Exploring Polkadot, the Top Polkadot Parachains

Introduction

The completion of Polkadot 1.0 signifies a journey from conceptualizing a groundbreaking approach to architecture to delivering a secure, adaptable, flexible, efficiently managed and cost effective ecosystem for blockspace. The release of Polkadot 1.0 signifies the realization of their pioneering vision for technology initially introduced in their whitepaper back in 2016. Over these years they have successfully launched all the functionalities outlined in their whitepaper. With the 1.0 release they have completed this ambitious journey. The codebase of Polkadot is now fully functional. Has been entirely handed over to the community through initiatives, like Polkadot OpenGov and migrating all runtime code into a repository managed by the Technical Fellowship.

Now is the ideal time to explore the Polkadot ecosystem. During the previous bull market, Polkadot had few live Parachains. As of August 2023, Polkadot has completed 45 parachain slot auctions. These auctions account for 133 million DOT, valued at $676 million, and comprise around 10% of the total supply. This growth has made Polkadot a key player in the blockchain space.

With 45 or more parachains now live, the upcoming bull market is the right time to research the polkadot parachains. Here are our top picks, reflecting our current views, subject to change with new developments:

Acala Network

The Acala Network is a DeFi parachain built on the Polkadot ecosystem. It is designed to host a wide range of financial services, including smart contract functionality, interoperable cross-chain technology, and robust security. Acala is also Ethereum-compatible, meaning its applications can maintain interoperability between Polkadot and Ethereum. The network offers a suite of financial applications with micro gas fees that can be paid in any token. Acala's native stablecoin, aUSD, is a decentralized stablecoin that can be seamlessly used across all blockchains operating in the Polkadot ecosystem. The network is scalable, optimized for DeFi, and is a powerhouse for DeFi services. Acala is backed by Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital, Polychain Capital, and other investors.

Recent developments include a new ACA staking program. However, the network also experienced a hack that caused its native stablecoin, aUSD, to depeg and plummet 99% . After noticing the exploit, the Acala team disabled the transfer functionality of the “erroneously minted aUSD” remaining on the Acala parachain. Later on, Acala community members created a proposal that would result in the return of all erroneously minted aUSD to the protocol and the tokens later being burnt. Acala's roadmap for 2023 includes focusing engineering, growth, and product efforts primarily in the following five areas: security and monitoring, cross-chain liquidity, stablecoin infrastructure, governance, and community. The network is confident with their 2023 plans and is welcoming to all centralized institutions.

Moonbeam

Moonbeam is a smart contract platform built as a parachain on the Polkadot ecosystem, designed to enable a multi-chain future where users and assets can move freely across many specialized and heterogeneous chains. Moonbeam makes it easy to build DApps on Polkadot, which means DApps can integrate with other blockchains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Moonbeam is much more than just an EVM implementation: it’s a highly specialized Layer 1 chain that mirrors Ethereum’s Web3 RPC, accounts, keys, subscriptions, logs, and more. The Moonbeam platform extends the base Ethereum feature set with additional features such as on-chain governance, staking, and cross-chain integrations. Moonbeam is Ethereum-compatible, meaning its applications can maintain interoperability between Polkadot and Ethereum.

Recent developments include Moonbeam securing a new lease on Polkadot, enabling the leading parachain to continue operation well into 2025. Moonbeam has released new advanced interoperability capabilities for inter-parachain interactivity. Uniswap V3 is coming to Polkadot on the Moonbeam parachain after a near-unanimous governance vote conducted by Blockchain at Michigan. Moonbeam's primary focus is on facilitating cross-chain smart contract functionality. By becoming a parachain on the Polkadot network, Moonbeam achieves integration and connectivity with other parachains and non-Polkadot-based chains, such as Ethereum and Bitcoin, via bridges. Moonbeam is the most Ethereum-compatible smart-contract parachain in the Polkadot ecosystem, allowing developers to port their projects with minimal to no code changes, enabling them to tap into the Polkadot ecosystem and all its assets.

Parallel Finance

The Parallel Parachain is a DeFi platform built on the Polkadot ecosystem. It is designed to offer lending, staking, and borrowing services in the Polkadot ecosystem. Parallel Finance is a Layer-1 blockchain that has its own logic and runs in parallel within the Polkadot ecosystem. The platform is designed to create a low entry barrier to accessing DeFi and to bring DeFi to 1 billion people. Parallel Finance is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, Polychain Capital, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, and LightSpeed Venture.As a parachain on the Polkadot network, Parallel Finance benefits from the pooled security, thought-through governance, and overall scalability of the heterogeneous sharding approach of the network. The platform is designed to increase capital efficiency, security, and accessibility through its leverage staking, money market, and auction lending platform.

Recent developments include Parallel Finance securing the fourth slot in the Polkadot parachain auctions, which contributed a total of 10.75 million tokens or $306 million. The platform has also launched six products spanning the DeFi spectrum, including wallets, staking, crowdloans, cross-chain bridges, an automated market maker, and yield farming. Parallel Finance has extended its liquid crowdloan to allow users to access liquid versions of tokens staked to crowdloans and network validators.

