Polkadot (DOT): the crypto report during Q4 of 2022

The performance report of Polkadot (DOT) for Q4 of 2022, sees increases despite the collapse of the FTX exchange that affected the entire crypto industry. Specifically, the crypto saw an increase in daily active accounts of 64% and new accounts of 49%. 

Polkadot (DOT): data on the crypto for Q4 2022

According to Messari’s report, it appears that Polkadot (DOT) and XCM, the messaging format among its parachains, recorded increases during Q4 2022, despite the period marked by the collapse of the FTX crypto-exchange.

And indeed, while Polkadot’s market capitalization declined 31% from the previous quarter and 83% year-on-year, the rest of its financial data remained stable. 

Specifically, quarterly revenue remained unchanged and DOT token supply increased as expected. Not only that, in November, the Web3 Foundation reported that, after three years of discussions with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the DOT token, initially offered as a security, was no longer considered a security.

Analysis of data on the Polkadot Relay Chain shows impressive growth over the previous quarter 2022, with daily active accounts increasing by 64% and new accounts by 49%.

The report explains this interesting growth of Polkadot probably because users have moved away from FTX and sought out more open, transparent, and decentralized networks such as Polkadot, the launch of USDT, and the launch of nomination pools.

The Cross-Consensus Message Format (XCM) of the parachains

As anticipated, Polkadot’s ecosystem also includes the Cross-Consensus Message Format (XCM), which is basically a language that facilitates communication between parachains by enabling them to send messages. 

Not only that, XCM messages can be transmitted through HRMP channels between parachains, but also from the parachains to the Relay Chain and even outside the Polkadot ecosystem to other applications and base layers. XCM is versatile and serves various purposes, such as operations, asset transfers and teleportation.

XCM was launched last May 2022, and since then it has been reported to have transmitted over 166,000 transfers through 70 channels. The most popular channels involve the Relay Chain with the popular parachains of Acala, Astar, Parallel and Moonbeam.

The expansion of XCM is critical to the continued progress of the Polkadot ecosystem. The next iteration of XCM, XCM V3, is expected to launch soon and will introduce new features, including enhanced programmability, connection to external networks, cross-chain blocking, improved fee payments, NFTs and more.

Polkadot (DOT): the Parachain slot auctions

Another interesting piece of news from Polkadot for the third quarter of 2022 was the Parachain slot auctions that attracted a large number of participants. 

This activity resulted in a high amount of DOT locked, due to the high level of anticipation leading up to the launch and favorable market conditions. Since the initial auctions, the amount of locked DOT has decreased in each consecutive quarter.

So far, 35 slots have been won, with a total of 133 million DOT (10.5% of total supply) locked. Slot auctions are currently scheduled until February 2023, which would bring the total to 41. 

The Polkadot network has the capacity to support a maximum of 100 parachains, and additional relay chains could be added in the future, thus increasing the number of supported parachains.

The seven winners of Q4 2022

During the fourth quarter, seven new teams were awarded parachain slots:

• Bitgreen, which enables organizations and individuals to invest in sustainability markets, purchase high-quality tokenized carbon credits, and participate in sustainable finance;
• Crust Network, which is a decentralized cloud storage provider that supports various storage-layer protocols such as IPFS and exposes instantly accessible on-chain storage functions to users;
• Ajuna which provides a simplified way for Unreal and Unity developers to create an incentive layer in their games using tokenized virtual assets;
• Parathread 2092 – This is a well-known project within the Polkadot community, but has chosen to remain anonymous for the time being until the next milestone is reached;
• Frequency, which makes Web3 social possible at scale by allowing applications to collaborate instead of compete when sending transactions; 
• OmniBTC, which is a decentralized omnichain liquidity aggregation (DOLA) protocol with individual coin pools from each public chain as the core, cross-chain interoperability protocols such as Wormhole, LayerZero as the bridge, and the Sui public chain as the settlement center;
• Pendulum which aims to establish the missing link between the fiat and DeFi ecosystems through a fiat-optimized smart contract blockchain; 

DOT’s price and the news about Polkadot projects

DOT currently ranks 12th in crypto by market capitalization, with a total market cap of more than $7.6 billion. 

At the time of writing, DOT’s price is $6.62 registering a +6% in the last seven days. Indeed, at the beginning of 2023, DOT was worth $4.32. However, the price is still far from its all-time high of over $53 in November 2021. 

The pump in the last week may also be due to updates Polkadot shared on Twitter about new projects. 

Polkadot shared news from projects running on its blockchain and parachains such as Kilt Protocol, the Efinity metaverse, Aleph Zero and many others.