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On December 29, 2020, the Polkadot-based DeFi aggregator Reef Finance (REEF) opened at a high price of US$0.3 after its launch on Binance, and then basically maintained above US$0.1 for the next 5 minutes. According to the prices of REEF's seed round, institutional round, and private round of US$0.0007, US$0.0009, and US$0.00125 respectively, it is equivalent to a "hundred-fold opening." In contrast, DOT’s recent rise is also quite eye-catching, especially against the backdrop of the upcoming parachain slot auction. Not only are DOT and related tokens performing well, but Polkadot’s ecosystem construction has already taken shape and is worthy of attention.
The long-awaited "slot auction"
Polkadot has also reached a critical moment in its development recently. On January 11, the Polkadot test network Rococo V1 opened registration for parachain testing qualifications, which means that the auction of parachain slots for Polkadot and Kusama will gradually begin: After the functions of the parachain test network Rococo V1 are running stably, a public welfare parachain will be launched on Kusama first, and then the Polkadot parachain auction will be opened. To understand the significance of “slot auction” to Polkadot, we need to go back to Polkadot’s mechanism design - Polkadot consists of a relay chain + N parallel chains. Parallel chains can enjoy Polkadot’s shared security and can interact with other parallel chains. However, the number of parachains is limited. If you want to become a parachain, you need to bid for a "slot". Each project can lock DOT to participate in the auction. Projects that win the auction can realize cross-chain assets based on the Polkadot mainnet . Therefore, the "slot auction" has always been regarded as the key first step for Polkadot to truly open its own network ecology. At the same time, in this process, not only the project parties, but also users can use DOT and KSM to vote for projects bidding for slots and obtain corresponding rewards. Therefore , even from the perspective of supply and demand in the secondary market, the "slot auction" is a strong support for the demand for DOT. Bill Laboon, director of technical education at the Web3 Foundation, also announced the progress of the Polkadot project on Twitter yesterday. Polkadot version 0.8.27 has been released and the Web3 Foundation has issued more than 200 grants (100 of which were issued after May 2020. So far, 69 teams have completed the projects and 112 teams have successfully delivered the first part of the work). In addition, as of now, more than 100 chains are ready to be connected to Polkadot, more than 60 test networks have been launched, there are currently more than 550 validator nodes and 7,000 nominators, and more than 60% of DOT is staked. Polkadot has reached a critical moment of continuity and progress.
“Sitting second and looking forward to first”, Ethereum’s “friend” and “only rival”
On January 13, OKEx announced that it will support the auction of Polkadot (DOT) and Kusama (KSM) parachain slots. So far, leading trading platforms such as Binance, Huobi, OK, and Matcha have basically all increased their investment and actively laid out the Polkadot ecosystem. In fact, all major trading platforms, especially the top three, have launched their own large-scale Polkadot ecosystem support plans . In particular, Binance, which has established a tens of millions of US dollars Polkadot ecosystem fund a while ago, in addition to the new coin mining support DOT mentioned above, it suddenly replaced Ethereum with DOT in the currency display on the homepage on the 28th, which is almost equivalent to a matter of course "open card dealer". In addition to Binance, Huobi officially launched the DeFi project HDOT, which is 1:1 anchored to DOT, on October 1. On December 4, it launched the "Polkadot Ecosystem Sponsor" system, stating that it will screen qualified Polkadot ecosystem professional investment institutions and investors to become "Polkadot Ecosystem Sponsors". Sponsors will have the right to recommend Polkadot ecosystem projects to Huobi Global Station. The recommended projects can be launched in the Polkadot Ecosystem Zone of Huobi Global Station after review and approval. On the same day, Huobi Innovation Lab established a US$5 million "Polkadot Ecosystem Support Fund", saying that it will mainly provide sponsorship for developers, event organizers, content creators, Polkadot ambassadors, and any other individuals and organizations in the Polkadot ecosystem who plan to contribute to the Polkadot ecosystem. OKEx has also made in-depth investments in the Polkadot ecosystem. It has established the Block Dream Fund, a fund that empowers high-quality global blockchain projects. With an initial capital of US$100 million , it focuses on investing in the Polkadot ecosystem as one of its strategic fulcrums. The last time there was such a grand occasion was probably during the EOS node election. Now with BM’s departure, EOS has obviously been unable to keep up with the rapid progress of Ethereum. Other “Ethereum killers” who were so powerful in 2018 have also ceased their activities. Polkadot has not only captured the favor of capital such as trading platforms, but its own ecological construction is also progressing steadily, and it has almost become the "only rival of Ethereum" that is currently "ranking second and looking to become first." According to data from PolkaProject as of January 13, 333 projects have been born in the Polkadot ecosystem, including underlying network facilities such as Acala and ChainX, DEXs such as Zenlink, development tools such as Noise Explorer, wallets such as Polkawallet and Ledger, validators such as Validators, and blockchain browsers such as Polkascan. A sufficiently rich and diverse independent ecosystem covering underlying technologies, wallets, oracles, NFTs, DAOs, smart contracts, bridges, DeFi, IoT and games has taken shape. Gavin Wood mentioned in his 2020 year-end summary: Polkadot is already the second largest DeFi ecosystem and will gradually become compatible with Ethereum in 2021.
