This year, as the crypto industry faced another chilly spell, the Polkadot community was hard at work constructing and introducing a wide-ranging system of layer-1 blockchains that is the largest in the world. This system has been equipped with various core technologies to drive it into 2023.
Given the sheer amount of events in the Polkadot ecosystem during 2022, it is quite difficult to succinctly summarize all that has occurred with regards to the core technology and its related community. As we transition into 2023, let us take a moment to reflect on some of the most noteworthy accomplishments and developments that have taken place within Polkadot this past year.
The birth of Web3’s leading ecosystem
The Polkadot community has a history of introducing excellent technology even in challenging times, and 2022 was no different. In just over a year since the debut of parachains at the end of 2021, Polkadot has become the most extensive and multifaceted ecosystem of specially designed layer-1 blockchains and applications, as well as the only one that is totally safeguarded by a shared validator set operating across the entire network and gaining from secure, verifiable cross-chain interoperability.
The Polkadot community has demonstrated its capability to create amazing technology even during challenging times – 2022 was no different. After the launch of parachains in late 2021, Polkadot quickly became the most significant and varied ecosystem of layer-1 blockchains and applications, all secured by a shared validator set, providing trustless cross-chain interoperability. To date, 74 parachains have been successful in their auction on Polkadot or Kusama, forming an ecosystem with more than 300 unstoppable applications.
Altogether, there are approximately 550 projects initiated or in the works for Polkadot, a noteworthy accomplishment during its first full year of operating live parachains. At present, more than 200 teams have either deployed or are constructing an exclusively designed blockchain on Polkadot’s technology framework, understanding that this system is more suitable for their requirements than a smart contract answer and that Polkadot proffers quicker access to market and a lower cost for development as well as the upgradability and interoperability essential for sustained progress.
The Polkadot community has demonstrated a strong belief in the future of the Polkadot ecosystem by loaning out more than 130 million DOT and almost 300,000 KSM via crowdloans to back parachains’ auction bids.
Polkadot’s multifaceted ecosystem has shown the world that Web3 encompasses far more than just DeFi and NFT applications. The Polkadot ecosystem is pushing the boundaries of blockchain technology with innovative DeFi and NFT solutions, but there are also parachains and dapps for various other use cases such as social media, supply chain, identity management, gaming, tokenized physical assets, carbon credits, privacy protection, robotics, IoT and much more.
This year, several significant progressions in ecosystem adoption have been achieved, such as the collaboration between Astar, a smart contract parachain, and NTT Docomo, Japan’s foremost mobile service provider, on a $4 billion initiative to boost Web3 utilization. Additionally, Efinity parachain has also partnered with Square Enix, the renowned gaming company behind Final Fantasy – one of the most popular video games ever – to create Polkadot-based NFTs for the game.
Centrifuge, a parachain specializing in bringing real-world assets into DeFi on the blockchain, has secured an investment of $220 million from Coinbase, making it the largest investment ever for this purpose.
Manta Network’s Privacy Hub parachain is on track to break records with its trusted setup, involving more than 13,000 members from 177 nations. This technology is essential for creating a safer web that preserves private data and will enable other developers within the system to use its security-maintaining capabilities.
In 2022, Project Liberty’s DSNP (Decentralized Social Networking Protocol) was declared to be first deployed on Polkadot, thereby ushering in a new age of social media where users possess authority over their own data, identities and connections – a requirement for Web3. Additionally, the music industry has also been exposed to some important advancements through Polkadot with the introduction of Public Pressure – an NFT marketplace for music which generated $2m in a matter of days after its launch.
KILT Protocol, the identity parachain of Polkadot, is experiencing considerable growth due to partnerships with dena and Energy Web – a Polkadot-based project for creating an identity register for the German energy sector. Moonsama has incorporated KILT’s SocialKYC for decentralized user sign-ins, and it has become the first parachain to shift from Kusama to Polkadot.
The Polkadot DeFi network experienced considerable growth in 2020 as a result of Tether’s (USDt) stablecoin being integrated, the news of USDC’s integration, and the emergence of Equilibrium and Polkadex decentralized exchanges.
Polkadot stands out due to its incredible ability to be flexible, scalable, upgradeable and secure – making it the ideal platform for all the ever-changing possibilities that Web3 has to offer.
Guiding the way towards genuine decentralization
In 2022, Polkadot made great progress toward its ambition of forming the most ungovernable, reliable, and unstoppable Web3 ecosystem.
The events of the last year and the behavior of certain unscrupulous individuals have highlighted how essential it is to take into account certain design principles for Web3. It has become apparent that systems dependent on users relying on middlemen to act morally, with their best interests in mind, and without corruption or incompetence, are vulnerable to loss of funds, data and identities. They are also susceptible to censorship and malevolent external interference.
Progressively, Polkadot has been reducing central points of control and becoming one of the largest DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) in existence. In 2022, Polkadot introduced OpenGov – the most advanced blockchain governance system ever devised – to replace the more centralized role of their Council. Through this decentralized referenda system, decisions can be made and executed in an autonomous manner without impediment.
The Polkadot Fellowship, part of OpenGov, was introduced this year. This decentralised, blockchain-based and ranked group of technical experts has supplanted the Technical Committee. It serves the purpose of oraclising the knowledge base within the Polkadot community without having control over decisions made by stakeholders in regards to network matters. The Fellowship is designed to optimise decision making without influencing its result.
The efforts for genuine decentralization paid off in November 2022 when Web3 Foundation declared that the DOT token had changed from a security to a non-security. This was a significant accomplishment towards achieving Web3.
