Polkadot is the 9th most popular crypto project according to coinmarketcap.com, so you might be wondering does it have a future?
If you feel more business will be done with smart contracts and there will be more adaption of crypto then Polkadot will probably have a future.
Polkadot was created in 2016 by Gavin Wood. As you can see from the picture below Gavin Wood was one of the creators of Ethereum.
Do you see anything else interesting about the picture? Charles Hoskinson created the crypto project Cardano and he was also an Ethereum founder.
Who is Gavin Wood?
Gavin Wood is also the creator of Solidity. Solidity is a programming language for smart contracts that Ethereum is based around.
The reason Gavin Wood left Ethereum in January 2016 to develop Polkadot was due to the fact he was unhappy with the direction that Ethereum was headed.
Gavin Wood also coded the first version of Ethereum and his approach to his smart contract blockchain is different than Ethereum and Cardano.
Everything that ends up on Polkadot first has to go through Kusama, which is a clon of Polkadot. With Cardano everything has to be peer-reviewed and tested by some of the smartest people.
With Ethereum everything moves “much” faster and because it’s faster more applications are on Ethereum.
Polkadots Rocky Start
The cryptocurrency that runs on Polkadot is called DOT.
Before Polkadot was launched in October of 2017 it raised 145 million dollars. In return, Polkadot sold 5 million DOTSs, which is half of the 10 million dots that will ever be created.
(10 million was the maximum number of DOTS until the community voted to raise the maximum to 1 billion!)
The problem is someone accidentally froze the money in a wallet. Oops right?
In the end, around 87 million dollars was lost and this left Polkadot with around 58 million of the original Initial coin offering and Polkadot moved on.
Can you imagine losing 87 million dollars? Talk about a bad day.
Polkadot was able to raise more money in 2019 by selling more DOT tokens (that it created out of thin air). Then it raised another 47 million later in 2020.
What makes Polkadot unique is the technology. It’s almost like it hit the ground running almost as Ethereum 2.0. Polkadot started with sharding and this is what Ethereum 2.0 will have.
Sharding is a way to scale a blockchain by splitting a blockchain into different shards that all communicate with each other. This makes the blockchain faster.
Polkadot also has a form of governance that makes it unique from Ethereum and Cardano. The reason governance is important is to keep the project together and not have it fork into another project.
There are 3 ways Polkadot makes decisions on where the project is headed.
- There is a group of 6 – 24 members who represent all DOT holders. Their job is to come up with ideas that better serve the network (almost like congress in the U.S.)
- Next is the technical committee which is another group of people who make proposals on technical stuff to the network.
- Then there is the community, which is ‘anyone” who holds the DOT token. The community gets to vote on new ideas and the more tokens you hold the more voting power you have.
Polkadot is also very fast and can make around 1,000 transactions per second and in theory, could possibly make 1 million transactions per second.
What Projects Are on Polkadot?
Having the first-mover advantage really is big. This is where I agree with Vitalik Buterin who created Ethereum and to grow quickly and attract as many projects as possible.
The 2 crypto games I play “Gods Unchained” you can learn more about it HERE. The second game I play is called “Axie Infinity” and I wrote a blog post about it HERE.
Both of these games plus NBA top shots and all the NFT projects use Ethereum. Do you know of ANY projects that run on Polkadot? I don’t!
All of these projects running on Ethereum help the brand. It’s almost like the saying bad credit is better than no credit.
What Polkadot needs is 1 big-name project to back it then this will help with momentum. This 1 big-name project will lead to many others.
It’s almost like if I guy attracts 1 hot girl a whole bunch of other girls will be interested.
What Makes Polkadot Stand Out!
The world of crypto is a crowded field. If you’re not Bitcoin or Ethereum how do you stand out?
What Polkadot is trying to do is not be number 1, but be that cool guy at a party who knows everyone. Then this guy is trying to introduce people who don’t know each other.
The Problem with crypto is there are “many” different blockchains that are unique and work independently of each other.
Why can’t there just be 1 blockchain that does everything? The reality is there isn’t and people don’t always agree, which is why ALL these altcoins forked from Bitcoin.
Each blockchain is a little different. Bitcoin is for moving a store of value. Ethereum is for smart contracts, just like Cardano.
What if 1 smart contract on Ethereum wanted to connect on the Cardano network? It wouldn’t work and this is a problem.
What Polkadot aims to do is help these blockchains communicate and work together like 1 big happy family. How it does this I really don’t know and if I tried to explain it you probably would fall asleep because it’s super boring.
Can all These Different Blockchains Co-exist or Will There be Just 1 Winner?
Crypto is an exciting industry and nobody knows what the future will hold. The main thing for any crypto project is to solve problems.
If the world accepts Bitcoin, smart contracts, and crypto “which is looking like that is the case” then many of the top projects like Polkadot will probably survive.
All of these different blockchains will probably co-exist, but anything could happen.
As I’m writing this blog I live in the United States. Honestly, I’m fairly spoiled. In developing countries, some people have more challenges.
There are banking problems, corruption, and challenges with moving supplies. The way to get ahead in the world is to “live below your means,” hustle, and invest your profits.
If some of these crypto projects like Polkadot help people with banking and storing their money then that would be a positive thing for the world.
What is cool is it doesn’t matter what project wins, but the fact that “many” projects are trying to accomplish this is a good thing.
I hope this blog post on does Polkadot have a future was helpful to you. Bye for now.