Gavin Wood: Polkadot 2023 Annual Summary

Written by:Gavin Wood

Compiled by: 0xAyA, Odaily Planet Daily

As the nights in the northern hemisphere lengthen, soma.fm’s Christmas music special comes to life on my radio at home, and it’s that time of year again when I write my annual diary on behalf of Polkadot. With the COVID-19 pandemic largely behind us, we can see a return to global normalcy, and with it, a resurgence in offline events. This year, conflict and artificial intelligence have been among the most prominent themes in the news cycle, and with them, some curious minds want to understand how they relate toBlockchainLet’s change the world together.

This year is also a special anniversary for me; I write these words at the exact moment, ten years ago I wrote my first crypto-finance code. So, what does 2023 bring?

Industry Events

Given my position in the industry, which is probably close to being a veteran, it seems to me that we have a seasonal system.cryptocurrencyThe "winter" has been going on for some time. Web3, more preciselycryptocurrency, often appear in the news, but often under more negative terms than the more optimistic headlines of a few years ago. (Indeed, a more pertinent review in the Economist magazine found some similarities to the ancient pest, the cockroach.) This crypto winter, while likely inevitable, was unsuccessfully helped by certain individuals who seemed to believe that Web3 could be messaged and marketed apart from its technology and culture. I’m afraid this won’t be the last time we see this kind of behavior in the industry, but, hopefully, it provides a constructive and illuminating lesson for everyone.

I’d wager that the negative press coverage and the unfair negative commentary that comes with it has probably reached the halls of power. At the same time, we’re also seeing the regulatory landscape for our industry evolve and change — sometimes wisely, sometimes ill-advisedly. Some major changes are happening around the world, especially in the UK, Switzerland, Japan, the EU, and the US; some of the developments in the latter are likely informed by the Web3 Foundation, which testified at the US House hearing and advises the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party. While each of these jurisdictional changes has its own nuances, we can see an emerging, increasingly clear position that places a strong emphasis on avoiding trust-based, custodial, and Web2 “solutions” and introducing true trustlessness and decentralization in all aspects: stakes, nodes, and governance. Thankfully, some of the more forward-thinking world regulators seem to be acknowledging that not all cryptocurrencies are equal, even if it’s only implicitly noted through some omissions.

Polkadot’s Decentralization

Older Web3ers know that decentralization has always been Polkadot's top priority, as stated in the Polkadot white paper. Idealistic and pragmatic interests rarely intersect, but this is real, and decentralization is not only a goal we should strive to achieve, but also a belief we must achieve.

While there is still much work to be done in this Web3 industry to create a truly resilient, decentralized, and self-sufficient system, Polkadot is already ahead by many metrics. A recent independent report ranked Polkadot at the top of the Nakamoto coefficient (a measure ofBlockchainThis year, we also witnessed a milestone in decentralization: Polkadot’s relay chain Kagome joined as a validator node of the Kusama network.

It seems that the push for decentralization is particularly evident in the recent structural changes of the Parity team. The Parity team's efforts to decentralize have meant a significant reduction in the number of people in its executive department, which has mainly occurred in areas supported by ecosystem activities and has little to do with the development of core technologies, the historical field of the Parity team. Behind this reorganization, the Web3 Foundation announced the launch of a $55 million "Decentralised Futures fund", whose stated purpose is to help our ecosystem work towards further decentralization and reach a sustainable state in which activities contribute to the utility and demand of Polkadot's block space (Coretime). The fund is immediately operational, has received dozens of high-quality applications, and will continue to be active and issued in the first half of 2024.

The Polkadot ecosystem is growing: On Polkadot and Kusama, we have 90 parachains from more than 580 ecosystem projects; including 300 decentralized applications and 190 projects developed based on the Substrate framework.BlockchainPolkadot now runs 50 enabled parachain cores, with trust andSafety17,000 XCM messages were transmitted in the same period. On December 22, we saw a single relay chain among the 50 Polkadot chains, processing 6.9 million transactions in 24 hours - a sustained rate of 80 transactions per second throughout the day. We now see over 2,000 active developers in the ecosystem almost every month, and 83,000 active users. We saw a 10x growth in retail-friendly nomination pools throughout the year, covering over 180 pools of 10 million DOT.

