(Cointelegraph Team)
According to data from programming repository GitHub, Polkadot recognized more than 500 contributions each day in September — an all-time high for the multichain protocol. Simultaneously, data from Polkadot’s cross-consensus interoperability standard XCM show that a record 26,258 messages were sent between its parachains. In total, 14,930 developers’ contributions were recorded on Polkadot’s GitHub in the month of August.
As told by project developers, 66 blockchains are now live on Polkadot and its parachain startup network Kusama. Since its inception, over 140,000 messages have been exchanged between chains via 135 messaging channels. Together, the Polkadot and Kusama Treasuries have cumulatively paid out 9.6 million DOT and 346,700 KSM ($72.8 million total) to fund spending proposals in the ecosystem.
Parachains are individual layer-1 blockchains that run in parallel on Polkadot and are first tested on Kusama. Auctions for parachain slots are held in the form of crowdloans, with the position going to the highest bidding project. The first of its kind took place last November.
Moving forward, Polkadot founder Rob Habermeier has recently published a roadmap on enhancing Polkadot and Kusama’s scalability. Highlights include asynchronous backing, or the de-coupling of the extension of parachains from the extension of the relay-chain, as a potential mechanism for cutting parachain blocktime by 50% while increasing block space give to 10 fold. The upgrade, should it go live, is also estimated to increase network speed to between 100,000 to 1 million transactions per minute.
The asynchronous backing upgrade is scheduled for development on Kusama by the end of the year and then on Polkadot. Another network upgrade due next introducing ‘pay-as-you-go’ parachains would theoretically combine launching a blockchain on Kusama with simultaneously launching smart contracts. The move would shorten the development process for building on Polkadot.
Demand for crypto, despite the storm
(Alexander Kuptsikevich – FxPro Financial Services Limited)
Market picture
Bitcoin declined 0.8% over the past week, ending near $19,300. The start of the new week brought no significant changes in price. Aside from big market moves on Thursday and Friday, the exchange rate remains chained to the current price. Ethereum lost 0.9% to $1310. Other top altcoins in the top 10 fell in price from 1.8% (BNB) to 12.5% (Cardano).
Total cryptocurrency market capitalisation, according to CoinMarketCap, sank 2% over the week to $925 billion. The cryptocurrency Fear & Greed Index was down to 20 by Monday versus 22 a week earlier and 24 a day earlier and remains in a state of “extreme fear.
Despite the negative external backdrop, BTC has successfully attempted to hold its September lows against much more worrisome sentiment in the stock markets. We view the idea of cryptocurrencies as safe-haven assets as untenable and see this stability in the prices of major cryptocurrencies as a manifestation of solid internal demand for risk.
News background
Despite high price volatility, DBS Bank of Singapore called Bitcoin an effective tool for clearing transactions. The BTC market operates 24/7, so investors can get money and liquidity when needed.
Cryptocurrency wallet MetaMask will launch a new option allowing U.S. customers to buy cryptocurrency directly from their bank accounts.
China has floated the idea of a pan-Asian digital currency to reduce the dependence of the region’s economies on the U.S. dollar.
Tether completely removed the shares of commercial companies used to back USDT Stablecoin.
Meanwhile, digital asset management company CoinShares unveiled a new experimental solution to determine the fair market value of non-transferable tokens (NFT) based on artificial intelligence.
Read Bitcoin association asks exchanges to block ’empty block’ Bitcoin SV miner
