This Saturday, December 18, 2021 was a great day for the Polkadot (DOT) universe. Indeed, the first bids were put online for the benefit of the five projects that won the first auctions. These projects can now start generating blocks on the network
Polkadot (DOT) parachains go live
On October 14, Polkadot announced the upcoming launch of its parachute auctions, which caused the DOT price to jump. Just over two months later, five auctions have been won by five different projects.
As expected by the Polkadot team, these first parachutes have been put online and the five projects can now benefit from them. In other words, they can use the network to generate blocks on it.
After 5 years of research and development, and a multi-stage launch that began in May of 2020, Polkadot launch is now complete, with all auction-winning parachains currently producing blocks on the network.https://t.co/V40mY3WEwZ
– Polkadot (@Polkadot) December 18, 2021
As a reminder, parachains are individual and parallel networks to the Polkadot blockchain. These networks are interoperable with each other and with the “parent blockchain”, which are all part of the same harmonized ecosystem.
Parachute winners of Polkadot (DOT) will start using the network
The first five Polkadot parachutes to go live are, in order of winning projects from the various auctions, Acala (ACA), Moonbeam (GLMR), Parallel Finance (PARA), Astar (ASTR) and Clover (CLV).
These projects all have different ambitions and themes, ranging from decentralised finance (DeFi) to investment opportunities and peer-to-peer lending.
From now on, the projects will be able to start putting their activities into practice, using the network offered by the Polkadot ecosystem. The main objective of the latter is to make all blockchains interoperable, beyond the Polkadot ecosystem alone.
For investors who participated in the parachains thanks to their DOT, their contribution is now blocked on-chain by a smart contract for 96 weeks. Their DOTs will be returned to them in October 2023.
In exchange, they will receive in the coming weeks the native tokens of the projects they have participated in
Can we still participate in the Polkadot (DOT) auctions
The release of the first Polkadot parachains is a very important step for the network. But it is only one step in the process, as Polkadot will eventually allocate no less than 100 parachains to 100 different projects.
It is therefore still possible to participate in the parachain auctions, for example via the Just Mining platform. Of course, it is strongly advised to study the project in which you wish to invest before blocking your DOTs.
Please note that if the project you are supporting does not win any auctions, the blocked DOTs will be automatically returned to you at the end of the parachute auction, without the need to wait 96 weeks.
