🎄 Merry Christmas to all the Buidlers in the Polkadot ecosystem!
At this festive moment, I am happy to share a report from Gavin Wood's Polkadot 2024 Annual Summary. This year was full of breakthroughs and innovations for Polkadot, witnessing the hard work and contributions of countless developers, teams, and community members.
The report is detailed, covering multiple aspects of the Polkadot ecosystem, including technological advancements, ecosystem development, improvements in cross-chain interoperability, and future strategic planning highlights. Due to the length of the original text, we have compiled and moderately condensed it, retaining the most critical and exciting parts to help everyone grasp the latest developments and future outlook of the Polkadot ecosystem more efficiently.
👇 Start Gavin Wood's 2024 Annual Review 👇
It's time to summarize... I temporarily put down the text editor and open Medium. On a cold night, with a short day, and the warmth by the fireplace, it's time to review the Polkadot ecosystem. How is Polkadot currently progressing? What achievements have been made in the past 12 months? What are the plans moving forward? Buckle up, this year's review will be long, as the Polkadot team is busy and eager for more.
Polkadot's Development Journey and Strategic Transformation
Turning Point for Polkadot
Polkadot's journey began with the white paper in 2016 and crowdfunding in 2017. These laid the foundation for subsequent development and product vision. 2023/2024 is a critical turning point, marking the transition from realizing the product vision in the white paper to optimizing and stabilizing the product based on market demand, ultimately evolving into a broader Web3 service platform.
Polkadot's High-Performance Blockchain
Polkadot's main value proposition lies in providing high-quality, interconnected coretime, primarily achieved through hosting high-performance parachains. Over the past year, Polkadot has successfully supported multiple projects with non-crypto user bases, such as Mythical Games' Mythos chain, which supports over 5 million game users, showcasing Polkadot's extremely high performance.
Three Major Technological Advances
Asynchronous Backing: Block time reduced to 6 seconds, throughput increased by about 10 times.
Agile Coretime: Replacing the existing slot leasing system, introducing monthly auctions for core resources.
Multi-Core Expansion: Supporting multiple cores to improve performance, Polkadot Hub uses 3 cores, reducing block time to 2 seconds.
Ecosystem Progress
Decentralization Level: Nakamoto coefficient increased from 93 to 132, becoming the first major blockchain to exceed 100, far surpassing other public chains.
Developer Ecosystem: Polkadot SDK remains in the top three, with continuous growth in developer activity within the ecosystem.
Governance System: Over 1,350 public votes completed, the DOT issuance mechanism adjusted to a fixed amount of 120M DOT per year, reducing inflation.
Decentralization and Autonomy
Polkadot's governance system is one of the largest and most complex DAOs in the world, with all protocol decisions being open and transparent. In 2024, DOT holders can influence developer decisions more directly through the 'Wish For Change' governance track. Pariy is also promoting education and the decentralization of knowledge through the Polkadot Blockchain Academy.
The Birth of PCF
In 2024, Polkadot created a new entity - PCF (Polkadot Centralized World Adapter), managed by DOT holders through OpenGov, aimed at addressing challenges encountered when interacting with the centralized world, such as signing business contracts and making legal payments.
Technological Innovations and Performance Breakthroughs
Performance Breakthrough: The True Performance of Kusama
Unlike other networks that continuously increase node requirements and improve TPS through complex optimizations, Polkadot (especially Kusama) demonstrates true network performance by expanding network scale. The 'Spammening' activity conducted on Kusama showcased that our technology can achieve over 100,000 TPS (actually 143,343 TPS) in real-world conditions, using only a quarter of Kusama's core resources. This demonstration clearly shows that even if performance is the only pursuit, Polkadot is the best choice.
Improved Cross-Chain Interoperability
Over the past year, Polkadot's cross-chain interoperability has significantly improved. The Polkadot chain can now operate trustlessly with Kusama, Ethereum, and other Substrate chains. Through XCM, Polkadot has successfully achieved the goals mentioned in the vision document, supporting not only token transfers but also executing transactions, publishing data, querying attributes, and paying fees.
Leap in User Experience
In 2024, the overall user experience of Polkadot has improved significantly. Cross-chain fund transfers, NFT management, multi-signature, and proxy operations have become very convenient. Wallet applications (like Subwallet, Talisman, Nova) are continuously optimizing, and users hardly need to pay attention to the multi-chain features of the blockchain. Polkadot App serves as a simplified onboarding tool that supports DOT, KSM, and USDT/C, allowing users to pay for goods and services in U.S. stores directly with their wallets without credit card fees and enjoy spending rewards.
