Author: Polkadot official blog

In the third quarter of 2023, the Polkadot ecosystem further grew, with significant growth in metrics for native staking, on-chain events, and independent accounts. Additionally, development activity in GitHub repositories remains high.

Five new parachain teams received slots, representing diverse Web3 use cases such as DAO, Metaverse, IoT, and sustainable energy. Important technology upgrades previously proposed, including agile core timing and asynchronous support, are closer to maturity. Other major news includes the arrival of native USDC.

Polkadot’s data growth

Polkadot’s staking metrics performed well in Q3. The total amount of pledged DOT increased from 578 million DOT quarter-on-quarter to 663 million DOT, and the pledged amount accounts for nearly 49% of the total DOT supply (close to the current ideal pledge rate of 52.5%).

The nomination pool helps users who do not have enough DOT to nominate their own validators, as well as those who want a more passive staking experience - the development of the nomination pool has also been very successful. Since its launch in November 2022, the nomination pool ended the third quarter with 15,281 members, with over 7 million DOTs staked.

The continued growth of the Polkadot ecosystem has resulted in significant growth in two important metrics:

• Number of on-chain events: The above chart shows all recordable on-chain events on all Polkadot parachains, including successfully submitted transfers, participation in governance, staking events, and smart contract completions. The chart above clearly shows how this number has grown every month since March, reaching over 190 million events, more than double the December 2022 level.
• Number of unique accounts: Judging by all public key addresses in the ecosystem, this number reached a new high in September at nearly 4.3 million, has risen every month since January, and is now higher than the previous quarter An increase of 10% and an increase of 16% from the beginning of the year.

Development activity remains strong: For two consecutive quarters, the Polkadot code repository has recorded more than 49,000 GitHub commits. **According to data provided by Santiment, this number continues to be higher than any other Web3 project.

Another impressive stat is that the sending of XCM messages increased by 20% quarter-on-quarter, demonstrating the increase in cross-chain activity in the ecosystem. XCM is the cross-consensus messaging protocol that enables interoperability within Polkadot and ultimately with other ecosystems via bridges.

Rapid ecological expansion

A series of high-frequency parachain auctions have allowed a large number of new projects to join the Polkadot ecosystem. they are, respectively:

1. peaq, which enables everyone to build a decentralized physical infrastructure network (#DePIN) and incentivizes the community to connect hardware devices.
2. Bit.Country, a user-created metaverse platform that allows users to launch their own metaverse in 12 seconds and simplifies the creation process through a library of existing content.
3. Inch, a multi-chain DAO infrastructure project with a dynamic multi-signature solution capable of serving the entire Polkadot ecosystem.
4. Energy Web, uses Web3 technology to help large companies such as Shell, Vodafone and Volkswagen accelerate their carbon reduction strategies.
5. Nodle, an IoT connectivity provider, builds a network powered by Bluetooth Low Energy to help companies and cities connect.

At the same time, in the third quarter, Astar Network also renewed its parachain slot, ensuring its long-term continued investment in Polkadot after the existing lease expires.

Technology upgrade

Fellowship, Polkadot’s decentralized technology advisory body, has approved the development of a dedicated system chain for purchasing and trading future block space on Polkadot. **

Essentially, this means the cyclical, sales-based approach to allocating Polkadot core time (which is part of the proposed upgrade to Agile Core Time) is one step closer.

Originally proposed by Polkadot founder Gavin Wood at the Polkadot Decoded conference in June, Agile Core Time provides Web3 projects with new, more flexible ways to access Polkadot's computing power - regardless of their size, scope or stage of growth. What.

Polkadot is moving from a chain-centric model to an application-centric model that functions similarly to a cloud computing service that efficiently allocates server space based on demand. Agile Core Time has been approved for further development, but still needs approval from Polkadot governance to become official.

A few weeks later, attendees at sub0 (the Polkadot developer conference) heard some exciting developments regarding async support. Asynchronous support is a process that simplifies the block generation and verification process of parachains.

This upgrade is expected to bring an eightfold increase in Polkadot scalability and is expected to be launched on the testnet Rococo soon. Async support is also the catalyst for a series of additional upgrades, including Agile Core Time.

Over time, asynchronous support and other upgrades are expected to enable Polkadot to support 1,000+ parachains and 1 million+ transactions per second, ensuring that Polkadot is ready for the future of mass adoption of Web3.

Q3 News Highlights

Circle has begun the process of launching native USDC into the Polkadot ecosystem, which will no longer require the use of a bridged version of the stablecoin. This means that native USDC can be used in all parachains and dapps in the ecosystem.

Zodia Custody, a leading digital asset custodian whose shareholders include Standard Chartered Bank, SBI Holdings and Northern Trust, announced institutional custody and staking services on Polkadot.

Upstream/downstream provider Banxa is helping users access the Astar parachain through multiple payment options as it works toward full ecosystem integration with Polkadot.

Snowbridge, the bridge to Ethereum, is expected to launch on Polkadot's canary network, Kusama, later this year.

Zondax has announced a new Polkadot Ledger application that will support any parachain in the network without requiring the installation of a separate application for each parachain.

OpenZeppelin, a security and audit specialist, has completed its first efforts to simplify the development of Polkadot’s native ink! smart contracts. This includes creating easy-to-implement and extensible smart contract standards and translating Solidity contracts into ink!.

The third edition of the Polkadot Blockchain Academy concluded at UC Berkeley in California, with the launch of a new Founders Track for entrepreneurs. The fourth and fifth phases will be held in Hong Kong and Singapore in January and May 2024 respectively.