About Polkadot (DOT)
Polkadot is a blockchain that allows developers to create customized interoperable Parachains. The project was launched in 2006 by Gavin Wood, Ethereum's former CTO and cofounder. Each Parachain connects with the main Relay Chain, allowing them to communicate and share the mainnet's security. A parachain can have its own modified Proof of Stake consensus mechanism, decentralized app development, and tokens. Space for Parachains is limited and regularly auctioned off for DOT.
Polkadot's native token is DOT, which has three primary uses cases:
1. Holders can vote on future project changes through Polkadot's governance mechanism.
2. Users can pay network transaction fees on the Relay Chain and some Parachains.
3. The token is staked to validate transactions. DOT has an unlimited supply making it an inflationary token, and the network pays out rewards to validators equally regardless of stake.
Polkadot's creators argue that their token isn't designed for speculation but instead for the use cases given above.
Polkadot has seen great success in sharing data and information between all its different Parachains, projects, and DApps. Interoperability has been a big issue for blockchains since Bitcoin, and Polkadot was one of the first projects to provide a solution. Polkadot is also scalable, as it can process transactions in parallel across all the different chains in the network.