The Polkadot blockchain has reached its all-time high in development going by its activities in recent months. The blockchain recognized more than 500 contributions each day in September — an all-time high for the multichain protocol.
The data from Polkadot’s cross-consensus interoperability standard XCM show that a record 26,258 messages were sent between its parachains. In total, 14,930 developers’ contributions were recorded on Polkadot’s GitHub in August.
As told by project developers, 66 blockchains are now live on Polkadot and its para-chain startup network Kusama. Since its inception, over 140,000 messages have been exchanged between chains via 135 messaging channels. Together, the Polkadot and Kusama Treasuries have cumulatively paid out 9.6 million DOT and 346,700 KSM ($72.8 million total) to fund spending proposals in the ecosystem.
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Parachains are individual layer-1 blockchains that run in parallel on Polkadot and are first tested on Kusama. Auctions for para chain slots are held in the form of crowd loans, with the position going to the highest bidding project. The first of its kind took place last November.
Polkadot Gives Update on Roadmap
Polkadot founder Rob Habermeier has recently published a roadmap on enhancing Polkadot and Kusama’s scalability. The highlight includes
1. Asynchronous backing, or the de-coupling of the extension of parachains from the extension of the relay chain.
2. Potential mechanism for cutting para chain block time by 50% while increasing block space give to 10 fold.
3. Estimated to increase network speed to between 100,000 to 1 million transactions per minute.
The asynchronous backing upgrade is scheduled for development on Kusama by the end of the year and then on Polkadot. Another network upgrade due next introducing ‘pay-as-you-go’ parachains would theoretically combine launching a blockchain on Kusama with simultaneously launching smart contracts. The move would shorten the development process for building on Polkadot.