What is Polkadot and Why is Everyone Talking About It

Unknown Speaker  0:01  

Welcome to the New To Crypto podcast designed to guide you through the crypto landscape with pinpoint accuracy created for the new and intermediate crypto investor. Join your host Crypto Travels Michael as he takes you through the different facets of getting started and succeeding in your crypto journey. New to crypto podcast brings you new episodes daily Monday through Friday with surprise bonus episodes sometimes on the weekend. Let me ask you, are you new to crypto don’t know where to start? Are you more experienced but have questions? Then you’re in the right place. This podcast is designed for you, coming at you from the training center in the lifestyle design studio. Here’s your host Crypto Travels Michael.

Michael  0:52  

Welcome to today’s show. I’m happy to report to you that this podcast has now been heard in 67 countries around the world spanning 436 cities. So welcome. Welcome. If this is your first time listening or you’ve you’ve been here for all of them, I welcome you. Let’s break down today’s episode because today is a really popular project. It’s a really it’s going to be a really fun episode. What is Polkadot? And why on earth is everyone talking about Polkadot? So their site Polkadot.network breaks down: Polkadot is an open source project founded by the web three Foundation, web three Foundation has commissioned five teams in over 100 developers to build Polkadot. Polkadot is a network that has a global network of computers to operate a blockchain on top of which users can launch and operate their own blockchains because of this Polkadot is one of the top blockchains in crypto, which have a growing ecosystem of cryptocurrencies. Polkadot is designed to operate two types of blockchains the main network, which is called a relay chain, this is where transactions are permanent. And the second ones are called para chains, which are user created networks. Para chains can be customized for any number of uses, and feed into the main blockchain. So the Para chain transactions benefit from the same security of the main chain, you’re gonna hear a lot about para chains around the projects of Kusama and Polkadot. And later this week, I have the episode about Kusama coming. So Polkadot is, a multi chain network. And it aims to connect different specialized block chains into a single unified network. blockchains that connect with Polkadot work in parallel, and are known as para chains. This is just a different way to say it. I know I previously mentioned about para chains, but para chains may be a new concept for you. Many people haven’t heard of this. So I want to kind of unpack this information for you in different ways. So those are known as para chains. And this enables them to access to Polkadot networks proof of stake validation of transactions and security. So Polkadot was launched in 2020. And who created Polkadot. Polkadot was founded by Gavin Wood. He’s the co founder of Ethereum. And there were two other co founders for Polkadot as Well, Peter Czaban and Robert Habermeier. Gavin Wood has the most notable background. He basically invented solidity, which is the computer language that’s used by developers to write decentralized applications or dapps on Ethereum. I mean, this is huge. So Gavin Wood, was also the Ethereum Foundation’s first CTO. He was also previously a research scientist at Microsoft. So Gavin Wood founded a company called parody technologies in 2015, with a partner named Judah Steiner, and its purpose was to implement projects wishing to build on Ethereum. It also worked on software essentials, to powering Ethereum including one of two clients run by a major network of nodes. parody technologies now maintains Substrate, which is a software development framework, primarily used by Polkadot developers who wish to quickly create para chains. So now let’s understand more about web three Foundation. 

The web three foundation is the nonprofit that conducted Polkadot’s token sales. Gavin Wood is also its president. And he co founded it with Peter Czaban. The web three foundation received 30% of the funds from the token offerings and oversees the allocation of those funds for the furthering of the Polkadot development. So how does Polkadot work? Well, let’s break down the relay chain. The main Polkadot blockchain, this network is where transactions are finalized. To achieve a greater speed the relay chain separates the addition of the new transactions from the act of validating those transactions. This model allows Polkadot to process well over 1000 transactions per second Polkadot also has para chains as previously mentioned, para chains are custom blockchains that use the relay chains computing resources to confirm that transactions are accurate. And Polkadot also has bridges. Bridges allow the Polkadot network to interact with other blockchains. And work is underway to build bridges with other blockchains, many other blockchains within, this will allow tokens to be swapped without a central exchange. So let’s break down the native cryptocurrency token for the Polkadot ecosystem. And that is called Polkadot or DOT the ticker symbol is D-O-T, DOT. 

Polkadot is an open source sharding multi chain protocol that facilitates the cross chain transfer of any data or asset types. So it’s not just tokens, it’s a wide range of blockchains interoperable with each other. Polkadot protocol connects public and private chains permissionless networks, Oracles and future technologies. You also hear about Oracles in the crypto currency industry. So Polkadot’s native dot token serves several purposes. It provides network governance and operations. And it also is creating para chains, parallel chains. And for the core components would be relay chain, para chain, para thread and bridges. It should be noted that Polkadot uses something called nominated proof of stake system, or NPoS system. NPoS system allows all native tokens, DOT holders to participate in securing the network by staking their tokens. So as you can tell Polkadot is unique in that is a sharded multi chain network, and it can process many transactions in seconds. And there’s an entire ecosystem of tokens that are built around this project. I hope that this has provided value for you today. And this is just meant to be an overview of what is Polkadot. So If you like today’s episode, be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform that you’re listening to show your support. I love reading your five star written reviews. And till next time, make it a great day.

Unknown Speaker  8:29  

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