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Astar Network

Astar Network is a decentralized blockchain platform built on the Polkadot ecosystem. It was previously known as Plasm Network and is a Substrate Runtime Module Library that allows developers to add Plasma functions to their Substrate chain. Astar is a scalable decentralized blockchain that supports both EVM and WebAssembly (Wasm) environments, and interoperability between them using a Cross-Virtual Machine. The platform is designed to create a low entry barrier to accessing DeFi and to bring DeFi to 1 billion people. As a parachain on the Polkadot network, Astar Network benefits from the pooled security, thought-through governance, and overall scalability of the heterogeneous sharding approach of the network. Astar Network is built on Parity Substrate, making it a scalable smart contract platform that supports state-of-the-art Layer 2 solutions. The platform is designed to increase capital efficiency, security, and accessibility through its leverage staking, money market, and auction lending platform.

Recent developments include Astar launching its Smart Contracts 2.0, the WebAssembly smart contracts, on the mainnet. With this upgrade, Astar Network will support both EVM and WASM VM smart contracts. Astar Network also announced a $100 million Astar Boost Program fund to provide liquidity and offer financial support and incentive programs to smart contract developers. Additionally, Astar Network was recently listed by Upbit.

Interlay

Interlay is a decentralized network bridging cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin with DeFi platforms, including Polkadot and Ethereum. As a Polkadot parachain, it's designed to connect with major DeFi networks like Cosmos and Ethereum.Interlay serves as a modular, programmable layer that unlocks decentralized financial opportunities for Bitcoin. It aims to promote Bitcoin's mass adoption by eliminating the need for centralized services. The network's DeFi hub offers a one-stop solution for decentralized Bitcoin finance, featuring BTC swaps, lending, and staking. Additionally, Interlay's BTC bridge enables the secure use of Bitcoin in the multi-chain ecosystem through iBTC, a 1:1 BTC-backed asset.

Recently, Interlay announced the launch of its Bitcoin DeFi Hub. This platform merges Bitcoin's power with Decentralized Finance (DeFi) innovation. It's designed to enhance security and simplify complex financial transactions like borrowing, lending, and asset swapping. Interlay has plans to integrate assets from Ethereum and Cosmos in the fourth quarter. These integrations will be completed with Wormhole, along with novel light client bridges built by Composable (Cosmos) and SnowFork (Ethereum). The DeFi Hub's user interface has been updated with a sleek onboarding tutorial, and a new "Bring your own fees" architecture has been introduced. This feature allows users to pay fees in various tokens, such as DOT, iBTC, INTR, or USDT.

Bitgreen

Bitgreen is a climate-positive blockchain that aims to promote sustainability and impact innovation in blockchain. Bitgreen is a Polkadot parachain that is purpose-built for green projects, renewable energy tech, and sustainable finance. Bitgreen's blockchain platform is designed to meet the needs of NGOs, corporate ESG groups, and purpose-driven innovation in Web3. Bitgreen's green DeFi platform allows organizations and individual users to invest in sustainability markets, purchase high-quality tokenized carbon credits, and participate in sustainable finance. Bitgreen's flagship product is its carbon credit marketplace, which makes it easy to finance, originate, and purchase high-quality, transparent carbon credits that conserve nature, remove atmospheric CO2, and send financial benefits to local communities. Bitgreen won Polkadot's 29th parachain slot auction with a private bid.

Bitgreen's parachain went live on Polkadot on December 21, 2022, just two months after winning the auction. Bitgreen is also live on Rococo, Polkadot's parachain testnet. Bitgreen's blockchain is 99.9% more energy-efficient than traditional blockchains. Finally,Bitgreen has integrated with Dotsama and Sequester to develop climate action.

Oak network

Oak Network is a blockchain automation hub for decentralized finance (DeFi) and automated payments built on Substrate. It is a cross-chain automation infrastructure that enables multi-chain apps to schedule and automate any substrate extrinsic or EVM smart contract function. Oak Network's automation combines off-chain data streams with event-driven execution to automatically execute any transaction or smart contract function. Cross-consensus messaging (XCM) enables Oak Network to automate transactions on any connected blockchains without tokens or private keys ever touching Oak. Oak Network is built on Parity Substrate with an event-driven execution model. It is a parachain on Polkadot, which enables it to directly integrate with and move tokens between any other parachains and parathreads on the network.

Oak Network's flagship product is its automation pallets, which allow users to automate anything securely on-chain and decentralized without requiring any coding knowledge. Oak Network won Polkadot's parachain slot auction and is expected to launch its parachain on Polkadot in Q4 2022. Oak Network's Turing staging network parachain testnet is live, and its Turing network Kusama parachain is also live. Oak Network has a token called OAK, which is a utility token with an initial supply of 1 billion. Oak Network has been steadily advancing in terms of applications and technologies since the first quarter of 2022, and it has signed partnerships with other blockchain projects.

