After being expected by the market for three years, the "cross-chain king" Polkadot has jumped to TOP 5 in market value, and many projects in the ecology are also blooming everywhere. With core functions such as parachains on the verge of coming out, Polkadot will open the era of Wanchain interconnection and produce immeasurable chemical reactions. On November 5th, Mars Video Live hereby opened an exclusive interview with Polkadot Ecology, exploring the most potential high-quality projects on the eve of the Polkadot Ecological Explosion, Polkadot Ecological DeFi Financial Center - Acala, told the progress of the latest parachain slot auction and the future Strategic layout and planning, the following is a draft of the live broadcast text.
Interview · Record
*Slightly cut without changing the original meaning
Q1: The Kusama Pioneer Network has the same characteristics as Polkadot, but it produces blocks faster than the Polkadot mainnet. Although it is defined as the first network of Polkadot, the current development progress of Kusama even exceeds the main network of Polkadot. There are voices saying that Kusama is the real Polkadot. I want to know what the guests think about this issue? What judgment criteria does Kusama have as a predictive trend for Polkadot’s future development?
Cao Yin: The block generation time of Kusama is the same as that of Polkadot, but the governance deployment time is faster. Seven-day governance decisions can be deployed on the chain accordingly, while the Polkadot mainnet is 28 days. In addition, in terms of pledge unlocking time, Polkadot is 28 days, and Kusama is 7 days. But this does not mean that the Polkadot mainnet is slow or has problems. The main reason is that the projects targeted by the two are not the same for users. Gavin defined the Polkadot mainnet as a B2B enterprise-level mainnet provided by parachain projects with particularly high consensus security requirements from the beginning. Kusama is positioned to be used by innovative enterprises, start-ups including social networks, games and other projects with less consensus security requirements. Both of these are mainnets, but the corresponding directions and requirements are different. For the Polkadot mainnet, the 28-day cycle is a relatively long buffer period for enterprise-level, especially financial enterprise-level parachain developers and users. For finance, safety comes first. Once everyone feels that there is a problem with the governance and resolution within 28 days, the governance result can be cancelled. There are 28 days for full discussion, which can make everyone feel more at ease. And Kusama is aimed at start-ups, innovative applications. The 7-day period allows everyone to quickly iteratively deploy and try some new directions creatively. Yuzhu: First of all, Kusama and Polkadot have the same set of codes, and the network functions are similar, but there are some differences in rules and functions. I always feel that between Kusama and Polkadot, there is something similar to domestic special economic zones and the whole of China. feeling between. Such as the same organizational structure, the same leadership team, but in terms of development rhythm and rules, whenever some new policies are formulated, they will always be implemented in the special economic zone first, so this is very similar to the current Kusama, all Polkadot networks All functions will be trial run on Kusama first, and the slot auction rhythm and lease time will be used. Kusama’s parachain slot auction will come out first, and the slot auction rhythm will be faster than Polkadot. The slot lease time cycle It will also be shorter. Therefore, the development of Kusama is actually of great reference and adjustment significance for Polkadot, and it can also lay a solid foundation for the stability and continuous development of Polkadot's future network.
Q2: To understand Polkadot, you must first understand parachains. Dr. Gavin Wood's answer is that Kusama will be conducted before Polkadot's parachain auction. Please briefly explain the relationship between parachains and Polkadot. What is a parachain? Where is the auction for parachain slots going now?