Technological Advances: Polkadot 2.0
In 2024, Polkadot entered the 2.0 era. Through Asynchronous Backing, block time was reduced from 12 seconds to 6 seconds, and throughput increased by about 10 times; Agile Coretime introduced a monthly auction system for core resources, replacing the previous leasing system, enhancing consumer flexibility and market responsiveness.
👉 Further Reading: Polkadot Q1 2024 Report | XCM Sets a Historical High, JAM Chain to Lead the New Direction of Polkadot 2.0
Future Development: Multi-Core Expansion
Polkadot's multi-core expansion provides greater flexibility for the future. Polkadot Hub will use a three-core configuration, reducing block confirmation time to 2 seconds and providing three times the computational bandwidth, suitable for high-frequency and high-performance chains. Elastic scaling technology developed in 2024 is expected to launch in 2025, allowing chains to operate at low costs during low traffic and scale dynamically during peak traffic.
Polkadot's Upgrades and Innovations
Polkadot 2.0 Conceptual Framework and Strategic Shift
The technological upgrade of Polkadot 2.0 greatly enhances the utility of the platform, but equally important is the new conceptual framework that helps us better understand the true value of Polkadot. This year, Shawn Tabrizi proposed the dual concept of Hub/Cloud, distinguishing it from the traditional 'parachain community' narrative and emphasizing the deeper value of Polkadot.
Polkadot 2.0 and Plaza Plan
Polkadot is redefining its product positioning by launching Polkadot Cloud (decentralized computing resources) and Polkadot Hub (a unified user interaction interface). The Plaza plan will introduce a native smart contract system that supports multiple programming languages and is compatible with Ethereum development tools.
Polkadot is divided into two complementary product parts:
Polkadot Cloud: Composed of powerful computing resources generated by Polkadot validators and protocols, supporting SDK chains (like parachains). In 2025, the application of Polkadot Cloud will expand to data distribution, and the JAM protocol will also enhance its cloud services.
Polkadot Hub: Provides a collaborative platform for the community, centrally managing various services (such as staking, governance, identity, and NFTs). The Hub provides high performance through three cores, with a block time of 2 seconds, and the smart contracts supported by PVM greatly enhance speed and efficiency.
Cross-Chain Integration of Polkadot Hub
Polkadot Hub provides a seamless user experience for the Polkadot ecosystem, eliminating fragmentation between different system chains. The Hub also supports Ethereum-compatible smart contracts and significantly enhances Ethereum performance through PolkaVM.
Web3 Personas and Proof-of-(Polite-)Personhood
With the rise of AI, traditional Web2 authentication mechanisms (such as CAPTCHAs, IDs, etc.) face threats. Polkadot proposes Proof-of-(Polite-)Personhood, a blockchain-based authentication system that protects privacy and avoids centralization. This system is expected to be rolled out in phases starting in 2025, using the latest zero-knowledge technologies to ensure decentralization and transparency.
JAM Protocol and Polkadot 3.0
The JAM protocol is core to Polkadot's future development, aiming to create a high-performance, decentralized Web3 supercomputer. In 2024, JAM's Gray Paper will be officially released, built in collaboration with up to 35 teams to create this 'World Computer'. JAM's advantage lies in its performance and decentralization, rather than relying on a single computing center like Ethereum. JAM is expected to see more development in 2025, with testing and optimization protocols through JAM TOASTER.
JAM Supercomputer and Future Vision
The ultimate goal of JAM is to build a JAM Grid composed of multiple JAM networks, forming a decentralized supercomputing platform. Each JAM supercomputer will support countless services, secured through DOT. Through the JAM Grid, Polkadot is expected to handle massive data and computing demands, driving global applications of Web3.
🥳 Looking Ahead to 2025
Polkadot's future is full of possibilities: Polkadot Apps, Hub, citizenship, DAO expansion, JAM, and trustless and easy Ethereum integration. There is so much to be excited about and a lot to build. So, take a good rest, and come back with renewed energy to work hard in the new year, continue to buidl, buidl, buidl, and never look back. Wishing everyone a happy holiday!
Source: Gavin Wood's Polkadot 2024 Annual Review: Technical Breakthroughs and Infinite Possibilities for the Future
