Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood has announced an 18.9 million DOT ($777 million) development fund just ahead of the network’s launch of the auctions for the initial batch of parachain slots. 

Here is an overview of Polkadot using information from the Polkadot website:

“Polkadot is a network protocol that allows arbitrary data—not just tokens—to be transferred across blockchains. This means Polkadot is a true multi-chain application environment where things like cross-chain registries and cross-chain computation are possible. Polkadot can transfer this data across public, open, permissionless blockchains as well as private, permissioned blockchains.

“This makes it possible to build applications that get permissioned data from a private blockchain and use it on a public blockchain. For instance, a school’s private, permissioned academic records chain could send a proof to a degree-verification smart contract on a public chain.“

Polkadot “unites a network of heterogeneous blockchains called parachains and parathreads.” These chains “connect to and are secured by the Polkadot Relay Chain” and they can “also connect with external networks via bridges.”

According to a tweet published last Sunday (October 17), Polkadot’s treasury has allocated more than 18.9 million DOT (worth around $777 million at the time) to a development fund that will be disbursed via community governance. Wood said that the money would be spent on the Polkadot community for “building, improving, educating” and anything else that could help Polkadot and its ecosystem. 

According to a report by Cointelegraph, Polkadot’s treasury funds can be spent if approved by the governance council, which votes on proposals that are put forth by the community. At present, the Polkadot council consists of 13 independent members, with plans to expand to 24 members in the future. 

While previous governance votes have generated lackluster response from the community in the past, Wood’s announcement of nearly a billion dollars in funding could be the ticket to spur greater engagement.

The first set of parachain slot auctions is expected to start on November 11.

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