Q2 Report Paints a Pretty Picture of Polkadot

Table of Contents

• Substrate Stats Stack Up
• What Comes Next?

Polkadot is red hot. That’s the message emanating from the multi-chain project, whose new Q2 report paints a picture of a highly active ecosystem. Data pertaining to dev commits, parachain auctions, grants, staking, and governance suggest that Polkadot is moving at a rapid pace and in the right direction, even as the market endures trying conditions.

It’s not just Polkadot that’s been going from strength to strength either: canary network Kusama, designed as Polkadot’s testbed, is also flourishing, while proving that it’s much more than a testnet. Even skeptics will be forced to concede, on the basis of its Q2 report, that Polkadot has been shipping.

Substrate Stats Stack Up

Composed of a main relay chain and series of interconnected parachains, Polkadot is built on Substrate, a blockchain framework developed by Parity Technologies. Substrate is at the heart of Polkadot’s blockchain of blockchains, given that new projects joining its ecosystem are compelled to master it: Solidity simply won’t cut it here. On this metric, Polkadot is in good health, reporting more than 1,400 active monthly developers. Only Ethereum boasts more devs; and Polkadot’s figure is an impressive YoY increase of 75%.

Not every project entering the world of Polkadot will want to get its hands dirty with Substrate, of course; to facilitate this, a Substrate marketplace has sprung up, shipping pre-built blocks of code. This allows projects to create their own chain without needing to code everything from the ground up.

To encourage crypto startups to pick Polkadot over the competition and set up shop within its universe, the Web3 Foundation has been merrily doling out grants to suitable applicants. Polkadot’s Q2 report notes that more than 400 of these have now been awarded, which augurs well for the future of Substrate and the networks it powers. Another noteworthy tidbit from Polkadot’s Q2 report is that over 500 core contributors have left their mark on Substrate repositories. It all sounds very decentralized.

Other stats cited include:

• 621 forkless upgrades across all Substrate-based blockchains, including Polkadot and Kusama parachains
• Polkadot Treasury has funded spending proposals of over 1.4 million DOT
• More than 1,400 governance participants have recently voted on key proposals

What Comes Next?

Interesting as quarterly reports are, they are by their nature backward-facing. Of more interest to the Polkadot community is the question of what comes next. Can Polkadot and Kusama gain market share on rival smart contract chains? Will all this developer activity convert into user growth? And will all these W3F grants spark the next crypto unicorn or killer application?

While many of these questions cannot be definitively answered at this time, what can be said for certain is that the framework is certainly in place to support these outcomes. Polkadot’s cross-chain messaging system, XCM, is picking up rapidly since launching in early May, with parachain teams now swapping 10,000 messages a month.

Polkadot’s governance process is undergoing a major upgrade, and there’s a new staking dashboard in place for DOT holders. As a blog post announcing its launch explains: “With this first-class staking portal, the community now has an easy, modern, and advanced interface to stake directly on the Polkadot Relay Chain. This should encourage more network participation as users are given an easier way to stake directly.”

If Polkadot can maintain this level of activity and innovation through Q3, it will be well on its way to realizing the vision laid out by Dr Gavin Wood when he composed its whitepaper all those years ago.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice