Polkadot Parachains Update: In an unexpected move, Polkadot, one of the top cryptos in the world, just announced their biggest update since their mainnett launch last summer.
If you are unfamiliar with what this means: companies will be bidding for a spot to build a substrate on Polkadot. Substrates are Polkadot’s equivalent to smart contracts on Ethereum. So, developers will come and build their own projects on the Polkadot ecosystem.
Those who aren’t familiar with the Polkadot and Kusama networks, might not understand how significant this is. This is because most Polkadot experts weren’t expecting Polkadot parachains to happen until 2022. While we still don’t have a date set in stone, the announcement that was made indicated that it would be very soon.
As one can see in the tweet above, Kusama’s parachain auctions are going to begin very shortly. All that has to happen is for a successful auction to happen on the Kusama network. Most were expecting Polkadot parachains not to happen until we saw months of successful parachain auctions and substrates being built on Kusama.
Kusama was designed to be a wild west version of Polkadot. It will do all the same things Polkadot does, except it will be more experimental. This the first time in blockchain technology that two companies will successfully launch a duo “substrate” platform.
What this means
Polkadot has been the cause of a lot of hype in certain niches of crypto. Polkadot was founded by former Ethereum CTO Gavin Wood. So we can certainly expect Polkadot to be a newer and better version of Ethereum. Issues such as gas fees and network speeds will most likely not be an issue with DOT.
The competition in technology between Polkadot, Ethereum and other blockchain networks is very healthy for blockchain technology in general. As the systems become more efficient it will attract more and more projects and investors which again will help develop the blockchain industry overall. Therefore, we are curious to see what the Polkadot parachains update will bring.
Final thoughts
There have been a lot of promises in crypto that fail to come through. Even Cardano has yet to give any specific indications of when smart contracts, or the “Gougen” upate as they call it, will occur. The genius of Gavin Wood’s marketing is that he always over delivers because he never sets expectations. No one was expecting Polkadot parachains to happen so soon, and this announcement blew everyone’s expectations out of the water.
If you enjoyed reading this article, perhaps you’ll enjoy learning more about Polkadot in this article: What Is Polkadot?
Aaron is passionate about blockchain and has been an investor in cryptocurrencies for the past years. He enjoys engaging with other people in the cryptocurrency community online, particularly on Telegram, and learning from experts.
