Published
3 years ago on
November 19, 2020
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Several months after its mainnet launch, the Polkadot network is set to hold its first official event featuring some of the most prominent innovators in the blockchain space. Called Polkadot Decoded, the free virtual event will take place on December 3 and will feature an appearance from Ampleforth. The algorithmically-adjustable crypto project will be speaking to community members about the potential of DeFi on Polkadot.
Polkadot Decoded to Showcase the Platform’s Wide-Ranging Potential
The highly anticipated public blockchain platform Polkadot saw its mainnet launch at the end of July. Four months later, its vibrant community will gather online at the platform’s first official event called Polkadot Decoded. The virtual conference will be free to attend and looks set to become a mainstay of the Polkadot calendar.
Despite the condensed one-day format, Polkadot Decoded boasts an impressive lineup of talks underscoring the network’s innovative promise. Among others, the event will feature presentations devoted to Polkadot’s ecosystem and governance, the workings of parachains, and the major projects building on Polkadot, such as the Acala stablecoin and Ontology’s digital ID solution. Defiant’s founder Camilla Russo will chair the discussion panel on Polkadot’s potential to compete in the defi space.
Another important topic at the conference will be interoperability with other blockchain platforms. One of the talks will cover the Polkadot-Ethereum bridge developed by the Snowfork project, whereas others will touch upon the PolkaBTC initiative of bringing wrapped BTC over to Polkadot and the platform’s place in the multi-chain future.
The highlight of the day, at least for Ampleforth's highly engaged community, will be the discussion about DeFi's potential on Polkadot. It's unknown whether this will entail a deeper relationship between Ampleforth and Polkadot, but Ampleforth representatives are expected to share more details on the day.
Polkadot Decoded will culminate with a fireside chat with its founder Gavin Wood moderated by Unchained podcast’s Laura Shin.
The Top Ethereum Competitor
A brainchild of Ethereum’s co-founder Gavin Wood, Polkadot is currently perhaps the best-positioned blockchain platform to challenge Ethereum’s dominance in the distributed computation space. Its native token DOT has rapidly established itself in the top ten by market capitalization and Polkadot has enjoyed the highest growth in development activity among major blockchain platforms in 2020, according to a recent report by Outlier Ventures. Meanwhile, other competitors, except Cosmos, have experienced declines in this metric.
Similarly to its biggest rival, Polkadot is aiming at providing a secure, permissionless basis for decentralized applications. It uses Proof of Stake (PoS) for consensus and implements an on-chain scaling approach similar to Ethereum 2.0’s sharding where the main chain (relay chain) serves as the security core for subordinated chains called parachains.
Polkadot’s key differences from Ethereum concern its approaches to governance and distributed computing. Unlike Ethereum’s largely informal approach to making decisions about the future of the protocol, Polkadot fully embraces on-chain governance. It also largely eschews smart contracts running within a shared virtual machine, opting for running each dApp on a separate parachain.
In addition to these design differences, Polkadot has already implemented the core scalability elements such as PoS and parachains, whereas Ethereum has yet to launch even its PoS chain that will initially be unusable by dApps, with sharding potentially fully activated only several years later.
Nonetheless, for all the sensationalist narrative about Polkadot being the ultimate Ethereum killer, Polkadot Decoded’s heavy focus on interoperability with other blockchains suggests that the network’s vision is currently more about finding its niche in the crypto world than taking competitors out of business.
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