain projects want to emphasize their reliability and security to counter the typical connotation that comes with being a crypto project.
9. Kusama
Now, this isn’t to say that Polkadot is not reliable or secure, but that they recognize the time and place for experimentation and adaptation. Let me make it simple for you: Kusama is a practice network. Now, a lot of Blockchain networks have things like this, where users can test different things before they get launched on the real network. The interesting thing about Polkadots, test network Kusama is that Kusama has real stakes.
The amount of money and stakes are much lower than the real Polkadot network, but it gives people enough of an incentive to not play around too much and try things that they are both ready for the real world and maybe a little risky. Also, Kusama isn’t just a version of the Polkadots varsity platform because it shows which things are working and which aren’t, it ends up having a significant influence on the development of the real Polkadot network. So, Kusama is just a test net.
10. Official Treasury
The engineers might get upset at me for saying that, though, let’s move on to the treasury now we’ve talked about treasuries and many other Blockchain projects like Cardano. An official treasury is useful because you know that when you are using the Blockchain to engage in transactions, the fees from those transactions are helping the network as a whole. These funds can be used for a variety of different reasons like community building and outreach marketing security and software development.
Those who want to make changes can use the funds from the treasury by sending a deposit, and then their deposit is refunded if the changes are accepted by the treasury and Kusama to its fundamental basis. Polkadot wants to position itself as a platform for innovation, interoperability, scalability, and experimentation. To me, it’s a fresh idea in the world of crypto.
That may end up being the idea that ties everything together and creates a massive, interconnected, crypto ecosystem. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s probably the best way I could put it.
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