Cao Yin: Parachains are actually sharding. Everyone is very concerned about the progress of Ethereum 2.0. The most important point is the sharding of Ethereum on the beacon chain. The sharding of Ethereum 2.0 will not be completed until phase 1, and it is now phase 0. According to the time schedule of Ethereum, it will probably be by the end of 2021. The Polkadot parallel chain is actually available, which is the sharding technology that Ethereum is currently doing. Ethereum has 32 shards, while Polkadot has 100 or more shards. As long as the parallel chain slot is obtained, the bandwidth of the entire main network communication can be shared. For example, if there are 100 parachains, each parachain will share 1% of the communication bandwidth of the main network. Cross-shard communication is based on the highest security level, the consensus is ensured by the relay chain, and the block is produced by the relay chain. At the same time, through the arrangement of parallel chains, it is ensured that each chain can focus more on the professional logic of its own vertical field. For example, Acala specializes in DeFi, so it can insert Polkadot's other public chains in the form of a "bridge" on the parachain for interaction. Polkadot is almost atomic-level interaction, and the bridge is also almost atomic-level interaction. At the same time, as a parachain, Acala can maintain its logic of focusing on DeFi. Security, efficiency, credibility, and high scalability are the characteristics of Polkadot. Compared with other highly scalable sharded blockchain networks, Polkadot is not only characterized by high scalability, but also that each parachain can still maintain the verticality of its own code that is exactly the same as the public chain. Unlike the smart contracts on Ethereum, the underlying logic of smart contracts is hard-coded and cannot be improved much. Through Substrate's parachain architecture, Polkadot can not only make parachain projects highlight their own professionalism, maintain their own vertical professionalism in code and underlying architecture, serve professional vertical scenarios, but also achieve integration with other parachains. Atomic level interactions. Yuzhu: As for what a parachain is, there are many great explanations on the Internet, but the most easy to understand is Fuyao’s metaphor last year. He compared the Polkadot intermediate chain to a plug-in row, and a parachain is plugged into a plug-in row. The electrical appliances on the Internet, and each electrical appliance has its own different functions to create value. In the last question, I also mentioned that Kusama’s rhythm will be faster than Polkadot. The latest news is that the parachain slot auction will start at the end of this year or early next year, but the parachain 1.0 version will be released in the near future.
Q3: The auction method of the parachain looks as if all project parties can participate fairly. But at the practical level, it may be difficult to avoid being hyped. For the project side, there may be many choices, why must bid for the slot? What if the auction is not successful?
Cao Yin: Let me first list several ways for projects to participate in Polkadot. The first is a parachain, through bidding slots; the second is a parallel thread. The project party can adopt the method of leasing bandwidth. Each transaction leases the bandwidth of the block to participate in the block generation of the relay network. It is equivalent to sending your own transactions to the relay network to generate blocks. If there is no transaction, there is no need to rent a parathread; the third method can be integrated into its own parachain by other parachain projects in the form of a module; the fourth method is SOLO, in the form of a single chain developed by Substrate, to run a The Substrate chain does not consider the interaction with other chains. This situation is generally relatively rare. Most projects participating in Polkadot hope to participate in the interaction, transaction and interoperability with other chains in the form of shards. According to the bandwidth of communication with the relay chain, that is, the Polkadot main network, the strongest bandwidth is the parachain or parachain slot, the second is the parachain thread, and the third is the use of modules such as embedding into the parachain middle. The parachain is the most demanding and difficult, but once a parachain slot is obtained, it will become a shard on Polkadot. This means that it has truly become a very important infrastructure in the Polkadot ecosystem. Yuzhu: First of all, Polkadot is a Layer 0 relay chain network. Substrate-based independent blockchain networks like Acala are connected to Polkadot through parallel chains, so that they can share security and gain with the huge Polkadot network. Cross-chain interoperability. We have also seen the huge market effect after the Polkadot network went live. Therefore, for projects that want to enter the Polkadot ecosystem, the best way is to enter Polkadot and Kusama through parallel links, but the rental cost of parallel chains is too high, and it is often not suitable for some small and beautiful teams, so for those For projects and teams that fail in the auction or do not participate in the auction, they can choose parallel threads, which is a pay-as-you-go way to access Polkadot and Kusama, but it will take some time for this function to go online. Another way is to build our own products on the existing parachains. Just like what we are doing at Acala, as the most important DeFi infrastructure of the Polkadot ecosystem, in addition to some core DeFi product components, we have also added smart The contract module allows the project party to directly use EVM or Ink on Acala! Build smart contracts. Of course, it is also possible to directly embed renVM into Acala's Runtime module as renBTC has cooperated with us to become a native part of the Acala network.
Q4: We would like to know what innovations have been made in parachain slots and before? What kind of reaction will the market trigger if the plan is implemented?
