According to data from the programming repository GitHub, Polkadot acknowledged over 500 contributions per day in September, a record number for the multichain protocol.
A record 26,258 messages were transferred between its parachains, according to data from Polkadot cross-consensus interoperability standard XCM. On Polkadot’s GitHub, 14,930 developers contributed in all for the month of August.
66 blockchains are currently operational on Polkadot and its parachain startup network Kusama, according to project developers. Over 140,000 messages have been sent and received between chains across 135 communications channels since the system’s launch. Together, the Polkadot and Kusama Treasuries have distributed a total of 346,700 KSM and 9.6 million DOT ($72.8 million) to finance budgetary requests in the ecosystem.
Individual layer-1 blockchains known as parachains are tested on Kusama and run in parallel on Polkadot. Crowdloan auctions are used to allocate parachain spaces, with the winning project receiving the spot. Its debut occurred in November of last year.
Rob Habermeier, Polkadot’s founder, recently released a plan for improving the scalability of Polkadot and Kusama. Highlights include the potential for asynchronous backing, or the decoupling of parachain extension from relay chain extension, to reduce parachain blocktime by 50% while boosting block space provided by a factor of ten. If the update is implemented, it is predicted to boost network speed to 100,000–1 million transactions per minute.
By the end of the year, Kusama will be the first platform to receive the asynchronous backing upgrade. Theoretically, the next network upgrade that will introduce “pay-as-you-go” parachains will combine the simultaneous launch of smart contracts and a blockchain on Kusama. The change would hasten the process of developing on Polkadot.