The much-anticipated cross-chain superstar Polkadot has often been compared with Ethereum since its establishment in 2015. Both Ethereum and Polkadot hope to provide developers with a comfortable development environment. Only some structures and functions of Ethereum and Polkadot overlap. Ethereum is a platform for deploying smart contracts and logic that can be used to control native assets on the Ethereum chain. In contrast, Polkadot provides a framework for building blockchains that can connect different blockchains to each other. Despite some differences, both platforms are designed for developers to build decentralized applications.

As the "king of public chains" Ethereum, Ethereum undoubtedly occupies a dominant position and has the largest developer community. However, due to the constraints of various factors, the latecomer Polkadot is catching up.

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Q: On October 29, when talking about the differences from Ethereum, Polkadot founder Gavin Wood said at the Web3 conference that Polkadot has indeed passed the era of smart contracts. Polkadot is not a smart contract platform. It's a platform of platforms, where each platform is doing what it's good at in a high-performance, efficient, and optimal way without having to worry about being charged gas or having their users pay with the currency of the underlying platform. These platforms will not be bundled to sell anything Polkadot. May I ask, in your opinion, what are the respective advantages and disadvantages of the development environments of Ethereum and Polkadot? How should developers choose?

Xiaojie: Ethereum and Polkadot have essential differences in the underlying architecture, which directly determines the difference in the development environments of the two blockchains.

Ethereum has a single-chain structure, while Polkadot has a multi-chain structure. If compared with the computer age, we believe that the single-chain structure can be compared to the stand-alone network in the Internet era, and the multi-chain can be compared to the local area network in the Internet age. Developers can develop stand-alone games like Tetris on a stand-alone computer, but in the local area network there is With the information management system, with the online game, with the communication.

The purpose of the design of Polkadot 2.0 Para Relaychain is to allow independent chains with different consensuses to abide by the same cross-chain protocol, communicate with each other, and form a chain network structure interconnected by thousands of chains. This can be compared to our current Internet era. In the Internet era, we have developed more online games, Apple systems, and iPhones. This is the meaning of cross-chain that everyone often asks! There is no so-called respective advantages and disadvantages, but two different positions. I am looking forward to the Web 3.0 era that Polkadot can bring to the Internet of Ten Thousand Chains!

Q: In mid-October, according to a report released by the cryptocurrency venture capital firm Outlier Ventures, in the past year in the blockchain field, the activity of Polkadot developers has increased significantly, with an increase of 44%. In contrast, EOS developers Activity fell sharply, with a drop of 86%, followed by BCH with a 63% drop, and Tron developer activity with a 51% drop. It can be seen that the number of Polkadot ecological developers and the number of projects are growing rapidly. Compared with networks such as EOS, what is the reason for the substantial increase in the number of Polkadot developers?

Xiaojie: The biggest reason is that the Substrate blockchain framework is "useful". I think that if a public chain wants to develop, it must be that the framework and tools you provide are helpful to developers. Bitcoin can exist for 11 years because developers continue to want to develop secondary development based on it. We all know Litecoin, Lightning Network, various forked chains, etc.; Ethereum provides smart contracts erc20 protocol, Developers can issue coins with one click and deploy contracts to develop dapps, all of which are helpful to developers. Similarly, Polkadot provides the Substrate development framework. Substrate is a modular blockchain framework that includes various tools and a variety of supported blockchain infrastructures, allowing developers to develop according to their own business logic. One-click release chain helps developers develop a chain very efficiently and at low cost. This is the most useful help for developers. Polkadot has such attributes that developers can continue to develop based on Substrate and access Polkadot. The developer community of Polkadot is bound to grow stronger and stronger!

Q: Polkadot is a heterogeneous multi-chain system developed based on the Substrate blockchain development framework. At the 2018 Web3 Summit, Gavin Wood used the Substrate blockchain development framework for the first time and completed the customized blockchain in only 15 minutes. blockchain. It is reported that more than 85% of Polkadot's code is completed using Substrate, and of course there are some independent modules that are completed in the Polkadot code base. What are the features and characteristics of Substrate that attract so many teams to develop?

Xiaojie: On the whole, it is highly modular and customizable. Specifically, Substrate provides many interesting modules, such as offchain worker、Forkless runtime upgrades, treasury module, etc. Interested developers can come and have a try!

If you want to know more about Substrate's functions, you can check out these articles we have published before:Deep Dive into Substrate 2.0、Substrate Minimalist Summary、Summary | Everything about Polkadot and Substrate。

Q: A very interesting phenomenon is that at the POW'ER 2020 DEFI Innovators Conference held by the Mars blockchain last time, some people believed that the coldness of DeFi was caused by the performance of Ethereum, and it is most likely to welcome What will explode will be the Polkadot DeFi ecosystem. Do you agree with this point of view? Why?