Other steps were taken to advance decentralization, such as introducing the most advanced light-client technology so users would not have to use third-party node services to examine data and utilize Polkadot’s or any Substrate-based chain’s functions. In addition, Polkadot’s staking system underwent some key modifications in 2022 – including nomination pools – which made it more accessible by reducing the minimal stake to 1 DOT, thus furthering decentralization and trustlessness by allowing more individuals to stake on the chain with their own keys.
Unstoppable innovation
In 2022, Polkadot provided an impressive 15 forkless upgrades, a number that surpasses any other blockchain and reaches almost 50 since its launch. Comparatively, Ethereum managed to do only 3 hard-fork updates in the same year and 4 in 2021. To put this into perspective, Apple’s iOS had 16 updates during the year, meaning that Polkadot’s upgradeability is on par with more standard software update schedules. This allows it to stay up-to-date with the pace of innovation thanks to its leading upgradeability features. So far, there have been almost 1000 non-forking upgrades of blockchains founded on Polkadot’s technology.
On May 4th, Polkadot governance upgraded the Relay Chain to v9190, which enabled protected cross-chain data transfer using XCM. After testing it on Kusama, this bridging technology was released to the public, promising to solve the “weakest link” issue that has caused $2.5 billion in damages in the last 12 months. Parachain teams embraced this new technology immediately; more than 100 channels were created and 10,000 messages were sent within the first 30 days. So far, over 160,000 XCM messages have been sent on Polkadot and more than 200,000 messages have been sent on Kusama, signifying the start of a new era where cross-chain interoperability is securely attainable. Additionally, v9190 brought about the full activation of Statemint which had first appeared in Polkadot back in December 2021. Users are now able to mint various assets such as NFTs and also teleport DOT between the Relay Chain and other chains – an essential feature for the whole ecosystem.
This year saw the introduction of Collectives, a second system parachain for Polkadot, which grants people the capacity to work together without having to place their reliance in third parties such as lawyers and courts – an essential role for Web3. The first collective to be released was the Polkadot Alliance, a joint initiative established to honor beneficial contributions to the environment and formulate a code of conduct relating to frauds, malicious activity, misuse of the Polkadot brand name and uncredited coding.
One of Web3’s most active and growing builder communities
This year, the development of Polkadot reached an unprecedented level. With a peak of almost 2500 developers participating monthly in 2022, Polkadot had one of the most active communities outside Ethereum. The Substrate Builders Program (SBP) accepted 32 new teams from 127 applications in 2022 and 60% of Polkadot’s parachains have been part of the SBP until now.
This year, the Web3 Foundation’s grant program in aid of Polkadot’s builder community achieved a significant milestone of 400th project, with 150 new grants being signed, 267 applications received, and 230 grant objectives accomplished. Furthermore, Polkadot’s decentralized on-chain treasury also disbursed a record number of DOTs to back up projects which benefit the network. So far, over 4 million DOT have been given to teams and individuals for their contribution to the system – a huge jump from the 200 thousand DOT paid out at the end of 2021.
Acknowledging the need for a growing number of engineers to bolster the ecosystem, the Polkadot Blockchain Academy (PBA) was established in 2022. This intensive academic program seeks to give students the necessary skills to become experienced blockchain engineers. The first wave of PBA took place at Cambridge University during the summer with 55 students selected from 560 applicants. The program was a success, taking participants from their starting point on their Web3 journey and leading them to be employed within the Polkadot environment after graduation. The following year will see Wave 2 of PBA commence at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in January with twelve universities from LATAM taking part in it.
Applications for the second iteration of Polkadot in the region had nearly 800 applicants within a month, demonstrating immense enthusiasm. The organization of future waves is already underway, creating a vast group of skilled developers to form Polkadot’s destiny.
Looking Forward to the Future
In 2022, much was achieved and many things are coming in 2023, which looks to be a bright future. Rob Habermeier and Gavin Wood, Polkadot’s founders, have outlined what new technologies will be developed if approved by the Polkadot community. A notable introduction is OpenGov on Polkadot that will go through trial on Kusama before being put before the public for voting. This addition will bring more decentralization to the decision-making process and allow the network to make more collective decisions at once which will improve how upgrades are done and guarantee ongoing progress.
Asynchronous support, an enhancement to parachain consensus, could enable Polkadot to reach a remarkable throughput of up to one million transactions per second – representing a new high for the industry.
XCMv3, a major upgrade to Polkadot’s interoperability protocol, will enable trustless cross-ecosystem communication with XCM, as well as NFT transfers and remote locking. With the launch of XCMv3, Polkadot will be able to set up trustless bridges for compatibility with other ecosystems such as Kusama and Ethereum through a Bridge Hub parachain. Parathreads and additional scheduling methods will allow blockchains to operate on Polkadot without taking part in the auction process, which will simplify and make deployment of the next generation of blockchains on Polkadot much easier. This brings us closer to achieving Rob Habermeier’s vision of making Polkadot into the premier marketplace for flexible and high-quality blockspace as outlined in his 2022 post titled ‘Polkadot: Blockspace over Blockchains’.
Polkadot’s Wasm smart contracts ecosystem is set to become more advanced, offering a better, stronger and more reliable alternative to Ethereum’s EVM smart contract technology.
The prospects for the Polkadot ecosystem in 2023 are very bright, with a flurry of projects ready to debut their specialized parachains over the following months, bringing a new influx of users. In view of the fact that the regular parachain on Polkadot has only been functioning for approximately 6 months, we’ll also observe these current projects maturing by 2023. In many ways, while there was plenty of parachain and dapp evolution in 2022, teams have predominantly been occupied launching their main features, so it is just beginning for the Polkadot environment — 2023 is promised to be an exhilarating year for the group.
It’s time to conclude the 2022 Roundup and look forward to what the following year holds. Wishing all readers a joyous New Year, and to all Web3 developers, keep creating!