Throughout the year, we saw 324 applications for the Web3 Foundation’s grant program, with 135 projects from 54 countries signing on; the Foundation reached another milestone last month — its 600th grant since its founding in 2017.

Crucial moment

Polkadot’s flagship event, Decode, took place in June in Copenhagen, Denmark, with satellite events around the world, most notably in Hanoi (Vietnam), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and Shanghai (China). At these events, 1,500 people attended in person (and thousands more watched online) to hear more than 100 speakers from across the ecosystem. These were a mix of virtual and real-life events, with more than 11,000 online registrations for the Copenhagen event alone.

Shortly before the Copenhagen event, the Polkadot Summit was held, which brought together 150 key decision makers and developers from the ecosystem. This was quite successful in my opinion, and one of the key results was the introduction of a new framework aimed at optimizing hardwarewalletA new metadata model for trustless operations across the Polkadot ecosystem — Due to the flexibility provided by Polkadot’s parachain model and innovative upgradeability, it is difficult to describe the meaning of any transaction at any time. Nevertheless, the integration of transaction metadata (and the human-readable meaning of transactions associated with it) provides an in-ecosystem solution that can be used across a variety of well-knownwalletAs we move further toward decentralization, programs like this ensure that the entire ecosystem can work together to create common opportunities in areas such as standardization, infrastructure, and tooling.

The Polkadot Developer Conference Sub 0 was held as a hybrid event for the first time this year, with live streaming support and various facilities for those who could not attend in person. A total of 500 people attended (with hundreds more watching online) and heard key insights from more than 50 speakers on the technical foundations of Polkadot. Content included core developers discussing the latest developments, tools, APIs and processes, and industry technicians talking about their experiences finding solutions through the technology stack.

The Web3 Music Summit, hosted by Primavera Sound in partnership with the Web3 Foundation, provides a space to explore Web3 in the context of music. Of particular note is the use of Web3 within the music industry. DAOThe feasibility of (decentralized autonomous organizations) is to rebalance and optimize artists’ economic incentives by allowing more direct economic interactions between artists and fans.

CommunityWe have hosted many Polkadot-related conferences both internally and externally, including ParisDOT in Paris, France and Polkadot Pulse in Bangalore, India, in addition to many Polkadot satellite events at the largest industry gatherings around the world, such as ETHDenver, SXSW in Austin, and Polkadot in South Korea.BlockchainWeekly, WebX in Tokyo, Token 2049 in Singapore, Coindesk Consensus, and Messari Mainnet in New York, these events included workshops, booths, and attendees, showcasing Polkadot’s unique advantages and vibrant technology.Community.

Academic achievements

Polkadot Blockchain Academy is a groundbreaking initiative to create a blockchain course worthy of being taught at a world-class academic institution. The project began last year with a five-week course at Cambridge University and has continued around the world this year, including at the University of Buenos Aires earlier this year and at the University of California, Berkeley during the summer.

The Buenos Aires program attracted 790 applicants for 76 spots and was run in partnership with 12 universities in the Latin American region. This program is not for the faint of heart, with a comprehensive curriculum tested by the best minds in the industry, and passing is not a given, but 80% students have made it.

In the later course, with 344 applicants competing for 72 places, we introduced a new Founders Course which focused less on the deep technical programming elements and more on the broader technology and its social and industrial impact. We saw similar pass rates, with one individual passing with distinction. Our youngest graduate was 17 years old and from Eastern Europe, who attended the six-week course.

The Substrate Framework Developer Program is the main program of the Parity team to support teams that are building blockchains using the Polkadot SDK. In 2023, 124 projects applied for the program, and 23 projects from 55 reviews reached the first major milestone. At the same time, the team launched a sister program, Developer Heroes, which focuses on guiding individual developers within the ecosystem, with 420 applicants throughout the year. The program currently has more than 200 members and 60 mentors.

Power to Parachains

This year has seen two major centralized stablecoins, TethThe launch and further deployment of Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC). While these are not the silver bullet for decentralization we strive for, they provide some significant utility value to several parachain projects and users. USDC alone has $250 million deposited on the Polkadot Asset Hub, and USDT has even more deposits, contributing to the ecosystem’s total stablecoin count.

