# Polka Dot

## Definition

Polkadot is a protocol that connects blockchains — allowing value and data to be sent across previously incompatible networks (Bitcoin and Ethereum, for example). It’s also designed to be fast and scalable. The DOT token is used for staking and governance; it can be bought or sold on Coinbase and other exchanges.

## Purpose
The Polkadot protocol is designed to allow unrelated blockchains to securely talk to each other, so that value or data can flow between, say, the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains without any intermediary. It’s also designed to be speedy and scalable, via the use of many parallel blockchains (or “parachains”) that take much of the processing demand off of the main blockchain.

Ethereum, for instance, is the most popular platform for DApps. Still, it is currently not very scalable and carries exceptionally high fees, particularly when traffic on the platform is high. EOS, on the other hand, secures fast and zero-fee transactions at the expense of decentralization.

All these networks are isolated from each other, with little to no information exchanged between them. Think of different banks, for example, that were not allowed to interact — we would not be able to transfer money smoothly from one bank to another.

Think of emails. Their interoperability allows us to transfer information from a Yahoo to a Gmail account, for example. Currently, a lack of interoperability is preventing the mass adoption of blockchain technology. Polkadot aims to fill this gap.

## Tokenomics
The Polkadot token (DOT) serves two main functions within the Polkadot network: it’s a governance token, which allows holders to have a say in the future of the protocol, and it’s used for staking, which is the way the Polkadot network verifies transactions and issues new DOT.

## Important Dates
June 2021 - Polkadot was listed on Coinbase.

## People
Founder - Polkadot and Ethereum co-founder Dr. Gavin Wood (PhD in Software Engineering)

## Opinions

## News
Updated Roadmap: https://medium.com/polkadot-network/polkadot-roadmap-roundup-4ee64577a9ae

- EOY 2022 - Asynchronous Backing. The first set of major optimizations to Polkadot’s parachain consensus protocol since its launch on Polkadot in December 2021. If Asynchronous Backing is enabled by the network, the block time of 12 seconds for parachains will be shortened to 6 seconds, which will mean lower latency and faster finality for transactions executed on parachains. Furthermore, the parachain blocks themselves will be allocated more time for execution, meaning that they get even more throughput.
- Q1/Q2 2023 - Parathreads / Next-Generation Scheduling. While smart contract parachains have made it possible to easily build for the network and leverage its interoperability, we’re aiming to improve this developer experience at all levels of the stack. Parathreads are pay-as-you-go parachains. Parathreads give you the power of starting a blockchain with the ease of launching a smart contract. They can be launched and operated without waiting for the next auction or doing anything more than uploading their code to the relay chain and spinning up a few funded collator nodes.
- EOY 2022 - XCMv3. XCM is a universal language for cross-chain communication that can be used inside or outside the Polkadot ecosystem. Combined with the transport protocol XCMP-Lite (aka HRMP) or other future transport protocols, it can be used to communicate securely and trustlessly between parachains.
- October 2022 - Weights V2. Weights are the mechanism by which Substrate transactions and actions are measured against block capacity. The work on Weights V2 introduces a notion of multi-dimensional weights, which measure not only execution time but also the amount of state accessed by a particular operation.
- Beginning of Q4 2022 - Governance Overhaul. Governance V2 has been designed as the next step in making the on-chain, binding decision-making processes of Polkadot as decentralized as possible. The novel governance system removes the council and technical committees, introduces the Polkadot Fellowship, and moves every decision in Polkadot to referendums by the community. to be deployed on Kusama (most likely with runtime upgrade v.0.9.30).
- EOY - Bridge Hub. Parity’s bridges team has been working on a Polkadot<>Kusama bridge for some time, and is preparing to start the launch process. The bridge hub will be a message routing service within each network. That is, it will not store much state about the bridged chains (e.g. wrapped assets), but rather forward messages to other parachains like Statemint to handle.