Annual summary of Polkadot ecological development in 2020background

When we look back at the wonderful story of cryptocurrency in 2020, in addition to the scorching summer wave of defi and the carnival of bitcoin at the end of the year, the rest may be the launch of two Tianwang level projects this year, one is filecoin, the other is Polkadot, and the launch of filecoin is very noisy because of some Oolong events, while Polkadot It seems to follow the trend, so it is quite popular.

Back to the beginning of 2020, perhaps not many people have paid attention to this important blockchain project, which has been developed for nearly four years. However, with the development of the past year, both the users of Polkadot community and the projects participating in Polkadot ecology have undergone earth shaking changes, with the launch of $5 million Polkadot from hot money The special fund for ecological support, the Polkadot ecological fund with us $10 million recently launched by coin an, and the hundreds of millions of ecological support funds launched by okex yesterday, it seems that many stories are undergoing subtle changes, and we are also participating in this wave

When we look back on the development of Polkadot in the past year, it is not enough to use an old poem to describe it. It is probably that "when the wind blows through the waves, sometimes, we will sail straight to the sea", and this day for many early people, we pay attention to Polkadot After all, the ups and downs in the middle range from obscurity to attraction. Only the players in the game know the bitterness and fun.

With bitcoin breaking new heights step by step, 2021 seems to be regarded as the next big bull market of cryptocurrency, so what happened to Polkadot ecology, which has attracted much attention this year, and how far it has developed, will inevitably arouse people's curiosity.

Therefore, we try to sort out the development of Polkadot and Polkadot ecology in 2020, and review the development of the past year as a whole from the Polkadot event, Polkadot ecological investment and financing situation and Polkadot ecological project development situation, so as to look forward to the future.

Polkadot ecological development

From an ecological point of view, we can comprehensively evaluate the development of Polkadot from three aspects: talents (developers), projects and funds.

1. Ecological developers

Let's first talk about the situation of people. The most important thing for ecology is the developers. The number of developers will directly affect the prosperity of Polkadot's whole ecology, no matter it is Polkadot The expansion of its own functions, the improvement of relevant supporting facilities and tools, or the construction of ecological projects, as well as the ecological development of these projects, are inseparable from a large number of developers, and the vigorous ecology can truly reflect the value of Polkadot itself.

According to electric capital, the monthly average number of active developers in Polkadot ecology has reached 384 in the third quarter of this year, double the number a year ago, and almost equal to that of bitcoin.

In addition, there are two data that we are more concerned about. One is the situation of Ethereum's ecological developers. Although Ethereum has experienced the upsurge of defi this year, the monthly average number of active developers of Ethereum has increased to 2296 from 1985 in the third quarter of last year, which is not as much as expected. The other is the case of EOS. The monthly average number of active developers in EOS has dropped from 195 in the third quarter of last year to 107, down 45%. Judging from the performance of EOS this year, it has gradually moved away from the center of the stage.

It should be noted that both EOS and Ethereum have been running for many years, and there are many applications that can directly let users experience. They are already in the mature stage, while Polkadot is still in the initial stage when the main network has just been launched, it is still improving its own functions, and the ecological project has only been gradually established, and it has not been applied and run.

This means that, although Polkadot is still in the run-up stage, from the perspective of ecological development, it has gradually overtaken the EOS that has been running for a long time. One is on the upslope with accelerated growth, the other is on the downhill with accelerated recession, which also makes us feel a sense of replacement of the old and the new.

As we all know, only when the application runs and more users and funds participate will it further attract more developers to make more projects and applications, and people and funds will further accelerate into the ecology, forming a virtuous circle.

Therefore, Polkadot, which is in the run-up stage, already has such excellent performance. Next year, Polkadot's functions will be gradually improved, and the parallel chain and cross chain functions will be officially loaded. At that time, the application of Polkadot will be really "used", and Polkadot will usher in the real outbreak of ecology.

2.Ecological projects

Official grant support

In 2019, 62 projects from 54 teams in 20 countries / regions were funded by the Web3 foundation.

This year, as we can see, the number of developers of Polkadot ecology has doubled, and there are many more new projects. This year, 142 projects have been funded by the Web3 foundation, which is 220% of last year's. Of course, these projects are not necessarily blockchain projects, some are developer tools.

