Polkadot parachain slot auction rules released, may start on November 11

Original title: "Polkadot Parachain Slot Auction Rules Released, to be Launched on 11.11"

Written by: Polkadot

Compiled by: Polkadot Chinese Platform

Nearly five years after the Polkadot whitepaper first outlined the vision of a heterogeneous multi-chain framework, parachains are now officially ready to launch on Polkadot. The announcement by Polkadot founders Gavin Wood and Robert Habermeier that Polkadot is now technically capable of supporting its first parachain was followed closely by the Polkadot Council proposing that the network’s first parachain slot auction begin on November 11.

Technical preparation

Gavin and Robert, representing Parity Technologies (the engineering team commissioned by the Web3 Foundation to build the initial implementation of Polkadot), announced today at the Sub0 conference that Parity has surpassed all technical barriers to launching parachains on Polkadot. They said that the parachain, auction, and crowdloan code is now ready for initial production release on Polkadot. The last technical steps that need to be completed before launching parachains on Polkadot are the completion of a full code audit of Polkadot (now completed) and the finalization of parachain disputes, which can now move forward.

Additionally, parachains have been running successfully on Kusama, Polkadot’s “canary network,” since the Statemine was launched on June 3, 2021. Since then, 11 parachain slot auctions have been successfully conducted on Kusama, for a total of 12 parachains. These parachain teams have performed several “forkless” upgrades on the network and processed millions of transactions. Combined with the Kusama parachain auction, over 2.4 million KSM have been used for crowdlending by over 49,000 unique addresses, demonstrating high community engagement in the parachain launch process. The fact that such activity has been taking place on Kusama for more than four months without major issues is an important factor in considering parachains ready for launch on Polkadot.

Completeness and maturity

One thing to note, Habermeier explained, is that being ready for an initial production release doesn’t necessarily mean the code is fully mature. Being ready means the parachain code is feature complete, has been unit and integration tested, audited, deployed, and demonstrated on Kusama and Rococo, but may still contain uncaught bugs. The path to maturity means ensuring the code is highly optimized, battle-tested, and stable. According to Habermeier, optimizations in the works include contextual execution, which will speed up block times.

Parity recommends a conservative approach to parachain rollout, suggesting that a reasonable approach is to ensure that the total number of parachains joining Polkadot does not exceed 75% of the number running on Kusama before the code matures. If any unexpected and major issues arise, Polkadot may need to suspend the auction until these issues are resolved.

The Polkadot governance forum issued a proposal for the auction of additional parachain slots, and the first auction is scheduled to start on November 11. The proposal suggests two batches of auctions, the first batch: five auctions, starting on November 11, each 7 days, starting every 7 days, and the lease period is 6-13 (LP6 is scheduled to start on December 15); the second batch: six auctions, starting on December 23, each 7 days, starting every 14 days, and the lease period is 7-14 (LP7 is scheduled to start on March 9, 2022). According to Polkadot founder Robert Habermeier, the last technical steps to be completed before launching a parachain on Polkadot are parachain disputes and a full code audit, both of which have now been completed.

Auction Process and Timeline

Parity’s technical proposal clears the way for Polkadot governance to determine what the initial auction schedule will look like. Shortly after announcing the technical readiness of the parachain, Resolution 118 was submitted to the Polkadot Council and the auction was decided to begin on November 11, 2021.

According to the proposal currently in referendum, the first batch of 5 auctions will have 1 new auction per week, and the second batch of 6 auctions will have 1 new auction every two weeks. The first batch of 5 parachains will officially join Polkadot on approximately December 17, 2021, rather than immediately joining after each auction as in Kusama. The second batch of 6 auctions will join Polkadot on approximately March 11, 2022. Each auction on Polkadot will allocate a parachain slot for 96 weeks (8 12-week leases), rather than 48 weeks on Kusama. Like Kusama, each 7-day auction on Polkadot will consist of 2 periods: a start period and an end period. On Polkadot, the start period is 1 day and 18 hours, and the end period is approximately 5 days. The auction can end at any time during the end period, which is a key aspect of Polkadot's candle auction system, which prevents last-minute "auction sniping" to get the most fair price.

