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    Gate.io Blog Summary of the First Round of Polkadot Parachain Slot Auction: What Projects Deserve Attention?

    Summary of the First Round of Polkadot Parachain Slot Auction: What Projects Deserve Attention?

    20 December 18:22



    【TL; DR】
    1. On December 16, the first round of five Polkadot Parachain Slot Auctions officially ended, and the lease term will expire on October 20, 2023.
    2. The second round of five slot auctions will be held on December 23.
    3. Acala is the "all-in-one DeFi hub" on Polkadot.
    4. Moonbeam finally won the most DOT in this round of the auctions, and is the Ethereum bridge on Polkadot.
    5. Astar is another smart contract platform in the Polkadot ecosystem, which can provide solutions including Layer 2, WebAssembly (WASM), EVM, etc.
    6. Parallel is a decentralized lending agreement on Polkadot, providing further DeFi services.
    7. Clover is also a smart contract platform on Polkadot, which helps public chain projects such as Ethereum / BSC to migrate to the Polkadot network more easily.

    On December 16, 2021, the first round of five Polkadot Parachain Slot Auctions officially ended, and the following five projects won the first five Polkadot Parachain Slots in the following order: Acala Network, Moonbeam Network, Astar Network, Parallel Finance and Clover Finance. In the early morning of December 18 (Beijing time), the first batch of five Polkadot Parachain were officially launched on the Polkadot network. The lease term of these projects will expire on October 20, 2023.
    The first round of five slot auction projects pledged a total of 99.1132 million DOT, accounting for 8.6% of the total Polkadot.

    The subsequent second round of auctions will be launched on December 23 which also includes five phases where each of them will last for 7 days. However, the second round of auctions will be held in every 14 days.
    Phase VI: December 23, 2021 to December 30, 2021
    Phase VII: January 6, 2022 to January 13, 2022
    Phase VIII: January 20, 2022 to January 27, 2022
    Phase IX: February 17, 2022 to February 24, 2022
    Phase X: March 3, 2022 to March 10, 2022

    In the future, all winning projects of the second round of auctions will be officially launched on the parachain on March 11, 2022, and the lease term will expire on October 20, 2023.

    Polkadot aims to become a perfect blockchain solution. It cannot load smart contracts or run blockchain programs but it can be connected to other blockchain projects through multiple parachains. In this process, the main chain of Polkadot, as a relay chain, plays the role of validating the parachain and providing consensus and security. The Polkadot network is linked to other blockchain projects through multiple parachains, and the main chain of Polkadot is used as the relay chain of the system to validate the parallel chain and provide consensus and security. Therefore, parachain slots are the core function of the Polkadot network and the greatest value of the Polkadot project.

    Please refer to the following articles about what the polkadot parachain slot is, what the relationship between Polkadot and its leading network Kusama is, the specific auction mechanism, and why polkadot parachain slot is so popular:
    Updates On Upcoming Polkadot Slot Auction | Key Information Not To Be Missed
    Headlines: Kusama Slot Auctions Officially Begin, Karura May Come Out On Top
    Will Polkadot_s Parachain Slot Be the Ticket to the Future?
    Cryptopedia: An Auction for a Polkadot Parachain Slot

    Introduction to the winning projects in the first round


    Acala —— DeFi Hub
    The project that won the first Polkadot parachain slot was Acala, the "all-in-one DeFi hub" on Polkadot. Its leading project Karura on Kusama also led other projects in the competition for the first slot of KSM and finally won. Acala (Karura) has a high degree of recognition in the polkadot ecosystem. It is not surprising that Acala won the first round of the slot auction in polkadot.
    Acala is the most important DeFi project in the polkadot ecosystem. It is committed to helping Polkadot exchange tokens in parachains and build a complete decentralized financial application system. Acala is a Layer 1 smart contract platform which adopts the new Acala EVM and is well compatible with Ethereum. The main services provided by Acala include decentralized stablecoin (aUSD), DOT liquidity mortgage (LDOT) and EVM+.


    Official Acala Website: https://acala.network/
    When participating in the slot auction, Acala obtained up to 32.51 million DOT from 25,000 contributors in the crowdfunding, almost doubling the number of participants when Karura participated in the auction. At present, each pledged DOT will be exchanged for more than 4.61 ACA.

