Polkadot Review and Rating

31 Dec 2020 by rate3

Polkadot: unites blockchains Review.

System (Security - Velocity - Engineering - Transparency)
Polkadot is made of Parachains (shards) united into the Relay Chain (consensus + cross-chain interoperability), which relates to external networks via Bridges. (Velocity is a-).

It relies on Collators, which collect shard transactions and are proved by Validators, which are staking DOTs to reach a consensus. Validators are selected by Nominators and monitored by Fishermen. All of that complexity is aggravated by Council Members (to represent stakeholders) and added by Technical Committee (to work). (Engineering is b and Transparency is b+)

With so many moving parts we shall wait and see how this benevolent juggernaut marshes through our streets in a dark before improving its Security rating (b-). Parity episode still clouds our memories :) We will closely watch Kusama progress, of course.

Result for PolkaDot System (Security - Velocity - Engineering - Transparency): b- / a- / b / b+

Vision (Singularity - Volume - Empathy - Timing)
Polkadot creators envision global, interoperable, decentralized space, which is full of interconnected, independent shards (Volume is a). This picture must be appealing to everyone in our rebellious industry led by ambitious, belligerent individuals (Empathy is a).

This idea sprung out on our collective radars relatively early, was impersonated (mostly) by the Tendermint whitepaper and brought to the mass attention by Cosmos (Singularity is b). Polkadot was a bit late to this game but its arrival coincided with the dawn of DeFi protocols and now creates the sense of unlimited perspectives for unchained finance Dapps (Timing is a-).

Result for PolkaDot Vision (Singularity - Volume - Empathy - Timing): b / a / a / a-

Execution (Solution - Validity - Equity - Team)
Polkadot has got collectively about $188M through the investments and two successful ICOs. Despite Parity wallet ridiculous hack (half of the fundings were locked up), the remains are still enough for the projects continuation. (Equity is b)

List of investors includes: IOSG Ventures (Hong Kong, 38 known investments); Fundamental Labs (Shanghai, 37 known investments); AU21 Capital (San Francisco, 27); HashKey Capital (Hong Kong, 31); LongHash Ventures (Singapore, 20); Kenetic (HK,51), Fabric Ventures, Polychain, Nirvana Capital.

PolkaDot is developed by Web 3 Foundation and registered in Reiffergässli, 4 Zug 6300 CH (Validity is b). It reports more than 1000 employees and led by very strong and experienced technical team (Robert Habermeier - a Thiel Fellow; Gavin Wood - co-founder and CTO of Ethereum; Peter Czaban - Masters of Engineering degree at the University of Oxford). (Team is a).

Polkadot has 73.3K Twitter Followers, 18 542 members in Telegram and very active Git with 144 repositories, and the latest updates hrs ago. However, its business model is unknown and currently financed by DOT. (Solution is c).

Results for PolkaDot Execution (Solution - Validity - Equity - Team): c / b / b / a

Trust (Sustainability - Value - Engagement - Transaction)
DOT token, which functionality is governance, staking and bonding, has 50/50 distribution with an half going to Web3 and 'pre-launch contributions', while another half got it from October 2017 ICO, which goes as following: four (4) whales hold more than 100,000 dots; 1,801 addresses (60%) hold fewer than 100 dots. I would call this situation tolerable over-concentration when whales doesn't have a blank ticket for their mating games but at the same time core team have a complete control over the governance (Engagement is b-).

DOT was not available to the public until its main net launch (special administrative privileges was enacted around 8 AM UTC on July 21 but Polkadot was live since late May). In mid-November 2020 it stands in a range of 4-5 USD (compare to its placement price in 2017 of $31.06). (Sustainability is c).

DOT is available on a more than a dozen exchanges (including Kraken) and about 20 wallets (2-3 popular ones). (Transactions is b). DOT has an unlimited cap (more than 1 billion now) and about 4 bln market valuation, which poses a limits on its appreciation (Value is b-).

Result for PolkaDot Trust (Sustainability - Value - Engagement - Transaction): c / b- / b- / b