Cao Yin: Polkadot, especially Kusama's parachain auction, is a preview of the DOT auction. This is the first time in history that shards are created using a pledged auction. Polkadot is also the first sharding network in history, and it used to be a single-chain sharding. To build a sharded network, it is necessary to create experience for future large-scale parachain auctions through Kusama-like parachain auctions. Therefore, the first Kusama parachain auction will be very interesting, and each project will cross the sea. Several project parties I know, such as Acala, including NFT teams, will prepare to bid for DOT and Kusama parachain slots. I think everyone must participate in the first auction. Although Kusama needs to mortgage for six months or one year in time. During the period, the price of Kusama may increase, and if it remains in the secondary market, it can be sold directly. But I think this is the first parallel chain, and each project party will definitely prepare the best gift or best price for everyone to participate. The second is that this parachain auction also has historic significance. Polkadot officials will also provide other benefits for the participation in the parachain auction, and will not disappoint everyone. So I think people who hold DOT and Kusama must participate this time. If you miss the first parachain auction, although you retain the opportunity cost of DOT or Kusama that can be sold in the future, you will miss the first batch of the best ecological projects in Polkadot. Yuzhu: I personally think that the parachain slot auction initiated by Polkadot is a kind of protection for ordinary users who are optimistic about the future development of Polkadot. Well, you can easily get the user's ETH without any guarantee for the user, which leads to chaos. In contrast to the new distribution model brought by Polkadot, first of all, the user’s principal is still there. Even if he chooses the wrong project, he cannot get income from the project side. At most, the loss is the staking income during the lock-up period. If a high-quality project is selected in the auction, the income obtained may be much higher than the staking income that should have been obtained. So this helps users to filter projects to a large extent, because only high-quality projects are likely to receive a lot of support from the community.
Q5: Because we have many new friends who don't know Acala very well, please introduce Acala from two aspects: professional and popular. What is its uniqueness?
Yuzhu: To put it simply, Acala is the most important DeFi infrastructure in the Polkadot ecosystem, providing a series of out-of-the-box DeFi product components for the Polkadot ecosystem. First of all, the first core module of our Acala is the decentralized over-collateralized lending system. Users can easily lend their encrypted assets to the US dollar stablecoin aUSD in an over-collateralized manner, thereby improving the utilization rate of their assets. The second core module is the decentralized asset swap module, through which users can quickly swap assets in the Polkadot ecosystem without the need for a third-party intermediary. In addition, we all know that the Polkadot network will maintain 50% of staking participation in the future, so for users participating in staking, the decentralized staking derivatives LDOT/LKSM we launched will be promising, because our LDOT / LKSM is essentially an on-chain asset that includes the user's principal and Staking income, and can be transferred between all parachains and relay chains arbitrarily, and we also provide users with a variety of Staking unbinding time periods to meet Users' demand for high asset liquidity. The last one is our decentralized self-government fund DAO, which is an economic model that is governed by the community to help the network achieve sustainable development. Polkadot officials have also mentioned our decentralized self-government fund many times, abbreviated as dSWF, thank you Interested friends can pay attention to it. We already have many innovative advantages. First of all, we have reached an in-depth cooperation with ren, ChainX, and Interlay, the bitcoin cross-chain bridge project officially named by Polkadot. Ren is now also trying to cross ETH to our Acala ecology, so cross-chain liquidity is one of the advantages we already have. Secondly, we have implemented a custom network service fee. When users conduct transfer transactions, they do not necessarily need network native Tokens for payment. All assets on the Acala platform can be used for service fee payment. In addition, in order to deal with emergencies on the network, especially the black swan incident that occurred on 312 this year, which caused serious congestion on the Ethereum network, Maker’s oracle feed price could not be read for a long time, so that people can buy at almost free prices A large amount of collateral was obtained. Therefore, we have launched the QoS service, which means that 20% of the space in each block will be reserved for important transactions at the system level. This function is like an emergency channel on a highway, ensuring the normal operation of important functions anytime, anywhere. Finally, we all know that it is very difficult to upgrade Ethereum itself or some DeFi projects. In many cases, there are multiple versions of a project, such as single-mortgage Sai, multi-mortgage Dai, Uniswap v1 and v2. For all substrate-based chains such as Polkadot and Acala, all core protocols are updated and upgraded without forks and low perception, just like app updates in mobile phones, so this is very convenient for users and project parties friendly.