Xiaojie: Performance is one aspect, and more is what I mentioned in the first question. Ethereum is a single-chain structure with limited resources. This is also the reason for performance. You can only play stand-alone games. The cryptocurrencies with 80% of the market value cannot participate in the current DeFi. The realization of Polkadot cross-chain will first involve Bitcoin. If the relatively small market value of Ethereum can have the current popularity, then 80% % of the market value of Bitcoin entering DeFi will be a big explosion! And it won't be very far away, Polkadot officially participated in the developmentPolkaBTC The test network will be launched in the first quarter of next year, so you can pay attention!

Q: What do you think is the biggest challenge Polkadot is currently facing?

Xiaojie: At the current stage, the biggest challenge is the smooth launch of the parachain, that is,XCMPsecondary title

Parachain

Xiaojie:ParachainIt is a shard on Polkadot, and each parachain is a blockchain, which is then verified by the verification nodes of the Polkadot relay chain. Due to their parallelism, they are able to process transactions in parallel and enable the scalability of the Polkadot system. They share the security of the entire Polkadot network and can communicate with other parachains via XCMP.

Polkadot has launched the testnet of the parachain in early August this yearRococo v0 version, is currently promoting the consensus code of the V1 version of the parachain, which is different from the prototype code on Rococo. The next step will be to deploy the V1 version code of the parachain to Rococo, which means that it will be upgraded to Rococo V1 soon. It has been sorted out on a testnet with 3 nodes at the moment, and will expand to a multi-node testnet in the next few days. Once everything works as expected and looks stable, then the deployment on Rococo can start.

Parachain Slot AuctionParachain Slot Auction, the parachain auction method seems to allow all project parties to participate fairly, but at the specific operational level, it is difficult to avoid the possibility of being hyped. Some participants use more chips to obtain slots, not necessarily for the purpose of building an ecology. Selling at a higher price, for the project party, there are actually many choices now, so why does the project party have to bid for the parachain slot? What if the election fails?

Xiaojie: I personally predict that the system-level parachain will be launched by the end of this year or early next year, which means that there may not be an auction of slots by the end of the year. For the project side, I think not all ecological projects have to bid for slots in the first place. For example, for some ecological projects that are still on the test network, have not yet launched the main network, and do not have their own validators, it is definitely necessary to conduct slot auctions at the first time, because these projects can only be auctioned if the slots are auctioned. Launch the main network, then use Polkadot's validators and share security.

If the election fails there are several options:

Q: With the approach of Polkadot and parachain auctions, the announcement of the details of the Polkadot parallel slot auction PLO (Note: previously known as IPO) plan means that the real landing of Polkadot PLO is close at hand. On October 7, Polkadot officially disclosed in its official blog"The details of the implementation of the "first parallel chain issuance" plan, and said that half of the parachain slots will be pledged by DOT holders. As soon as the news came out, the industry paid attention to it. What is the innovation of the parachain slot auction (PLO)? What will happen? What kind of market effect?

Xiaojie: The biggest advantage is that it can provide asset protection for DOT holders. The tokens through PLO are pledged on Polkadot’s relay chain. Parallel chain projects cannot be withdrawn. After the period ends, it will be automatically returned to the user's account.

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Q: What role does Polkadot play in the historical trend of Web3.0?

Xiaojie: As mentioned above, Polkadot has a multi-chain structure, which is equivalent to the basic protocol of the local area network and the Internet in the computer. Substrate is actually very similar to Linux, and Linux is also modular. With Linux, there is Android, and there is Huawei. , Xiaomi, Samsung mobile phones, etc., in the same way, only with Substrate will there be excellent blockchain innovative products. So Polkadot is a basic framework protocol in the Web3.0 era. According to Dr. Xiao Feng's words at the Web3 conference, Polkadot is the best blockchain framework for building a complete set of commercial infrastructure, and Substrate is to provide you with Tools for developing Web3.0 applications/products!

Q: Is now the best time to invest in Polkadot? How can ordinary investors participate in the Polkadot parachain slot auction?

Xiaojie: I personally don’t know how to invest, but I need to see some trends. Everyone can make their own decisions about investment. Ordinary investors can directly participate in the slot auction of the parachain through PLO, but the DOT you participate in PLO has some opportunity costs in it, because if you don’t participate, you may have 10% Staking currency standard income or the secondary market The random income brought by fluctuations, but at the same time, if you participate, you may have the income brought by the parachain project itself, and you will also have the income of releasing liquidity. However, no matter whether it is Polkadot investment or parachain slot auction investment, ordinary investors should understand clearly before investing. Don’t blindly follow the trend, understand what Polkadot is, and understand the parachain you want to PLO What is the project and what are the rules, because now is not the era of barbarism, I hope everyone treats it with caution!