Ecological situation

So far, according to incomplete statistics, a total of 323 teams, projects or applications have joined the Polkadot ecosystem, including some community, capital, wallet and other applications. It is a bumper year.

Next year, Polkadot's cross chain function will be installed, which means that other chains can be connected to Polkadot. At present, 100 + chains are ready to access Polkadot, and 60 + test networks have been launched.

3.Project financing

According to incomplete statistics, Polkadot ecology has 18 financing events this year. Interestingly, these financing events occurred in the second half of this year, which may be related to the special situation of this year. On the one hand, affected by the epidemic in the first half of this year, the traditional capital market was severely damaged. Warren Buffett saw the second, third and fourth fusions in his life, and cryptocurrency also encountered 312 The market has plummeted.

Therefore, the first half of the year was very depressed, whether it was work (with epidemic interference) or economic environment (no confidence in investment targets). Fortunately, defi lit a fire in the summer and warmed up the whole circle.

We can see that Polkadot ecology has been intensively financing in the second half of the year. On the one hand, the economic benefits brought by the popularity of defi may make the capital with keen sense of smell start to look for the next hot spot. On the other hand, although Polkadot launched its main network in May, many important functions, such as decentralization, transfer and governance, were launched in the second half of the year. These important events also promoted the layout of capital Polkadot in the second half of the year.

From the perspective of niche of financing projects, there are 12 projects related to defi, accounting for 2 / 3 of all financing projects. The rest are storage, privacy projects, cloud platform, decentralized identity, and Ethereum compatible smart contract platform. We (Polkadot Ecological Research Institute) believe that Polkadot's ecological development in the coming year will also be based on the application or platform of defi, because such projects are very easy to implement, and many business models have been practiced on Ethereum, which is very mature.

Secondly, infrastructure projects like storage and privacy, as well as projects that provide some functions for the entire Polkadot, will follow, followed by some specific application scenarios, which is similar to the leading role played by finance and infrastructure in the development of a city in reality.

Sum up the past and look forward to the future

1.Polkadot year end data summary

Since Polkadot's main network was officially launched this summer, the current main network data are as follows. We believe that these data will change significantly in the new year, which is worthy of our attention.

Verifier: 273

Candidate verifiers: 319

Mortgage rate: 74.3%

Number of accounts held: 63492

Inflation rate: 10%

Number of projects / teams currently receiving official Grant: 204

2.New year's outlook

With the official launch and operation of rococo-v1, in the coming 2021, I believe we will soon welcome Kusama's formal test auction of parallel chain, which is the common expectation of all Polkadot ecological supporters and ecological builders. We predict that this will become a springboard for Polkadot to enter the next stage, so it deserves our attention.

Similarly, according to the time axis setting, after the Kusama test, we will usher in the real Polkadot parallel chain auction. Just as Dr. Gavin, the founder of Polkadot, announced before, we believe that this will be carried out step by step

1. Launch Rococo V1 and wait for it to run stably;

2. Online Kusama's system (public interest nature) parallel chain;

3. Open the auction on Kusama;

4. The parallel chain of successful bidding on Kusama;

5. After the completion of the audit, Polkadot's public interest parallel chain will be launched;

6. Open the auction on Polkadot;

7. Online Polkadot on the successful parallel chain auction.

When the "7" step is completed, Polkadot will really shine, and it is also the time when the parallel chain function really enters the public view and is used.

For the development of blockchain, nearly 10 years have passed. However, many technical problems still need to be solved, and some bottleneck problems also perplex practitioners. The emergence of Polkadot can not be said to completely solve these problems, but at least from some levels, such as cross chain, expansibility, bifurcation and governance problems have created a precedent, and these outline the future Polkadot has a broader future and is worth learning and understanding.

On the other hand, this year we also saw the focus of traditional institutions on cryptocurrency, which also brought a bull market with different underlying logic from 2017.

Next year, it will no longer be just a game between stock markets, but an incremental market for big traditional financial funds. In this context, Polkadot will realize cross chain cooperation next year, and the prospect of many Polkadot ecological projects officially connecting to Polkadot will become the most important thrust of Polkadot next year.

Then, let's continue to "ride the waves" and witness the completion of Polkadot's mission to become a new generation network infrastructure platform.