Following the map, which tracks in the Polkadot DeFi ecosystem may produce dark horses? For many friends who have regrets about 2020, having missed Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem, it seems that the corresponding opportunity of Polkadot should not be missed at all. So if we take the current Ethereum as a blueprint and "follow the map" to predict the most anticipated and potential star tracks in the Polkadot DeFi ecosystem, what are the projects worth paying attention to right now (excluding non-Polkadot native projects that have crossed over from Ethereum)? Source: COIN98 "Polkadot's cross-chain version of Uniswap" - Zenlink (ZLK), a cross-chain decentralized trading network based on Polkadot, is committed to building a new generation of cross-chain DEX network. By integrating the Zenlink DEX Module, Zenlink can enable parachains to quickly possess DEX capabilities and share liquidity with other parachains; the Zenlink DEX aggregator can link all DEX DApps on Polkadot. On December 12, 2020, the first true cross-chain transaction use case was successfully implemented based on the asset management and DEX modules within the Zenlink DEX Module. Zenlink has currently delivered two rounds of Web3 Foundation Grants and the third round of Grants has passed the review; "Staking service provider" - Stafi (FIS), a decentralized protocol that provides liquidity for Staking assets, provides liquidity for users' Staking assets, and solves the risk of currency price fluctuations during the Staking lock-up period. The Stafi protocol solves the contradiction between the security required by the system and its token liquidity by distributing ABS tokens to Staking participants; Acala, the “Polkadot version of MakerDAO” , provides an alternative infrastructure for DeFi on the Polkadot multi-chain ecosystem, adopts a governance structure similar to MakerDAO, with split governance (ACA) and stablecoin (aUSD) on the Polkadot network; "Synthetic Asset Protocol" - Coinversation, the first synthetic asset protocol on Polkadot, users mint the system's default stable currency CUSD by pledging CTO or DOT; “Layer 2 Solution” - Celer Network, which provides fast, easy and secure off-chain transactions for payment transactions and general off-chain smart contracts; "DeFi Basic Protocol " - Bifrost Rainbow Bridge (BNC), is committed to becoming the infrastructure that provides liquidity for pledged assets. It currently launches vToken, a derivative product for Staking and Polkadot's parachain slot PLO. vToken can optimize transactions in multiple scenarios such as DeFi, DApp, DEX, CEX, etc., and realize the transfer channel of pledged rights such as Staking and PLO through vToken, thereby realizing the risk hedging of pledged assets.
Benchmarking the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem, Polkadot has launched projects in popular DeFi tracks such as DEX and aggregators. However, we still need to remain cautious. Even for Ethereum, the construction of the DeFi ecosystem has gone through two years of dormancy, and it has gradually gathered sufficient infrastructure and other support before ushering in an unprecedented explosion in 2020. At the first Polkadot community meeting on December 3 last year, Gavin Wood declared to “Make blockchain great again”. Let us wait and see. Some people say that the Polkadot ecosystem is criticized by investors because most of the projects are started by Chinese people. It is only in full swing in China. What do you think of the development of the Polkadot ecosystem? Welcome to leave your comments in the comment area. |
