Polkadot in Q3: Of staking, developments, and a new roadmap

• DOT supply staked grew by 49% as Nomination pools welcomed more members.
• The block time on the network may soon decrease as a result of a new development.

According to Polkadot [DOT], the project’s performance in the third quarter (Q3) was something it was very pleased with. The report, which Polkadot published on 6 October, explained how there were some technical upgrades, newly deployed parachains, and growth in other areas.

Read Polkadot’s [DOT] Price Prediction 2023-2024

DOT staking grows, thanks to…

First off, Polkadot mentioned that Energy Web, Bit.Country, peaq, Nodle, and InvArch Network won the parachain slots in the quarter.

Previously called a parallelizable chain, a parachain helps to coordinate the Polkdaot and Kusama [KSM] networks. It also helps feed into the main blockchain called the Relay Chain.

Therefore, the increase in the number of Polkadot parachains means that there’s more room for harmonious functioning of the ecosystem.

As per its staking metrics, the web3 interoperability blockchain mentioned that DOT staked grew from 578 million to 663 million.

Source: Polkadot

However, Polkadot noted that the growth would have been impossible if not for the input of the Nomination pools. By definition, Nomination pools help users who do not have enough DOT to recommend their own validators and those who want to stake DOT passively. 

As a result of this, Polkadot highlighted that, 

“Having only been launched in November 2022, nomination pools ended Q3 boasting 15,281 members with more than 7m DOT staked.”

More for development, less for value

Another area where the project excelled was in terms of public GitHub repositories. On a Quarter-on-Quarter (QoQ) basis, Polkadoto noted that there were 49,000 GitHub commits. This number was much higher than any other project within the period, according to Santiment data.

One of the reasons for this impressive development activity could be connected to the approval of a dedicated system chain for trading future block space on the network.

However, in a more recent update, Santiment revealed that Cardano [ADA] surpassed both Kusama and Polkadot in terms of development activity. 

🧑‍💻 Here are #crypto‘s top coins by development activity: notable #github commits, past 30 days:

1 @Cardano $ADA
T2 @Polkadot $DOT
T2 @kusamanetwork $KSM
4 @hedera $HBAR
5 @vegaprotocol $VEGA
6 @chainlink $LINK
7 @ethstatus $SNT
8 @dfinity $ICP
9 @cosmos $ATOM
10 @ethereum $ETH pic.twitter.com/LUSDsSmxw7

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) October 6, 2023

Furthermore, it was also in Q3 that Circle [USDC] arrived on the Polkadot ecosystem. According to the earlier announcement, the deployment would enable every parachain to access USDC without bridging.

Besides its ready-to-use feature, the integration would also boost Polkadot’s liquidity by allowing institutional access to the network. On other ends, Polkadot did not fail to mention that it was rolling out a new testnet to foster its scaling roadmap.

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Known as Rocco, the testnet would serve as a major step in Asynchronous Backing. For context, the Asynchronous Backing is aimed at reducing block time and increasing block space on the Relay Chain.

For the DOT token, Santiment showed that its value decreased by 19.90% in the last 90 days. The market cap at $5.06 billion also followed suit with a similar fall.

Source: Santiment