Those who want to participate in parachain crowdlending need to note that they need unbonded DOTs to participate, and the current unbonding period for Polkadot is 28 days. User-facing features such as registering parachains and opening crowdsales are not yet complete and need to be enabled by the Polkadot Council. If on-chain governance approves the crowdlending module to be available on the chain, the parachain team will decide when to open it, which can be before or after the first auction begins.

If approved by Polkadot’s on-chain governance, the initial auction will take place on Polkadot as follows (note these are estimated dates):

➤Batch 1 Auction:

• Auction 1: Begins on November 11, 2021. Closing period begins on November 13, 2021. Bidding ends on November 18, 2021. The winning parachain between December 17, 2021 and October 20, 2023 will go live on December 17, 2021.

• Auction 2: Starts on November 18, 2021. The closing period starts on November 20, 2021. The bidding ends on November 25, 2021. The winning parachain will go live on December 17, 2021, and the time period is from December 17, 2021 to October 20, 2023.

• Auction 3: Starts on November 25, 2021. Closing period starts on November 27, 2021. Bidding ends on December 2, 2021. The winning parachain goes live on December 17, 2021, and the period is from December 17, 2021 to October 20, 2023.

• Auction 4: Starts on December 2, 2021. The closing period starts on December 4, 2021. The bidding ends on December 9, 2021. The winning parachain will go live on December 17, 2021, and the time period is from December 17, 2021 to October 20, 2023.

• Auction 5: Starts on December 9, 2021. The closing period starts on December 11, 2021. The bidding ends on December 16, 2021. The winning parachain will go live on December 17, 2021, and the time period is from December 17, 2021 to October 20, 2023.

➤Batch 2 Auction:

• Auction 6: Starts on December 23, 2021. Closing period starts on December 25, 2021. Bidding ends on December 30, 2021. Between March 11, 2022 and January 12, 2024, with the winning parachain going live on March 11, 2022.

• Auction 7: Starts on January 6, 2022. The closing period starts on January 8, 2022. The bidding ends on January 13, 2022. The winning parachain will go live on March 11, 2022, and the time period is from March 11, 2022 to January 12, 2024.

• Auction 8: Starts on January 20, 2022. The closing period starts on January 22, 2022. The bidding ends on January 27, 2022. The winning parachain will go live on March 11, 2022, and the time period is from March 11, 2022 to January 12, 2024.

• Auction 9: Starts on February 3, 2022. Closing period begins on February 5, 2022. Bidding ends on February 10, 2022. The winning parachain goes live on March 11, 2022, and the period is from March 11, 2022 to January 12, 2024.

• Auction 10: Starts on February 17, 2022. The closing period starts on February 19, 2022. The bidding ends on February 24, 2022. The winning parachain will go live on March 11, 2022, and the time period is from March 11, 2022 to January 12, 2024.

• Auction 11: Starts on March 3, 2022. The closing period starts on March 5, 2022. The bidding ends on March 10, 2022. The winning parachain will go live on March 11, 2022, and the period will be from March 11, 2022 to January 12, 2024. '

How to become a parachain

A core element of the Polkadot vision is to create a secure environment for blockchain communication, while also providing teams with the freedom and flexibility to implement the best design for their own specific use cases. Therefore, the only criterion for becoming a parachain is that the chain must be able to prove to the network's validators that every block produced follows the agreed-upon protocol.

Projects are free to create custom chains with their own features and tokens, and adopt any governance model they see fit. They can even accelerate production using Substrate, a modular framework for creating specialized blockchains compatible with Polkadot and Kusama for any use case.

Just as services on the Internet cover a wide range of applications, parachains are being developed for a variety of purposes, including but not limited to: decentralized finance (DeFi), robots, games, smart contracts, and bridges to other blockchains. Once a purpose-built autonomous parachain is ready, all that remains is to secure a parachain slot by winning a bid in a parachain auction.

Polkadot’s Parachain Journey

Parachain launch is the final stage of the multi-phase launch process. The final step in this phase will launch the parachain on Polkadot. This step can be triggered by governance once the parachain and auction on Kusama are stable and a full external audit has been completed. Only then will an on-chain vote to enable the parachain on Polkadot take place. Live parachains and slot auctions on Polkadot will mark the full and final launch of the network. The successful completion of the first parachain slot auction on Kusama is a historic moment that brings us one step closer to the interoperable multi-chain vision outlined in the Polkadot whitepaper.