What Projects Are Involved In Kusama_s First Round Parachain Slot Auction？

【TL; DR】

Polkadot slot auctions will officially begin on November 11th

Karura (KAR), the DeFi Hub of Kusama, was the first project to win a KSM slot and enjoys a high amount of recognition and credibility.

Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform that seamlessly migrates ethereum smart contract applications to Kusama (Polkadot). The yield from each staked KSM hit an impressive $5,000.

Shiden(Astar) is a smart contract platform in the Polkadot ecosystem and can support EVM, WebAssembly(WASM), and Layer 2 solutions.

Khala (Phala) is a “Confidential Compute Cloud” that enables the assetization of data.

As the blockchain middleware, Bifrost offers a multi-chain DeFi platform that allows users to earn staking rewards and DeFi crypto rewards in the cross-chain scenario.

The Polkadot community has approved a proposal announcing that the long-awaiting Polkadot slot auction will officially begin on November 11th. As the core function of the Polkadot network, Parachains slot is the final piece in the Polkadot project. The schedule for the auctions is as follows:

The first round of auction (Batch 1) will consist of 5 auctions. Each round will last for 7 days, and be held every 7 days.
Round 1: November 11, 2021 to November 18, 2021
Round 2:November 18, 2021 to November 25, 2021
Round 3:November 25, 2021 to December 2, 2021
Round 4: November 2, 2021 to December 9, 2021
Round 5: December 9, 2021 to December 16, 2021
All the winners of this round of auction will be officially launched on December 17, 2021 and will be leased until 20 October 2023.

The second round of auctions (Batch 2) also involves 5 rounds where each round lasts for 7 days and is held every 14 days.
Round 6:December 23, 2021 to December 30, 2021
Round 7:January 6, 2022 to January 13, 2022
Round 8:January 20, 2022 to January 27, 2022
Round 9:February 17, 2022 to February 24, 2022
Round 10:March 3, 2022 to March 10, 2022
All winners of the second round of auctions will officially launch the parachains on March 11, 2022, with a lease running until October 20, 2023.

For information on what Polkadot slot is, what is the relationship between Polkadot and its Canary Network Kusama, the introduction of auction facility and why the Polkadot slot is so high-profile, check out the following articles:

Headlines: Kusama Slot Auctions Officially Begin, Karura May Come Out On Top

Cryptopedia: An Auction for a Polkadot Parachain Slot

Kusama is the canary network of Polkadot, and there is a famous proverb about canary: canary in the coal mine. It is said that in the early 20th century, coal miners would often carry canaries into the mines with them. Canaries are very active, so they inhale and consume large amounts of air, but they are sensitive to toxic gases. The miners would rely on canaries to detect harmful fumes, primarily carbon monoxide in the mines. Therefore, the "canary in the coal mine" can be interpreted as a warning sign of impending danger. In the development of the project, the "Canary Testing" originated from the proverb, and all operations to be run on Polkadot will be previewed on Kusama.

As a result, major projects that win the Kusama slot auction can largely reflect the development of projects across the Polkadot ecosystem. These projects tend to be more advanced in development, while having better technical accumulation and community consensus.

What are the projects involved in the Kusama Slots?

The Kusama slot auction was divided into two rounds, with the first round starting on June 17 and ending on July 20, 2021, involving a total of five slots. Over 1.11 million KSM were locked in the crowd loan. In the first round, projects that won slots were: Karura (Acala's sister network), Moonriver (companion network to Moonbeam), Shiden (Astar's canary network), Khala Network (Phala's canary network), and Bifrost.

Source: https://parachains.info/auctions/faq-questions

I. Karura(Acala) - The DeFi Hub of Kusama

Karura (KAR) is the first project to win a KSM slot. As the canary network of Acala, Karura is labelled "all-in-one DeFi hub of Kusama" and was a significant leader from the start in the race for the first slot in the auction. Acala, as the main DeFi project in the Polkadot ecosystem, is dedicated to offering cross-chain financial applications and building a complete DeFi application system.
Karura shares the same set of code as Acala and is a pilot network for Acala before its official launch. The project utilizes the new Acala EVM, which is well compatible with Ethereum. It mainly offers the KSM Liquid Staking product (LKSM), Karura Dex, and the multi-collateralized stablecoin Karura Dollar (kUSD). It is worth mentioning that kUSD has now been added by the Polkadot Web3 Foundation as one of the payment methods for its Grant program.
Acala website: https://acala.network/
Acala whitepaper: https://github.com/AcalaNetwork/Acala-white-paper/blob/master/Acala_Token_Economy_Paper.pdf

In the slot auction, Karura received a whopping 500,000 KSM from 14,000 contributors in the crowd loan. Currently, every staked KSM is exchanged for over 22 KAR, which equates to a return of over $100 per KSM. Since Karura (Acala) enjoys high recognition and great credibility among a host of projects, it is predicted that Acala is likely to win the first slot in the Polkadot parachain auction.

II. Moonriver(Moonbeam) - An Ethereum-Compatible Smart Contract Parachain

As the second project to win a KSM slot, Moonriver is the canary network of Moonbeam.