    Moonbeam —— Ethereum Bridge
    Moonbeam is the second project to win the polkadot parachain slot. Its leading network on Kusama is Moonriver. This project also won the second Kusama slot. It is worth mentioning that Moonbeam finally won the most DOT in this round of auctions due to the good performance of Moonriver on Kusama.
    Moonbeam emphasizes that it is compatible with Ethereum smart contract to the greatest extent. Developers can make only a few changes, and then integrate the Solidity contract program on Ethereum into the Moonbeam chain, and then connect with the whole Polkadot ecosystem and other Polkadot parachains. For example, in October last year, Sushiswap announced that it would open a branch on Moonbeam. Since Polkadot and Kusama networks do not natively support smart contracts, the importance of Moonbeam is self-evident.


    Official Moonbeam Website: https://moonbeam.network
    When participating in the slot auction, Moonbeam obtained up to 35.76 million DOT from 48,000 contributors in the crowdfunding, and the number of participants far exceeded that of other projects. At present, each pledged DOT will be exchanged for more than 4 GLMR.

    Astar —— Multi-Chain dAPP Platform
    Astar is the third project to win the Polkadot parachain slot, previously named Plasm. Shiden, its leading network, also won the third Kusama slot. Astar is another smart contract platform in the polkadot ecosystem which can provide solutions including Layer 2, WebAssembly (WASM), EVM, etc. As we all know, EVM is a smart contract platform based on Ethereum Solidity language. In contrast, the WebAssembly instruction set has higher performance. Although WASM based on this has not been widely used as EVM, it is also a more advanced intelligent contract platform. Astar supports both EVM and WASM smart contract protocols. Accordingly, Astar will provide a variety of applications such as DeFi and NFTs. In addition, Astar also supports many Layer 2 ecosystems, including OVM (Optimistic Virtual Machine).


    Official Astar Website: https://astar.network
    Astar White Paper: https://github.com/PlasmNetwork/plasmdocs/blob/master/wp/en.pdf

    When participating in the slot auction, Astar obtained more than 10.33 million DOT from 27,170 contributors in the crowdfunding. At present, each pledged DOT will be exchanged for more than 102 ASTR.

    Parallel —— Decentralized Lending Agreement
    Parallel is the fourth project to win the polkadot parachain slot. Heiko, its leading network, won the fifth Kusama slot in the second round.
    Parallel goes one step further on the basis of ordinary DeFi services and provides many new services, such as Leveraged Staking, Auction Lending and Insured Staking. Depositors can lend funds while staking and earn double returns. These functions can significantly improve capital efficiency and return level.


    Official Parallel Website: https://parallel.fi
    Parallel White Paper: https://docs.parallel.fi/white-paper

    When participating in the slot auction, Parallel obtained 10.75 million DOT from 4009 contributors in the crowdfunding. At present, each pledged DOT will be exchanged for more than 93 PARA.

    Clover - Smart Contract Platform
    Clover is the fifth project to win the Polkadot parachain slot. Its leading network on Kusama is Sakura, and it is also the only project that did not win the slot of the first two rounds of Kusama among the five projects in the first round of the polkadot parachain slot. In addition, Sakura recently won its own Kusama slot.

    Clover is also a smart contract platform under the Polkadot ecosystem, which helps Ethereum / BSC and other public chain projects to migrate to the Polkadot network more easily. Clover supports both EVM and WASM with good compatibility. Meanwhile, the project is equipped with a developer incentive mechanism and a part of the Clover EVM trading fee will be allocated to the smart contract owner.


    Official Clover Website: https://clover.finance
    Clover White Paper: https://clover.finance/whitepaper.pdf

    When participating in the slot auction, Clover obtained 10.33 million DOT from 5465 contributors in the crowdfunding. Each pledged DOT will be exchanged for no less than 20 CLV tokens.

    Conclusion
    Being a leading project in the blockchain field, Polkadot has an extremely big vision and is one of the most powerful competitors in the public chain infrastructure field. In the development of Polkadot, this parachain slot auction is undoubtedly a very important link. In the future, parachain slot auctions will be normalized and become a significant daily part of Polkadot project operations.
    During the Polkadot / KSM slot auction, Gate.io always supports participating in slot auctions with one click. We will continue to update the subsequent slot auction support projects on the Gate.io Finance page. Please keep an eye on our following updates.

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    Author: Ashley.H, Gate.io Researcher
    *This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment advice.
    *Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all other cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.

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