Q6: What key elements are necessary for a good blockchain economic model design? Please introduce the Acala economic model?
Yuzhu: I think the most critical element of a good blockchain economic model is sustainable development. In the design of Acala's economic model, the first and most important point is in the distribution of Acala's Token. We reserve a large part for users who help Acala parachain slot auctions to ensure smooth access in the form of parachains. Polkadot. Secondly, in the future, we will start such as collector node rewards and some liquidity incentives, so as to stabilize the network and increase network liquidity. Then, our core economic model design is our dSWF, which is the decentralized autonomous fund DAO I just mentioned, because the Polkadot parachain has a certain lease period, so the cost of the parachain always exists , then for each Polkadot ecological project, the DOT cost of renting users is too high and uncontrollable, so a certain DOT reserve is required. Therefore, our Acala network will use the network revenue surplus reserve DOT during the lease period of the parallel chain. When the network has enough DOT to rent the parallel chain slot, Acala will realize the sustainable development of the network. Of course, another point is that it is also very important for a DeFi platform to reserve a certain amount of valuable assets and liquidity, because liquidity and reserves are a sharp weapon against black swan events. Take the liquidation pocket when a crisis occurs, for example, If our decentralized self-governing fund has a rich asset structure and sufficient reserves, even if a black swan event such as this year's 312 occurred, the network can still have robust processing capabilities to avoid falling into the system because there is no reserve and liquidity Into a death spiral.
Q7: What role does Acala play in the Polkadot ecosystem? What are the latest developments in Acala? And what is the next important plan?
Yuzhu: In fact, many people think that our Acala is a combination of DeFi applications on Polkadot, but this is not the case. Visually speaking, Acala is a natural stable currency, staking derivatives, DEX and on-chain governance model independent blockchain network, and our Acala also has a smart contract module that supports EVM and Ink! Developing smart contracts allows developers to build their own DeFi products based on Acala, so for the Polkadot ecosystem, Acala is a real DeFi infrastructure. As for our future plans for Acala, the first thing to do is to prepare for the upcoming parachain slot auction, and the second is to improve the functions and UI/UX experience of Acala's full products, and then we are still working on one thing It is to break through the sandbox of the smart contract, because to be honest, the current smart contract is just a closed sandbox, and the contract and the chain itself have a certain barrier. For example, the ERC-20 assets issued by the Ethereum EVM cannot be directly used in the Ethereum For the original chain itself, although we have added the smart contract module of EVM, it has not really solved this problem, so what we have to do is to break through this layer of barriers, that is, to enable the Dapp built by the Acala smart contract to be compatible with the Acala chain The native Token or other built-in modules on the platform are compatible with each other, truly realizing the integration of chain and contract, thus accelerating the development of Acala ecology. The last thing I would like to mention is that a while ago, the orml-nft pallet developed by our Acala was officially adopted by Kusama. Developers or project parties of the Kusama ecosystem can use Acala’s technology to issue NFT. I believe this is just a At first, because we not only continued to develop in the proprietary field of DeFi, but also gradually became the R&D partner of Web3 Foundation and Parity, whether it is to provide some general modules for Polkadot or Kusama, or to break through the sand of smart contracts. boxes and so on, we at Acala are constantly working on this.
Q8: Acala Pioneer Network Karura plans to participate in the first batch of Parachain Leasing (PLO) on the Kusama Network. What is the significance? What are the Karura network incentives? How should investors get involved?
