JAM Session: Gavin Wood Reveals Bold Vision for Polkadot's Next Revolution

Yesterday at Token 2049 Dubai, Gavin Wood announced a bold vision for the next generation of Polkadot technology. In line with the other groundbreaking firsts that Polkadot has brought to the market, this new vision is set to revolutionize the future of Web3. It will provide the speed, scale, full decentralization, and ease of use needed to drive forward deep innovation across not just Web3, but the entire tech landscape.

At the heart of this vision is JAM, a new version of the Polkadot chain that will push Polkadot’s capabilities beyond the current boundaries of Web3, while making it possible to deploy a broad array of technologies to Polkadot. With JAM, groundbreaking scalability that is currently only seen through rollups, is brought to the consensus layer.

When fully built out, JAM will be a distributed computer that can run almost any kind of task, that can be expressed as a service. JAM moves Polkadot toward a world of synchronous composability, which will help reduce the fragmentation and consolidate activity, so apps on Polkadot are better able to tap into the network efforts of the ecosystem as a whole. This will unlock a new horizon of possibilities for deep innovation and provide developers with a powerful environment where they can create like never before.

JAM is currently in research and development. There is currently a proposal up for vote by the Polkadot community (via Referendum 682↗) to confirm this new direction and authorize the technical Fellowship to ratify JAM.

To support the development of JAM, and ensure it is built in the true spirit of decentralization, Gavin announced a JAM prize in conjunction with the Web3 Foundation during his talk. A total of 10M DOT will be used to incentivize the creation of additional implementations of JAM. 

Along with his talk, Gavin also released a technical Graypaper. If you want to dig into the vision and technical details of the project you can find the paper on the new JAM Graypaper website↗.

Together, Gavin and Polkadot have been leading the way in the creation of innovative technologies aimed at realizing the vision of creating a free and open web. JAM is the next chapter in the ever-evolving Polkadot story.