17 Oct 2022 Josphat Kariuki
Polkadot Peaks In Development Activity Despite DOT Monthly Price Drop
Despite a month of sideways price action after a drop in value on September 19, Polkadot is seemingly attracting more and more developers to join its race to deploy parachains. Data from GitHub showcased that Polkadot’s ecosystem recorded over 500 contributions each day in September, which doubles as an all-time high for the network.
GitHub’s data correlates with figures from XCM – Polkadot's cross-consensus interoperability standard. It turns out that a total of 26,258 messages were sent between its parachains, which is a substantial increase from the 14,930 developers' contributions, recorded in August.
Polkadot’s ecosystem expands
The developer activity brought a total of 66 blockchains, which currently operate on Polkadot’s blockchain and the Kusama parachain startup network. Since Polkadot decided to push out parachain auctions, over 140,000 messages have been exchanged between those parachains, which communicate via 135 messaging channels.
As a result of the auctions, the Polkadot and Kusama Treasuries rolled out almost 10 million DOT and close to 350,000 KSM tokens to fund spending proposals in the ecosystem.
An unexpected move?
The introduction of parachains in last November allowed Polkadot developers to run a parallel chain on Polkadot, after first testing on the Kusama testnet. However, in order for developers to build on Polkadot, their proposition has to be determined by bidding and the highest bidding projects get a slot on the network.
Meanwhile, Polkadot founder Rob Habermeier addressed the future scalability enhancements for Polkadot and Kusama. The future development features include asynchronous backing, which is the de-coupling of the extension of parachains from the extension of the relay chain. The move would possibly cut down block production times by 50%, increasing block space give 10 times.
Also, the upgrade would increase network speed to between 100,000 to 1 million transactions per minute, if the update happens. The roadmap suggests that the update would go live on Kusama by the end of 2022. After a successful launch on Kusama, the update would go live on Polkadot.
Another network update is the addition of 'pay-as-you-go' parachains, which would merge launching a blockchain on Kusama with simultaneously launching smart contracts.
What about Polkadot’s price
The past three months happened to be a rollercoaster ride for Polkadot’s native DOT token. Polkadot climbed massively at the end of July and reached a peak in the foothills of $10,000. After the three-month high, the price per DOT plummeted at the end of August, taking yet another plunge in the middle of September to reach a current price point of $6.22.
Experts are on both ends of the spectrum about DOT’s future price move, with valuations ranging from below $6 to as much as $25 per token. Indeed, data from CoinCodex is showing a one-month price prediction below $4, while Coinpedia is predicting a high of $9 for the 12-th largest crypto in the world.
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