Polkadot ecosystem fuels rapid growth, driving innovation in busy end to 2022

Polkadot, the multichain ecosystem at the forefront of Web3, continued to drive forward a series of important developments during the final quarter of 2022, with the growing number of teams building use-case specific Polkadot blockchains (known as parachains) increasingly leading the wave of innovation.

Nomination pools dramatically lowered the barrier of entry for native staking, allowing users to help secure the Polkadot network at a minimal up-front cost without needing to go through a third party, while the Astar network’s major collaboration with Japan’s biggest mobile phone operator, and some impressive developer stats, provided other landmark moments.

Nomination pools drive growth of Polkadot community

A new feature of Polkadot’s staking system, nomination pools went live on November 1, allowing users to pool their DOT tokens together on-chain to nominate validators and receive rewards, significantly improving the system’s scalability.

Through native staking, DOT holders can help keep Polkadot secure and decentralized while receiving highly competitive rewards. Lowering the minimum stake from around 200 DOT to 1 DOT, and thereby making staking accessible to a wider audience, Polkadot’s nomination pools proved an instant hit, and by the end of the year 3,475 pool members were actively bonding 854,495 DOT.

Astar closes major deal with Japan mobile giant

Polkadot parachain and smart contract platform Astar Network announced a major collaboration with Japan’s top mobile carrier NTT Docomo↗ to collaborate on mass adoption of Web3 as well as its social implementation.

NTT Docomo will invest up to $4 billion on decentralized technology and the two organizations will work together to foster sustainable development goals, expedite Web3 adoption through education and nurture Web talent.

First parachain ‘migrates’ from Kusama to Polkadot

KILT Protocol became the first parachain to accomplish a full migration from Kusama to Polkadot, marking a major technical milestone, and representing the first instance of a live blockchain migrating from one network to another.

KILT, a blockchain identity protocol for issuing self-sovereign, verifiable credentials and decentralized identifiers (DIDs), took this decision because large-scale enterprises had started to implement business cases on KILT which required high levels of stability and security that cannot be guaranteed within the more experimental Kusama network.

DOT has ‘morphed’ from a security into a non-security

Web3 Foundation, which funds development teams building out the decentralized web, announced that Polkadot’s native token, DOT, had morphed from a security into a non-security.↗ This followed three years of engagement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Polkadot is, and has always been, coordinating software. It is vertical agnostic, use-case agnostic, highly secure infrastructure. It is built as an open base layer, upon which other blockchains and applications can be built.

The Foundation has ensured the vision of token morphing set out by the SEC has been addressed, setting up business processes and communication guidelines comparable to a public company. It has taken steps to ensure Polkadot provides safety to token holders, and that its token is compliant with the law.

Polkadot leads on development activity

Data provided by Electric Capital, assessing Polkadot itself along with 334 ecosystem teams (parachains and other Polkadot projects), indicated a figure of 1,128 weekly active developers in Q4 producing a combined 13,934 weekly commits.↗

That second figure surpasses the weekly commit number of any other Web3 project over the same period, putting the Polkadot network at the top of the list for development activity.

Table provided by Artemis/GokuStats as a visual representation of Electric Capital’s data

Q4 also witnessed a strikingly strong performance from both Manta Network↗, a Web3 privacy hub built on Polkadot, and Kusama↗, Polkadot’s canary network. Manta was third out of all projects evaluated by Electric Capital and Kusama fifth.

Further positive engagement involving Manta came when it broke a record by establishing the largest Trusted Setup↗ in the history of zero-knowledge technology with over 13,000 participants from 177 countries. This technology is essential for building a better, more secure web that keeps sensitive information private, and will allow other builders within the ecosystem to leverage its privacy-preserving features.

Polkadot ends the year with the largest ecosystem of use-case specific layer-1 blockchains and apps. By the end of 2022, 74 parachains had won an auction on Polkadot or Kusama, supporting an ecosystem of well over 300 unstoppable applications. In total, around 550 projects are either launched or under development for Polkadot.

Other highlights

• The Web3 Foundation grants program↗, supporting Polkadot projects, supported an additional 37 projects during Q3, with 476 total grants since inception.
  
• The Polkadot Treasury↗ took its spending beyond 4m DOT, representing a dramatic rise since the end of 2021, when it was around 200,000 DOT.
  
• With support from Parity Technologies, SubWallet built an interactive map↗ to provide an interactive live dashboard of the Polkadot & Kusama ecosystems.

About Polkadot

Polkadot provides the technical advances necessary to make blockchain technology practical, accessible, scalable, interoperable, and future-proof, removing limitations and barriers to entry, and thereby fuelling innovation, growing the decentralized technology space, and bringing the Web3 vision to life.

About Web3 Foundation

Web3 Foundation funds research and development teams building the technology stack of the decentralized web. It was established in Zug, Switzerland by Ethereum co-founder and former chief technology officer Dr. Gavin Wood. Polkadot is the Foundation's flagship project. For more information, visit web3.foundation↗

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