This Saturday, December 18, 2021 was a great day for the Polkadot (DOT) universe. Indeed, the first parachains have been put online for the benefit of the five projects that won the first auctions. These projects can now start generating blocks on the network.
Polkadot (DOT) parachains online
On October 14, Polkadot announced the upcoming launch of its parachute auctions, which caused the DOT price to jump. Just over two months later, five auctions have been won by five different projects.
As expected by the Polkadot team, these first parachains have been put online and the five projects can now benefit from them. In other words, they can use the network to generate blocks.
As a reminder, parachains are individual networks that run parallel to the Polkadot blockchain. These networks are interoperable with each other and with the “parent blockchain”, which are all part of the same harmonized ecosystem.
Polkadot (DOT) parachains winners to begin using the network
The first five Polkadot parachutes to go live are, in order of winning projects in the various auctions, Acala (ACA), Moonbeam (GLMR), Parallel Finance (PARA), Astar (ASTR) and Clover (CLV).
These projects all have different ambitions and themes, ranging from decentralized finance (DeFi) to investment opportunities to peer-to-peer lending.
From now on, the projects will be able to start putting their activity into practice, using the network offered by the Polkadot ecosystem. The main objective of the latter is to make all blockchains interoperable, beyond the Polkadot ecosystem alone.
For investors who have participated in parachains thanks to their DOT, their contribution is now blocked on-chain by a smart contract for 96 weeks. Their DOTs will be returned to them in October 2023.
In exchange, they will receive in the coming weeks the native tokens of the projects they participated in.
Can we still participate in Polkadot (DOT) parachute auctions?
Putting the first Polkadot parachains online is a very important step for the network. But it is only one step in the process, since Polkadot will eventually allocate no less than one hundred parachains to one hundred different projects.
It is still possible to participate in parachain auctions, for example through the Just Mining platform. Of course, it is strongly advised to study the project in which you want to invest before blocking your DOTs.
Please note that if the project you support does not win any auctions, the blocked DOTs will be automatically returned to you at the end of the parachute auctions, without having to wait 96 weeks.
