Polkadot launches Parachains as it Looks To Bring in Interoperability

Polkadot, one of the teams working to bring in interoperability among blockchains, has announced the launch of parachains, which is a set of blockchains that are connected and would be running in parallel within the Polkadot ecosystem.

In this way, the network plans to bring in blockchain interoperability which is one of the biggest challenges facing the blockchain industry at the moment. Though this does not solve the underlying issue of how best to connect the existing blockchains like ethereum or Solana, it believes that setting up a series of parallel chains which can be rented out to blockchain teams would ultimately lead to a group of projects and applications that can communicate freely with each other so that messages, as well as assets, can be exchanged between them which would lead to the development of interconnected and powerful applications much easier in the coming months.

“No single blockchain design works optimally for every use case. Each chain comes with trade-offs making it good for some applications and not others. The para chain model was created with the belief that the future of Web 3 will involve many different types of blockchains working together. Just as the current version of the internet caters to different needs, blockchains need to be able to provide a variety of services. Parachains solve this,” said Dr. Gavin Wood who is the co-founder of Polkadot.

It is expected that in the first phase, the network would be releasing 100 such chains which can be rented by developer teams via auctions. This would be valid for 96 weeks at a time post which they would either give up the chain or would need to renew their renting. In the coming months, many more slots for such chains are expected to be released for the developer teams who would then be able to build various applications on these chains.

The next batch of Polkadot auctions will begin on or around December 23, 2021. The second batch will feature six auctions in total, with the six winning parachains to be onboarded on or around March 11, 2022. It remains to be seen how the uptake in these auctions would be and how the project teams that take in these blockchains would be using the interconnectivity to build powerful applications different from those that are available in other blockchain networks.