Moonbeam emphasizes its maximum compatibility with Ethereum smart contracts. Developers can incorporate the Solidity contracts on Ethereum into the Moonbeam network with only a few changes, and then connect with the entire Polkadot ecosystem. For example, in October last year, Sushiswap announced that it would open a branch on Moonbeam. Since Polkadot and Kusama do not natively support Ethereum smart contracts, the importance of Moonbeam is self-evident.

In addition, all MOVR tokens released by the project will be distributed to the community, with no portion reserved for project owners and early backers.

Source: https://parachains.info/auctions/faq-questions

Moonriver website: https://moonbeam.network/?ref=block123

III. Shiden(Astar) - A Multi-Chain dApp Platform

Shiden, the canary network of Astar (previously Plasm), is the third project to win a KSM slot.

Astar is another smart contract platform in the Polkadot ecosystem and can support EVM, WebAssembly(WASM), Layer 2 solutions. As we all know, EVM is a smart contract platform based on the Ethereum Solidity programming language. Relatively speaking, the WebAssembly instruction set has a higher performance. Although WASM has not been widely used as EVM, it also can be regarded as a more advanced smart contract platform. And both EVM and WASM are available on Astar. Based on this, Astar will provide various applications like DeFi, NFTs and more. In addition, the platform also aims to support all layer 2 protocols through OVM (Optimistic Virtual Machine).

In Shiden’s DApp Staking mechanism, half of each block reward is distributed to the DApp developers and nominators.

Astar website: https://astar.network
Astar whitepaper: https://github.com/PlasmNetwork/plasmdocs/blob/master/wp/en.pdf

In the slot auction, Shiden achieved nearly 140,000 KSM from 4,611 contributors in a crowd loan. Each staked KSM can be exchanged for over 70 SDN, and earning from each pledged KSM reaches up to $246.

IV. Khala(Phala) - Confidential Compute Cloud

Khala(the canary network of Phala) is the fourth project to win the KSM slot. It’s a trustless privacy-preserving cloud computing, featuring “General-Purpose Confidential Smart Contract for DApps and DeFi”. The Phala mainnet is set to primarily serve large or enterprise blockchains, while Khala will mainly serve innovative and growing blockchains.

On Phala’s website, it is labeled as “Global Confidential Compute Cloud”. Phala provides a variety of infrastructures, including a cross-chain data confidentiality layer, multi-party privacy computing protocol, and a trustless computing platform. With confidential smart contract technology, Phala enables the trustless collection, management and analysis of data. This ensures the trustworthiness of the data and enables the use of the data without privacy invasion. In essence, Phala enables the assetization of data, which is also known as "Confidential computing" technology.

In the Phala project, PHA is the settlement currency used to purchase services such as trusted computing power, on-chain resources, and off-chain data storage. In addition, holders whose PHA tokens are above a certain threshold are entitled to participate in the governance and voting of the Phala DAO.

Phala website: https://phala.network/
Phala whitepaper: https://files.phala.network/phala-paper.pdf

In the slot auction, Phala obtained more than 130,000 KSM from 2,759 contributors in a crowdloan. Currently, each staked KSM can be converted into more than 150 PHA, yielding $109 per pledged KSM.

V. Bifrost - The Blockchain Middleware

Bifrost (BNC) won the last KSM slot in the first round auction. In Norse mythology, Bifrost is the rainbow bridge that connects Asgard (home of the gods) with Midgard (home of humans). Hence the project Bifrost is also called "Rainbow Bridge". In its official website, Bifrost describes itself as "the world's first blockchain middleware that enables multichain technology. Never settle for just one protocol. Always gets the best of every protocol.”

Bifrost offers a multi-chain DeFi platform that is dedicated to allow users to earn staking rewards and DeFi crypto rewards in the cross-chain scenario. When staking their PoS tokens on it, investors can obtain equivalent vTokens through the Bifrost protocol, and then obtain a second income through DeFi with these vTokens. On October 19th, the first cross-chain BNC/kUSD Bootstrap swap pool was officially launched, which is also the first parachain cross-chain DeFi trading pair.

Bifrost website: https://bifrost.finance
Bifrost whitepaper: https://whitepaper.bifrost.finance/en.pdf

In the slot auction, Bifrost received over 130,000 KSM from 938 contributors in the crowdloan. Currently, each staked KSM can be converted to over 22 PHA, yielding up to $76 per pledged KSM.

Conclusion

The five projects mentioned above are the winners in the first round of KSM slot auction. As they are more representative, it’s believed that they can provide some reference for the Polkadot slot auction. In the following article, the six winning projects in the second round will be introduced. Gate.io will keep you posted on which projects will win slots in the future.

Also, you can join in the Polkadot / KSM slot auction with Gate.io’s one click participation feature. After the auction officially begins on November 11th, relevant updates will be shown on the “Finance” page. Please stay tuned.

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Author: Ashley. H (Gate.io Researchers)
* The article only represents the researcher’s views and does not constitute any investment advice.
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