Kusama’s Asset Hub now has full integration with directTokenThis cross-chain magic works by introducing a system-level decentralizationexchange, for DOT/KSM to variousTokenIt provides a neutral and easily accessible liquidity pool. In addition, the liquidity pool fully integrates the fee payment system, allowing all these tokens to be easily used to pay the fees of the Asset Hub and exchanged through the XCM language without going through a third party. This greatly simplifies cross-chain transactions and reduces the complexity for users, collation and developers.

The ecosystem of user tools continues to evolve, with many well-known products seeing significant improvements. Parity Signer is an app designed to transform any old Android or iOS device into a fully functional ultra-Safety隔离wallet，现在已经被重写并发布为 Polkadot Vault。虽然我仍然参与产品方向的制定，但维护工作正在从 Parity 团队转移到 Novasama 团队（这在最终确定时会有更实质性的通知）。最近，Polkadot Vault 新增了一些功能，旨在与该团队的新 Spectr Wallet 紧密集成。对于那些不了解的人，我想说的是，这是一个由基金支持、开源的项目，旨在成为爱好者和高级用户的非商业、中立桌面钱包。通过良好的集成，Vault 设备上的担忧减少到几乎为零，Vault 的恢复和升级过程变得令人愉快。

This year also saw the launch of Smoldot 1.0, a fund-backed project that exists in a properly decentralized manner. While experimentally integrated into the well-respected Polkadot.js application in compatibility mode, it has played a major role in applications built directly for it, such as Novasama's Spectr power-user wallet, and middleware built specifically for it, the Polkadot-API (PAPI), which is becoming the first fully functional example.

As time goes by

The Polkadot network is able to continue to move forward at an unprecedented pace with an impressive number of seamless upgrades and improvements, thanks to its Webassembly-based meta-protocol foundation and its indispensable canary network, Kusama.

2023 is the year that Polkadot’s three main codebases finally merge into a single codebase. Substrate (a general-purpose blockchain development framework used primarily by Polkadot, but now also used by Cardano’s Midnight, Mandala, and Polygon’s Avail), Polkadot Node (Relay chain node software based on Substrate), and Cumulus (software for building cross-chains using Substrate) now all belong to a single Polkadot-SDK (i.e., a software development kit for building specific types of other software) codebase. This merger greatly simplifies and optimizes the development process.

While this merger itself does not help decentralization as they are still managed by the Parity team on GitHub, further changes taken this year do contribute to decentralization: part of the codebase, the production runtime that defines business logic specific to Polkadot and Kusama, is no longer hosted under Parity’s GitHub organization; instead, it is now managed by the decentralized Polkadot Fellowship organization (more on this below).

Secondly, the various components of the Polkadot SDK are now published on crates.io, the software publishing service for the Rust ecosystem, ensuring that the team building the Polkadot-SDK has a greater measure of stability and reduces dependence on Parity's internal development process. Next year, plans are in place to further improve the stability of the SDK and significantly reduce the workload of ecosystem teams in updating their code bases.

Unusual business

Frame is a framework that Substrate uses to build business logic components on the chain (similar to smartcontract), which will see several improvements in 2024. While some improvements are obvious, others are behind the scenes, but are just as important. One of the most important is the message queue system for passing XCM messages in the ecosystem. Now it is ready for launch, which allows more and more complex messages to be sent between chains. There is also a new feeless_if API for free transactions, a task API that greatly improves the development experience of on-chain maintenance functions, and Default Configs, which allow pallets to have their Config trait items have default values. Many other improvements have been made, but it is impossible to list them all here.

OpenGov 是 Polkadot 治理体系的重大修订，宣布 Polkadot 理事会和技术委员会的时代已经到来，为其去中心化的资格带来了一次飞跃。事实上，我们已经看到Community齐聚一堂，力挽狂澜，坚决取消了对 Polkadot 的第一次恶意全民公投。

OpenGov brings the Polkadot Fellowship. This is an entity whose actions and membership are governed through complex on-chain code, the first of its kind and a step towards Polkadot becoming a fully functional, autonomous organization capable of attracting, retaining, and nurturing the talent and expertise it needs. DAO One of a series of concrete steps towards a goal of building a community around Polkadot and Kusama. There are currently around 60 members, with new members joining all the time. The project’s progress is tracked in the new OpenDev monthly public call, which many team members participate in (including myself), led by Jay Chrawnna of Kusamarian and moderated by Tommi Enenkel of Mangata. In addition, the group (Fellowship) is responsible for managing the code base and publishing versions of the business logic (runtime) of Polkadot and Kusama (of course, their governance bodies must still perform any upgrades).

