Popular Science | What is Polkadot?

Later, at the global celebration of the launch of the Cosmos mainnet, Xiao Feng of Wanxiang Blockchain gave a speech saying: With the launch of the mainnet of new blockchain technologies represented by Cosmos, a new era is about to begin.

Cosmos focuses on cross-chain technology, and among all the projects focusing on cross-chain technology, Polkadot has been highly anticipated by many people. Today we will take a brief look at what Polkadot is.

01

Polkadot founder: Ethereum godfather Gavin Wood

On October 23, 2018, at the Web3 Summit held in Berlin, Gavin Wood unpacked a brand new Mac and demonstrated it on the spot. Fifteen minutes later, a new blockchain was born in his hands.

The founder of the Polkadot project is none other than Gavin Wood.

Another well-known identity of Gavin Wood is the co-founder of Ethereum and the author of the Ethereum Yellow Paper. In 2013, Gavin Wood, then 33 years old, met the 19-year-old Vitalik Buterin through a friend's introduction and then joined the development of the Ethereum project.

In April 2014, Gavin Wood wrote the Ethereum Yellow Paper, which is known as the "Ethereum Technical Bible", which clarified the concept of virtual machines and enabled the smooth operation of smart contracts. Ethereum's development language, Solidity, which is specifically designed for smart contracts, was also created by Gavin Wood.

In 2016, Gavin Wood left the Ethereum Foundation and developed Parity, one of the main Ethereum clients.

In October 2017, Gavin Wood launched the Polkadot project. In an interview, Gavin Wood said that he was doing Ethereum programming as an exercise at the time, and Polkadot was designed based on the consideration of expanding Ethereum at the end of 2014.

Gavin Wood is a leader in both blockchain technology development and blockchain development experience. This is why so many people in the industry attach great importance to the Polkadot project.

02

Polkadot, a cross-chain blockchain

Data and information between different blockchains cannot be interoperable, and each blockchain is an isolated island.

In order to break this state of data isolation, Polkadot is committed to creating a network protocol, similar to the Internet TCP/IP protocol, by establishing a multi-chain architecture, so that all blockchains connected to this architecture can better complete information exchange with each other.

To achieve this goal, Polkadot defines a set of parachains and relay chains.

Among them, the parachain is mainly responsible for data calculation and transaction information processing. Through multiple parachains, the horizontal expansion of the blockchain can be completed, that is, the performance problem of the blockchain can be solved.

A bridge is essentially a special type of parallel chain, but its responsibilities also include connecting other blockchains with different structures.

The relay chain is a center of Polkadot. Its main function is to verify the blocks given by each parallel chain and provide proof of finality.

The entire Polkadot network system consists of relay chains, parallel chains and bridges.

Do you think that with the recent parachain auction coming to an end, Polkadot’s main event may also really kick off? Feel free to leave your predictions in the comment section.