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Polkadot STORIES AROUND THE WEB

#DOT Price, Data, History and Stories | HackerNoon
Polkadot is a bridge protocol that was built to connect different blockchains that hitherto had no means of exchanging data and valuables with one another. The design makes it faster and expandable to accommodate a lot of users.
All +/- % changes are for a 24 hour window
Price
$7.47+2.43%
Market Cap
$11,438,899,897+3.82%
Trading Volume
365,338,362.84-17.52
Circulating Supply
1,532,004,758+0.02%
## The History The Polkadot project was started by Dr. Gavin Wood, a co-founder of Ethereum. He also invented the Solidarity smart contract. Wood began working on the project to design and develop a platform like Ethereum with a sharable version in the middle of 2016. He eventually published the first draft of the project white paper in October 2016. \ Dr. Wood and Peter Czaban founded Web3 Foundation in 2017. It is a non-profit enterprise set up for the support of research and development for Polkadot and to be an overseeing arm of its fundraisers. \ It was the Swiss-based Web3 Foundation that played host to the first token sales of Polkadot in October 2017 while utilizing a Dutch auction to dispense funds. The first sales raked in $145 million in less than two weeks as it sold more than half of the starting 10,000,000 DOT issued. The task for developing Polkadot was assigned to Parity Technologies by the Web3 Foundation. \ Parity Technologies is a blockchain development firm that was founded by Jutta Steiner and Dr. Wood. The firm also maintains the Parity-Ethereum client and Substrates. These are the frameworks for the development of Polkadot. ## Polkadot’s Biggest Claim to Fame The nickname of Polkadot is probably one of its claims to fame in the crypto space. “Ethereum Killer,” as it is called, the rate of its speed to prominence gives a lot of hope in its abilities.  \ However, Ethereum maintains its place as the most traded coin when Bitcoin gets out of the list, but Polkadot has been able to gain a lot more traction above it in the last couple of months as it traded at over 80%, and making its way into the top 10 on top coin list. Ethereum has maintained a pitiable 50% transaction rate for a longer time. \ There are debates currently ongoing that if Polkadot can keep up its current streak, it may just aim very closely for Ethereum’s spot before the end of the year. \ Part of what is responsible for the speed of Polkadot up the ladder is the redenomination carried out in 2020. Following a community memorandum in August 2020, the issued DOT in circulation was broken up and multiplied by 100. \ The action is like splitting stock, so its value can rise considerably. This will enable small-holder investors to buy into it. This will not affect the volume already held by investors ab initio. \ In Polkadot’s case, one DOT was split up into 100 units to make room for new investors. The result of that was that the initial supply of ten million DOT in circulation became one billion. After that, the market capitalization of Polkadot quickly rose to a staggering $3.7 billion to start with. ## The Biggest Criticisms Polkadot Has Had A substantial part of the cases against Polkadot is that it has a limited period of experience in a crowded or saturated space of blockchains. It is said that investors are undertaking a lot of risk by putting in so much. Polkadot, though growing steadily, still has a lot to prove and a long way to go before it has the confidence of a block of conservative investors. \ Technically, Polkadot has a firm grip on its system network, and the only attack they have had was in 2017 when about $33 million was stolen before they were able to stop the ongoing theft of their assets. ## The Polkadot Team Polkadot was designed and developed by the triumvirate of Dr. Wood, who is Ethereum’s co-founder, Peter Czaban, a Web3 Foundation Director, and Reto Trinkler. \ Dr. Wood was the co-founder and CTO of Ethereum, where he jointly designed Ethereum’s Protocol, wrote its official specifications, then wrote and created the first-ever operational Ethereum execution. \ Peter Czaban is a director at We3 Foundation, a lead researcher, and of Web3, where he works to support the development of the next generation of distributed technologies. \ On his part, Reto Trinkler founded the Trinkler Software, and he is also a researcher at the Web3 Foundation. He likewise co-founded Melonport AG, a platform based on the blockchain that helps users to set up and manage technology-driven digital investments. ## In Conclusion The crypto market, especially smaller investors, has been overly ecstatic when it comes to Polkadot as it gave them an opportunity a while ago to own more for less. A few of them care about losses as the system could stop theft on its track while it was ongoing. That event built user confidence to an extent. \ What the market now looks forward to is more scaling up in the market capitalization of the coin so it can compete effectively with leading cryptocurrencies at the top of the chart. Then they can see it live up to its name as the Ethereum Killer.