Polkadot’s ecosystem saw significant expansion in Q3 2023, with the addition of five new parachains, a rise in staking metrics, and major technical upgrades. The total volume of staked DOT increased to 663 million, and the platform recorded more than 190 million on-chain events. The quarter also saw the introduction of native USDC and a 20% quarter-on-quarter rise in XCM messages.
Staking and Metrics
Polkadot reported a quarter-on-quarter increase in the total volume of staked DOT, from 578 million to 663 million. The percentage of the total DOT supply staked is now just shy of 49%, close to the ideal staking rate of 52.5%. Nomination pools, launched in November 2022, ended the quarter with 15,281 members and more than 7 million DOT staked.
New Parachains
Five new teams acquired parachain slots, diversifying Polkadot’s Web3 use cases. The new projects include peaq, Bit.Country, InvArch, Energy Web, and Nodle. These projects focus on various sectors such as DAOs, the metaverse, IoT, and sustainable energy.
Technical Upgrades
Major proposed technical upgrades like agile coretime and asynchronous backing are nearing completion. Agile Coretime aims to provide more flexible ways for Web3 projects to access Polkadot’s computing power. Asynchronous backing could potentially increase Polkadot’s scalability eight-fold and is expected to be rolled out on the testnet Rococo soon.
Other Highlights
Native USDC was introduced, eliminating the need for bridged versions of the stablecoin.
Zodia Custody announced institutional custody and staking services on Polkadot.
A 20% quarter-on-quarter rise in XCM messages indicates increased cross-chain activity.
Polkadot is shifting towards an application-centric model, similar to cloud computing services. The upcoming technical upgrades are projected to enable support for over 1,000 parachains and 1 million transactions per second, preparing Polkadot for Web3 mass adoption.
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