The Polkadot ($DOT) network says it ended 2022 on a high, reporting multiple key developments that took place in the fourth quarter as well as strong developer momentum.
Polkadot, which is a multichain blockchain ecosystem that intends to serve as the foundation of Web3, took a key step in terms of boosting the decentralization and security of its network with the launch of its long-awaited nomination pools feature.
It’s an important development because it lowered the minimum number of tokens required to stake natively on its platform to just 1 DOT, down from 200 DOT. The move means that native staking is now accessible to a much wider audience than previously, and it had an immediate impact with more than 2,475 pool members actively bonding 854,495 DOT by the end of the year.
The implementation of nomination pools was one of a number of headlines made by the Polkadot ecosystem during the final three months of the year. In other news, the Polkadot smart contract platform Astar Network announced in October it had entered into a key partnership with the Japanese mobile network provider NTT Docomo. Astar said it will henceforth be working with NTT Docomo on a number of initiatives that aim to boost adoption of Web3.
One of the initial goals of the partnership is to create a project that will solve social issues through the use of a decentralized autonomous organization, which provides an alternative to centralized decision-making and is a key feature of Web3.
In addition, the two companies said they’re aiming to create solutions based on Web3 technology for various issues faced by modern society, such as environmental problems and regional development.
As part of the initiative, NTT Docomo also promised to invest up to $4 billion to fund these projects.
That same month also saw a major milestone for Polkadot, as its parachain KILT Protocol pulled off what was the first full migration from Kusama to Polkadot’s main relay chain. Kusama is a “canary network” that serves as a kind of testbed for both Polkadot, and the numerous parachains that are one day aiming to launch on Polkadot’s relay chain.
KILT, a blockchain identity protocol for issuing self-sovereign, verifiable credentials and decentralized identifiers, said the historic migration was made possible thanks to Polkadot’s unique technology stack, which is based on the cross-chain interoperability standard XCM.
The migration proceeded without a hitch, demonstrating the viability of both the technology and the canary model, where projects carry out a kind of trial run in a real-world environment before launching officially on the main Polkadot network.
There were good news for DOT investors too, who may have been satisfied to learn that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision no longer sees the token as a “security”, but rather a “non-security”.
The new definition means that the SEC recognizes that the Web3 Foundation has taken steps over its business processes and communications guidelines that ensure more safety for DOT investors, as well as compliance with U.S. regulations.
Development Activity Gains Pace
While Polkadot and its ecosystem of parachains keep hitting new milestones, its developer community keeps on growing. Data from Electric Capital shows that Polkadot and its 334 ecosystem teams boast 1,128 weekly active developers working on various parachains and decentralized apps, generating a combined 13,934 commits per week.
Developer commits can be thought of as updates, and with almost 14,000 per week, Polkadot tops the list of all Web3 projects in terms of developer activity, Electric Capital’s data revealed. What’s more, some of the individual projects within Polkadot’s ecosystem ranked high on the overall list themselves.
Manta Network, a privacy protocol, and Kusama, the canary network, ranked 3rd and 5th, respectively, on Electric Capital’s list. Manta also achieved a notable milestone of its own, setting a new record by establishing the biggest-ever “Trusted Setup” for a zero-knowledge network with over 13,000 participants.
As for Polkadot, its huge developer community caters to what is now the largest ecosystem of use case-specific Layer-1 networks and decentralized applications. A total of 74 parachains have now won auctions on either Polkadot or Kusama, and these projects support a total of more than 300 dApps and just over 550 projects that are either up and running, or under development and set to launch in the new year.
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