Polkadot Plans To 1000x Its Throughput

The Polkadot network is planning on boosting its mainnet to increase transaction speed by 100 to 1000 times. 

Boosting Transaction Speed

The Polkadot team updated its roadmap on Monday, announcing that it would be adopting the “asynchronous backing” technique by the end of this year to improve transaction speeds. The technique would first be deployed on its testing network Kusama, followed by a mainnet upgrade after audits and testing. The deployment will allow parachains to build blocks simultaneously as the relay chain. Since the relay chain plays a key role in the functionality of the Polkadot protocol, the deployment of asynchronous backing will allow the network speed to reach 100,000 – 1,000,000 transactions per second (TPS). The network currently operates at an average speed of 1000 TPS. 

Other Possible Upgrades

Furthermore, it will also cut parachain block time by half, i.e., the block time of 12 seconds will be reduced to 6 seconds, which will mean lower latency and faster finality for transactions executed on parachains. It will also increase per block space five to ten times. Finally, the upgrade will also allow the reuse of the parachain blocks in the event that they do not make it onto the relay chain in their first attempts. Thus network scalability will improve, thereby boosting the amount of work each parachain can handle, allowing for higher parachain registrations. 

The roadmap statement also addresses upgrades related to scalability, cross-chain communication, expense calculation, governance, and staking that are expected to be rolled out by mid-2023. 

Polkadot’s Web3 Partnerships

The price of the network’s native DOT token saw a slight boost since Tether announced that the USDT stablecoin was live on the Polkadot platform. The stablecoin was previously launched on the Kusama Network.

Company CTO, Paolo Ardoino, commented:

“We’re delighted to launch USDT on Polkadot, offering its community access to the most liquid, stable, and trusted stablecoin in the digital token space. Polkadot is on a trajectory of growth and evolution this year, and we believe Tether’s addition will be essential in helping it continue to thrive.”

Polkadot has been signing critical partnerships that have boosted its position as a multichain application ecosystem. One such partnership is with the web3 platform Alchemy. In August 2022, a parachain of the Polkadot network, Astar Network, partnered up with Alchemy in order to gain access to the latter’s node infrastructure. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.