Polkadot Deep Analysis! Polkadot deep analysis is necessary due to Polkadot joining the leading ranks in the crypto top ten – many are wondering how this coin made it to the top ten so quickly.
Polkadot was conceived by Ethereum cofounder Dr. Gavin Wood and he’s been working on the protocol for the last four years. It was also one of three blockchain protocols, along with Dfinity and Filecoin that had a lot of hype behind them.
The Polkadot project’s light paper notes that the protocol is a heterogeneous blockchain.
“Polkadot is a next-generation blockchain protocol that unites an entire network of purpose-built blockchains, allowing them to operate seamlessly together at scale,” the light paper further details. “It connects several chains together in a single network, allowing them to process transactions in parallel and exchange data between chains with security guarantees.”
In layman’s terms, any data can travel across Polkadot’s multi-chain environment like real-world assets and tokens. Any blockchain can, furthermore, join the Polkadot infrastructure. This can be done due to something called Heterogeneous Sharding.
Heterogenous sharding is a concept that has been discussed within the blockchain development community for quite some time. Sharding is basically breaking up the data that peer-to-peer nodes handle – those nodes essentially, then, hold their own shards of data. Every shard is shared amongst the network of nodes. Heterogenous Sharding allows every chain to remain unique.
There are three main parts to the Polkadot network – the main relay chain, parachains, and bridges. The parachains are made up of the heterogenous blockchain shards – everything else is secured by the main Polkadot Relay Chain.
The parachains mint native tokens, transfer tokens, and connect to external chains via bridges. Bridges leverage Polkadot shards in order to communicate with blockchain like Ethereum or Bitcoin.
Many believe that Polkadot will be a top-three market cap contender in the future.
Polkadot isn’t free of criticism, however. Tom Shaughnessy, the cofounder of Delphi Digital, has written about Polkadot’s promises and problems. He notes how Polkadot has had a rocky history, and was born from members of the Ethereum team, in particular, Gavin Wood.
He also notes how Polkadot’s parent company, Parity, has also had a shaky history. He takes no stock in Polkadot’s council of 6-24 people that could be seen as a centralization risk for the entire network.
Other concerns include a research paper published by Cornell University that explains how the chain can be manipulated by Shard Takeovers. A corrupted node and compromised data could lead to losses.
“Existing sharding proposals achieve efficiency scaling by compromising on trust,” the paper highlights.
What do you think? Let us know on our Facebook page!
