Polkadot blockchain is now fully decentralized and permissionless after a decision passed by community governance removed the admin rights enjoyed by the Web3 Foundation.
The co-founder of Polkadot developer Parity Technologies, Gavin Wood tweeted the unshackling as it happened. The governance proposal to remove special admin privileges was enacted around 8 AM UTC on July 21, which signaled the true launch of Polkadot blockchain.
Denomination of DOT tokens
Polkadot was live since late May, but it began its life as a permissioned “proof-of-authority” network. The Web3 Foundation both validated the network and had special access to intervene on the Polkadot blockchain if a crisis were to occur.
These measures were enacted to lower the damage from potential catastrophic security breaches and bugs in the newly-launched network. Over time, validation was decentralized to the community via a proof-of-stake system, which currently employs over half of the DOT tokens in circulation through 197 validators.
A key component of Polkadot consensus is the community governance system, which allows token holders to express their view on key ecosystem parameters. One of these parameters is the denomination of DOT tokens, as previously reported.
The governance system was used to remove admin access as well, in what Wood called a “nicely poetic” ending. However, the procedure was also required from a practical perspective to test the governance system one last time
Polkadot blockchain launch
In anticipation of the final launch, Polkadot was busy onboarding companies and developers to its community.
As previously reported, the modularity of Polkadot allows it to attract both developers from other smart contract platforms like Ethereum and those from more traditional backgrounds. It uses WebAssembly for its virtual machine, which accepts “Web2” programming languages like Rust and C++ to code DApps. Frameworks to deploy decentralized apps in Solidity, Ethereum’s programming language, are also being developed.
Previously, Parity began integrating Chain Link oracles onto Kusama, Polkadot’s “canary network” used for experimenting with technology in a slightly lower stakes environment.
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