Yuzhu: What I want to say here is that Karura is Acala's leading network. The underlying code technology is consistent with the Acala main network. It aims to become the most important DeFi center in the Kusama ecosystem. It also launched out-of-the-box DeFi product components for the Kusama ecosystem : Such as over-collateralized stable currency kUSD, LKSM that releases Kusama staking liquidity, etc. Karura's network incentives also reward most of the Tokens to users who help Karura obtain parachain slots. Therefore, if users want to obtain KAR (Karura Network Token), the most important thing is to have free circulating KSM at the beginning of the parachain slot auction, which can help Karura obtain slots and get KAR rewards. Finally, what I want to say is that PLO is the new name for the next parachain slot auction. You should understand the specific reason. "IPO" is actually easy to confuse people, and we have also taken the token rewards for the parachain distribution. A new term is called Paradrop, so that everyone may have a better understanding of the meaning of these abbreviations.
Q9: How do you view the competitive development of the Polkadot ecosystem in the blockchain field in the next few months or even years? The rise of ETH 2.0 is imminent, how will this affect the Polkadot ecology?
Cao Yin: Ethereum 2.0 is still too early to go online. What may be launched by the end of this year is the phase 0 mainnet. What Vitalik has forwarded these days is the phase 0 mainnet pledge contract. You can put ETH into the pledge contract and wait for the beacon chain to go online before you can participate in the Staking of Ethereum 2.0. According to the first phase of Ethereum, it will be divided into four sub-phases, phase 0 is the beacon chain, phase 1 is to start sharding, and phase 2 is to link the current Ethereum and sharding. The whole process is pushed back stage by stage. According to the plan of the Ethereum Foundation, it will take three years to complete the launch of the available version of Ethereum 2.0 in 2023. The current news says that Ethereum 2.0 will be launched on December 1st, which actually refers to the 0th phase, the launch of the beacon chain. In fact, the beacon chain has been launched once before, but there were not enough nodes to maintain the main network, and there were not enough nodes to run the main network, so it failed. Moreover, the launch of the pledge contract only means that everyone can put ETH into the pledge contract, but it cannot be refunded if it is entered. It is a one-way ticket. At least until the second stage to really run. Now I can't do anything except to deposit coins and go in for pledge. Of course, you can get interest, which is now about 20% annually. However, as a large amount of ETH enters the network, the annualization of the pledge will gradually decrease, such as 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7%. Because it will determine the inflation rate of Staking based on the amount of Ethereum pledged. There is no rush to launch Ethereum 2.0, this is an inappropriate analogy. It’s like you’re flying a high-speed plane with important people and important assets on board. You have to change the engine, change the wings while flying, and finally change the driver, and at the same time ensure the safety of the assets. This is a dangerous thing. Before Ethereum 2.0 is officially launched, Polkadot will leave a very precious three years. Polkadot can do many things in three years. And this does not take into account the three-year bounce in Ethereum. Moreover, Ethereum 2.0 was proposed in 2018, and the first stage of 2.0 was not reached until the end of this year. There will be a long time left for Polkadot. I have been ridiculing that Ethereum 2.0 actually does not need to be done. Just use the POW chain of Ethereum 1.0 as a parallel chain to participate in Polkadot. Because the work Polkadot needs to do in Ethereum 2.0 has been completed, and it is ready to be used, not the code. Polkadot is technically better than Ethereum's design. What's more, Polkadot has already done it well, and Ethereum still needs three years. The advancement of Polkadot is due to Dr. Gavin Wood, as the technical founder of Ethereum, he designed, implemented and deployed the architecture of Ethereum 1.0, and wrote the technical bible of Ethereum, the Ethereum white paper. As the chief architect of the architecture, he designed a series of architectures. Based on his experience in developing Ethereum, combined with Polkadot’s in-depth thinking on the blockchain 17 years later, he made Polkadot with his in-depth thinking on governance and smart contracts. The advanced nature of Polkadot has attracted many experienced blockchain developers to join the Polkadot ecosystem. Polkadot is not a competitor of Ethereum, but a very good partner of Ethereum. On the one hand, all smart contracts on Ethereum can be deployed on Polkadot, or on Acala, and entered with the native EVM, which was developed by Dr. Gavin Wood; on the other hand, Polkadot as a heterogeneous cross-chain The network can provide slots for Ethereum, so that contracts on Ethereum can enjoy the highly scalable, highly vertical transaction experience and development experience on Polkadot before the deployment of 2.0.
