Polkadot Development Team Announces Roadmap Update; What to Expect

The Polkadot (DOT) development team updated its roadmap on September 26, announcing plans to adopt some notable improvements in the coming months.

According to a blog post from the Polkadot blog, the network plans on adopting the “asynchronous backing” system by the end of 2022, based on official estimates, which would improve transaction speeds on the DOT network. The technique will first be delivered on Kusama, its testing network, before being deployed to the mainnet after audits and testing.

Source: Polkadot

Asynchronous Backing

The asynchronous backing optimization will allow parachains to build blocks simultaneously as the relay chain. Because the relay chain plays a pivotal role in the Polkadot protocol, this upgrade will boost network speeds to 100,000 - 1,000,000 transactions per second (TPS). For context, the protocol currently runs at an average speed of 1,000 TPS.

Governance Overhaul

Another critical improvement the upgrade delivers is that it plans to completely overhaul its governance system. An excerpt from the post reads: “Our novel governance system removes the council and technical committees, introduces the Polkadot Fellowship, and moves every decision in Polkadot to referendums by the community.”

With the new update, users can submit and vote in referendums, which will be delivered through a permissionless mechanism.

More Upgrades on the List

The roadmap update came with a wide array of other improvements aimed at taking the DOT protocol to the next phase of development. Apart from the asynchronous backing and governance overhaul, Polkadot plans on implementing nomination-based staking pools to allow stakers to create their own pools, where other stakers can join and nominate validators.

Other proposed upgrades per the blog post include parathreads, XCMv3, FRAME: Weights v2, collective parachains, bridge hub, staking dashboard, and dispute slashing.

Commenting on the move, Polkadot founder Rob Habermeier noted:

“We’ve been hard at work on delivering the code for these features and upgrades and look forward to having them accepted by the Polkadot community.”

Glimmers of Hope for DOT?

Following the announcement of the roadmap update, DOT recorded a rise in bullish sentiment from investors, which led to the cryptocurrency recording a 10% jump.

Also, the network enjoyed some successes in its developer activity frot. On-chain analytics platform Santiment reported that Polkadot had the most development activity within 30 days ending September 26, surpassing heavyweights like Ethereum (ETH) and Cardano (ADA).

Source: Santiment

However, the price windfall did not last long as the cryptocurrency erased all the gains accrued the following day. At press time, the cryptocurrency trades at $6.39, as it moves to close September deep “in the red.”

DOT/USD 4-Hour Chart on TradingView

The bearish bias comes amid persistent sell-offs and choppy movements in the broader crypto scene, as the crypto winter blows hot.

DOT Statistics Data

DOT Current Price: $6.39

DOT Market Cap: $7.16B

DOT Circulating Supply: 1.12B

DOT Total Supply: 1.23B

DOT Market Ranking: #11

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Disclaimer

This article should not be taken as a piece of financial advice. It is essential to conduct your research before making investment decisions.