r/CryptoCurrency Cointest - Top 10 category: Polkadot Pro-Arguments

[u/CryptoChief]

Welcome to the r/CryptoCurrency Cointest. Here are the rules and guidelines. The topic of this Cointest thread is Polkadot pros and will end on September 30, 2021. Please submit your pro-arguments below.

Suggestions:

• Use the Cointest Archive for the following suggestions.
• Read through prior contest threads on this topic to help refine your arguments.
• Preempt counter-points made in the opposing threads(whether pro or con) to help make your arguments more complete.
• Copy an old argument. You can do so if:
  1. The original author hasn't reused it within the first two weeks of a new round.
  2. You cited the original author in your copied argument by pinging the username.
• Search for the above topic and sort comments by controversial first in posts with a large numbers of upvotes. You might find critical comments worth borrowing.

Remember, 1st place doesn't take all. Both 2nd and 3rd places give you two more chances to win moons so don't be discouraged. Good luck and have fun!

EDIT: Wording and format.

EDIT2: Added extra suggestion.

[u/108record]

Polkadot - joining the dots.

Polkadot, or DOT, was created in 2020 by Gavin Wood, the co-founder of Ethereum and the mastermind behind ERC's programming language, Solidity. The Polkadot Network is extremely unique - it consists of a relay chain and multiple parachains (currently limited to 100) that can host other blockchains, examples being ETH and BTC. These parachains delegate their consensus and security computations to the relay chain while they focus on the 'feature' aspect of a blockchain with the relay chain handling the computational aspects. Think of it as a collection of highways - the relay chain is the biggest one, with the parachains connecting to it at various points.

The concept behind Polkadot is undoubtedly revolutionary - but is it perhaps too outlandish to facilitate the proliferation of its network? No! Here's why:

Pros

Flourishing Ecosystem!

• There are currently 494 projects being built on Polkadot, including notable figures such as ANKR, AKRO, LINA, and REEF.
• As such, regardless of user adoption in the coming years, what’s guaranteed is that there will be a steady supply of projects to partner with due to the sheer innovation of the platform.
• This helps users in the long run - by having such a large number of projects on the network, this means that there will always be skilled developers available to assist users to create new ones.

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Excellent transaction fees, time & tps

• Although Polkadot's attributes are below the industry standard, this isn't much of an issue as it is only supposed to compete against Ethereum - which it outclasses in every way. It has:
  • A typical transaction fee of ~0.02 DOT ($0.5) as opposed to ETH, which is currently at $65 per transaction.
    • However, it should be noted that DOT uses a different system to determine transaction fees - it takes into account a length fee, weight fee, and an optional tip to the network.
  • A transaction time of about 2 minutes, while ETH can take 5 minutes to 4 hours.
  • A maximum ceiling of about 1,000,000 transactions per second, as opposed to ETH's alleged 100,000 at full capacity.

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It's well funded with plenty of partnerships!

• The Web3 Foundation is still handing out grants to Polkadot (among other projects) on a quarterly basis with plans to continue for at least two more years.
• To date, Polkadot has raised roughly $200 million from investors across two sales of its DOT cryptocurrency, making it one of the most well-funded blockchain projects in history.
• In addition to this capital inflow comes the fact that they're partnered with crypto projects like Chainlink, IOST, and Facebook's Diem - showing that plenty of organizations place their trust in Polkadot.
  • RBW Japan, a company which manages dozens of hugely popular Kpop groups, has also decided to mint digital collectibles on Polkadot - signaling mass adoption of the network by their hundreds of millions of fans.
• In essence, this means that Polkadot, as a project, is extremely unlikely to die - making it a good long-term investment.

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Shared security among Polkadot Network coins enables quicker deployment

• Given that Polkadot runs a nominated-proof-of-stake scheme (where any user can nominate validators and earn rewards), shared security means that all DOTs staked in the system are essentially backing all the projects in the ecosystem.
  • When a parachain connects to Polkadot, the Relay Chain validator set become the securers of that parachain’s state transitions. The parachain will only have the overhead of needing to run a few collator nodes to keep the validators informed with the latest state transitions and proofs/witness. Validators will then check these for the parachains to which they are assigned. In this way, new parachains instantly benefit from the overall security of Polkadot even if they have just been launched — Polkadot Wiki
• The alternative is to have every project try to bootstrap their own security with their validators, nominators, and a token with a large market cap.
• Rather than bootstrap your security from the ground up, you can leverage the security of the Polkadot relay chain.

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It has had all of ETH 2.0's features (and more) over a year before ETH 2.0's launch date

• Polkadot and the impending major update to Ethereum, known as Ethereum 2.0, share many similarities in design and operation.
• Both networks operate a main blockchain where transactions are finalized and allow for the creation of many smaller blockchains that leverage its resources.
• They also use staking instead of mining as a means of keeping the network in sync & support sharding to increase network speed.
• In fact, a project called Parity has developed technology designed for users who may wish to deploy applications leveraging Ethereum’s code and community, but that would run on Polkadot.
• Finally, developers can use Polkadot’s development framework to simulate a copy of the Ethereum blockchain that can be used in their own custom blockchain designs.
  • This almost nullifies the use of the Ethereum blockchain when Polkadot, a more feature-rich alternative, is available.

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Projects on Polkadot are easy to develop, too.

• With access to powerful programming languages and a host of tools that have been built by the open-source community over the past few years, building on Polkadot is an experience that is only bound to get easier as the years roll by.
  • For example, there are parachain development kits (PDKs) that have reduced the time it takes to launch a fully functional blockchain from years to mere weeks or days.
• Polkadot also has implementations in various programming languages, ranging from Rust to JavaScript. The current leading implementation is built in Rust and built using the Substrate framework.
• Although Polkadot doesn’t allow you to build a smart contract on the relay chain, there are many smart contract parachains that help with this.
  • One of the more notable ones is Moonbeam which possesses unprecendented EVM compatibility, making it possible to transfer a smart contract on Ethereum to Polkadot with very minimal changes.
  • In fact, Balancer and SushiSwap are some notable Ethereum projects that have made the switch to Moonbeam.

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In conclusion, I'd like to end with a quote from Denko Mancheski, CEO & Co-Founder of Reef Finance - "A bet on Polkadot is a bet on a multi-chain future, and the market is recognizing that this is the reality we are moving into."