parachain auction
Polkadot unveils $770M development fund ahead of parachain auctions
Polkadot’s Gavin Wood has announced a more than $770 million development fund just weeks before the network’s parachain auctions are set to go live.
Polkadot (DOT) founder Gavin Wood has unveiled a $777 million development fund ahead of the network’s parachain lease auctions.
Wood tweeted on Oct. 17 that Polkadot’s treasury has allocated more than 18.9 million DOT (worth roughly $777 million at the time of writing) to a development fund that will be disbursed through community governance.
Wood gave broad suggestions as to how the funds might be spent, stating the capital will be mobilized to realize the community’s vision for “building, improving, educating” Polkadot’s ecosystem, in addition to “anything else that the Polkadot governance believes valuable.
According to Polkadot’s Wiki, the treasury funds can be spent if approved by the council, which votes on proposals put forward to them. The Polkadot council currently consists of 13 members, however the council plans to expand to 24 seats at some stage in the future.
With many Polkadot governance votes seeing poor community participation in the past, the development fund may be intended to bolster DOT holders’ engagement with the governance process According to Polkassembly, three governance proposals put forward this past week have seen total voter turnouts of zero, six and seven votes respectively.
Stakeholders wishing to put forward a proposal must reserve a deposit of at least 5% of the proposed spend, with the deposit being either slashed (a burn mechanism to deter validator misbehavior) if rejected, or returned if accepted. With funds being placed at risk in the event of an unsuccessful vote, Polkadot’s slashing mechanism may be a factor impeding governance engagement on the network.
The new development fund was also revealed just weeks before Polkadot’s highly anticipated parachain auctions are scheduled to begin in early November, suggesting the funds could be intended to kickstart development targetingPolkadot’s forthcoming parachain ecosystem.
Polkadot’s parachain auctions will be used to realize Polkadot’s vision for a sharded ecosystem. The auctions will see projects building on Polkadot compete to secure one of the 100 parachain slots by bidding to lock up DOT.
Parachains are Polkadot’s sharded side-chains that can host decentralized applications and protocols, offer specialized computation, and communicate with Polkadot’s proof-of-stake “Relay Chain” to finalize transactions.
Polkadot’s existing relay chain exclusively processes transfers, governance, staking services for the Polkadot network, with the forthcoming parchains being tasked with providing advanced features like smart contract functionality and cross-chain compatibility.
As such, the new development fund may be intended to encourage developers to begin building on Polkadot in preparation of parachains going live.
Related: Polkadot eyes breakout to $75 after DOT price rally sets up classic bullish reversal
Many onlookers have singled out the Coinbase-backed Acala Network as a frontrunner to win the first parchain slot on Polkadot. Karura Network, Acala’s deployment on Polkadot’s siser-network Kusama, won the first parachain auction on Kusama by a significant margin in June.
Karara pulled support from more than 15,000 entities to win its slot with a bid more than 500,000 KSM (worth roughly $184 million at the time of writing).
Polkadot to debut parachain auctions after governance vote
The first series of auctions will begin on Nov 11 and run until Dec. 9
Polkadot (DOT) has laid out a schedule to debut parachain auctions on Nov. 11 following unanimous approval from the blockchain’s on-chain governance council members. The news marks a landmark achievement as it fulfills the final core technical element of the whitepaper published five years ago.
Parachains are uniquely distinctive layer-1 blockchain platforms that operate laterally alongside the main Polkadot network, in addition to being tethered to the Polkadot Relay Chain. Their purposeful function can be witnessed across a multitude of areas from decentralized finance to smart contracts.
Speaking at the Sub0 Conference as representatives of Parity Technologies, Polkadot founders Gavin Wood and Robert Habermeier confirmed that Polkadot now holds the technical capabilities to implement parachains, auctions and crowdloans for the first time.
In an immediate response, Proposal #118 was motioned by governance member Joe Petrowski, expressing details and recommendations for the deployment.
The first Polkadot parachain auction of the initial batch is slated to begin on Nov. 11 and will continue at a rate of one per week for five consecutive weeks until the final auction on Dec. 9.
The initial bidding period will last for two days, followed by a five-day ending period. Two unique features about the proposal of this auction schedule are that unlike the immediacy of Kusama’s project onboarding after auctions, Polkadot auctions will be held in transit for a period of one month.
In addition to this, there will be a 75% capacity of projects to that witnessed on Kusuma, in a bid for quality over quantity.
Within the proposal, and indeed further quoted later in this piece, canary network Kusama were cited as having a positive impact on the evolution of this concept in both abstract and practical terms.
Kusama, a sandbox platform designed for developers to experiment with blockchain applications before their official launch on the Polkadot blockchain, has recently implemented the success of 11 parachain slot auctions.
In addition to commending the near-flawless process of the Kusama auctions, the official report also noted that 2.4 million KSM has been contributed by 49,000 uniquely active addresses during the auctions.
Cointelegraph reached out to Peter Mauric, Head of Public Affairs at Parity Technologies, for an exclusive commentary on the inspiration behind the proposal as well as the potential impact the implementation may have on the Polkadot ecosystem:
"Kusama was launched in order to give the teams building the core Polkadot protocol, parachains and their constituent communities an opportunity to battle-test their tech and teams. While there were a few bits of expected chaos along the way, the experience over the past few months deploying parachains on Kusama have given us confidence that they are ready for prime time on Polkadot."
Related: Polkadot Web3 wallet Talisman closes $2.35M seed funding round
He went on to discuss the positive impacts that the implementation will have on the Polkadot ecosystem, saying:
"This is the moment everyone has been waiting for since the Polkadot paper was introduced over five years ago. The promise of parachains has always been core to what Polkadot aims to achieve: scalable, customizable and truly decentralized infrastructure for the next generation of layer-1 protocols, in the form of these parachain networks.