We’ve seen OpenGov’s (sometimes strident) treasury process spark a lot of online discussion, showcasing a variety of insightful groups competing to make their positions heard and felt. While this is instructive for a functional, inclusive democratic process, it doesn’t always produce the easiest way to make decisions, nor is it ideal for engaging reasoned discussion. OpenGov was far from that, and this year we’ve seen decentralized governance and execution mature into a sophisticated DAO beyond basic stake voting, with the emergence of the Polkadot Fellowship as the first non-token element of Polkadot’s decision-making body, and others are sure to follow.

In such a groundbreaking moment, the Polkadot network began what it calls the first decentralized, autonomous sovereign wealth reserve, instructing the network through OpenGov to use treasury funds to regularly purchase USDT to fund the salaries of the Polkadot Fellowship.

Referendum #231 is using 469,000 DOTs to buy over two million USDT (likely more as I write this) through the HydraDX Omni Pool.pool) is a highly liquid decentralized blockchain based on parachains.exchangeThe purchase mechanism uses an on-chain "scheduler" to make purchases in small amounts, averaging around $250 every half hour. These USDT will be placed in a dedicated network sub-treasury specifically for autonomous distribution to members of the Polkadot expert community as part of the Fellowship salary program. The salary program itself is outlined in the manifesto and detailed in Fellowship RFC #50.

The entire process was approved in a decentralized manner through OpenGov and is being executed autonomously on-chain with professionally audited logic code, written according to pre-published instructions. No specific individual or entity organization holds any executive privilege or position during the entire process. While this was a one-time operation for placing stablecoin token purchases in the Fellowship Treasury, there is nothing unique to USDT, the Fellowship, or its sub-treasuries, and the same process can be applied to any decentralized treasury that exists within the scope of Polkadot’s XCM.exchangeTokens, and any treasury affairs of any collective. Perhaps we’ll see a wealth management collective come together to create a decentralized sovereign wealth fund for Polkadot? Regardless, I expect to see a range of rules-based collectives hosting their own multi-asset treasuries in the future, perhaps with salary plans that meet the specific needs of the network.

Key highlights

Agile Coretime is an idea I first proposed at Decoded this year. After a quickly written RFC and an intense development cycle, it is now live on Rococo and is expected to land on Kusama and Polkadot in Q1 next year. This fundamentally changes the way Polkadot obtains a key resource, parachain Coretime. Unlike unpredictable long-term pledges achieved through auctions, Coretime (the name of the resource) is sold at a more predictable price in monthly sales before use.

In the Agile Coretime model, blocks of Coretime are represented by XCM NFTs, which can be traded, exchanged, advertised, and sold within the Polkadot ecosystem in the same way as any other NFT. In addition, these Coretime NFTs can be cut and diced in various ways, and then these smaller blocks of Coretime are resold again and ultimately used to support a cross-chain. Some Coretime markets have emerged, such as Lastic, which provide an easy way to trade this new resource class.

The direct impact is to avoid locking up DOT tokens to participate in slot auctions (usually funded by crowdlending). This greatly reduces the burden on new teams and reduces uncertainty for current teams. It works well with the "cross-chain on demand" model, allowing buyers of Coretime to contribute it to a shared pool, which ODPs can purchase as needed.

The Road Ahead

The new year is going to be a busy time for Polkadot. Xiaobai NavigationParachains, Ethereum Snowbridge, and Kusama Bridge are four important upcoming infrastructures. Elastic Scaling is the fifth technology I expect to see in 2024. I’m also looking forward to the expansion of our DAO, including new teams, multi-asset sub-treasuries, extended XCM, and some exciting new primitives we are developing.

Our innovative forkless block production consensus algorithm, Sassafras, has taken shape, and we can expect to start using it in testnets in 2024. Parity Labs is also working on a lot of new technologies; a recent RFC (closed after some significant iterations in the prototype phase) called CoreJam may give interested parties some ideas about the direction here.

That's the end of my little review; I hope you enjoyed it. All that remains is to wish you all a happy holiday season and hope for a freer, more peaceful, and happier world.

See you next year.

——Gav

The article comes from the Internet:Gavin Wood: Polkadot 2023 Annual Summary

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