Phala network

Phala Network is a privacy-preserving cloud computing service that operates as a parachain on the Polkadot network. It is a trustless computation platform that enables massive cloud processing without sacrificing data confidentiality. Phala Network's distributed computing cloud is versatile and confidential, built around TEE-based privacy technology already embedded into modern processors. Phala Network's flagship product is its Phat Contract, which is an off-chain programming model running on Phala Network that allows developers to create robust and cross-chain capable dApps.

Phala Network is designed with multiple layers of security guarantees to provide fully verifiable computation. Phala Network won a parachain slot auction on Polkadot and is expected to launch its parachain in Q4 2022. The network is backed by numerous decentralized workers and a significant amount of staked tokens. The Phala Network token, PHA, is a utility token with an initial supply of 1 billion. Phala Network has been making significant strides in decentralization, innovation, utility, and community building. The network is designed to offer computing power comparable to existing cloud services and protect the privacy of managed programs.

Manta Network

Manta Network is a privacy-preserving protocol running on the Polkadot blockchain. It is a modular system that enables on-chain privacy for any web3 ecosystem and the decentralized applications that live on them. Manta Network's founding team comprises many US cryptocurrency experts.

One of the main features of Manta Network is the zero-knowledge soulbound tokens (zkSBTs), which prove identities without leaking any personal details. Manta Network has teamed up with Linea, a rollup-based scaling solution, to offer users zkSBTs. These tokens will use Linea’s zkPioneer–alongside a unique Manta innovation called Proof. The zkSBTs will offer users a decentralized, trustless, and private way to verify their real identities without compromising any information or data leakage about their on-chain activity.

Manta Network has several projects within the Calamari network, including MantaPay, NFT Private Offering (NPO), Subscan, XCM Bridge, Talisman, Subwallet, and Polkadot.js. MantaPay is an on-chain, multi-asset shielded pool that enables private transacting using zkSNARK. NPO is an NFT/SBT launchpad that leverages the Manta Network’s zkAddress tooling and the MantaPay ZK circuit to privately mint NFTs/SBTs on zkAddress while using public tokens to pay minting fees. Subscan is a high-precision Web3 explorer used to browse blockchain data from Substrate-based chains, including Manta Network. Talisman is a user-friendly wallet built for Polkadot & Ethereum. Subwallet is a Web3 Extension Wallet for the Polkadot & Kusama networks. Polkadot.js is a browser-based vault for the management of account keys.

Ajuna Network

Ajuna Network is a decentralized gaming platform built on Polkadot that aims to bring blockchain gaming into the mainstream by integrating GameFi functionality with the world's leading development engines, Unreal and Unity. Ajuna Network enables players to own their in-game assets, protect and control their functionality, and have a voice in the future of the games they love. Ajuna Network offers a simplified way for Unreal and Unity developers to build an incentive layer into their games using tokenized virtual goods. Ajuna Network has a sister network, Bajun, that runs on Kusama, the canary network of Polkadot. Ajuna and Bajun are symbiotic but intended for different purposes.

Ajuna Network has raised $7 million in seed and private funding rounds, which will be used to develop its network and suite of tools, integrating better game engines and off-chain game operators.Ajuna Network's SDK simplifies blockchain development for makers, with seamless Substrate integration. Ajuna Network's governance function gives players a genuine say in the future of the games they love . Ajuna Network's platform is intended to be the fastest way for game developers to build decentralized games integrated with the Unity and Unreal game engines

Ajuna Network's goal is to enhance gamers' experience through blockchain and NFTs, users can utilize game tokens to pay gas fees for the use of the Ajuna Network .Ajuna Network's recent developments include the launch of its first NFT collective game, Awesome Ajuna Avatars.

Final Thoughts

The Polkadot ecosystem is at an exciting juncture, with the completion of Polkadot 1.0 and the successful launch of numerous parachains. From Interlay's innovative bridging of Bitcoin with DeFi platforms to Bitgreen's climate-positive blockchain, the diversity and potential of these projects are immense. Acala Network's focus on decentralized finance, Moonbeam's smart contract functionality, Parallel's lending and borrowing services, and Astar's scalable decentralized blockchain are just a few examples of the innovation within the Polkadot ecosystem. Oak Network's automation capabilities, Ajuna Networks gaming platform. Phala Network's privacy-preserving cloud computing, and Manta Network's on-chain privacy features further demonstrate the breadth of solutions being developed. Recent developments across these parachains, such as Interlay's Bitcoin DeFi Hub launch and Astar's Smart Contracts 2.0, highlight the rapid progress being made. Challenges, such as the hack experienced by Acala, are met with resilience and community-driven solutions.

The Polkadot ecosystem is not just growing; it's thriving. With 45 parachains, Polkadot is positioning itself as a key player in the cross chain space. The upcoming bull market presents an opportune time to delve into research and exploration of these parachains. Whether you're an existing Bitcoin holder, a newcomer to the DeFi world, or someone interested in the broader potential of blockchain technology, the Polkadot ecosystem offers a rich landscape of opportunity and innovation. The projects highlighted here are just 10 of the 45 parachains, there are 35 more parachains that could offer other opportunities.