With 2021 lower than 24 hours away, Polkadot creator Gavin Wooden says the undertaking has constructed up a head of steam heading into the brand new yr. In a 2020 roundup printed on Wednesday, Wooden highlighted Polkadot’s rise to turning into the quantity crypto for staking based mostly on the amount of staked tokens.

According to Stakingrewards.com, over 63% of the 1.02 billion DOT token provide is locked in staking wallets. This proportion quantities to about $5.2 billion in staked DOT “cash” based mostly on the present token worth.

Certainly, Polkadot is without doubt one of the finest performing top-10 altcoins in December. For the reason that begin of the month, the DOT token worth has gained over 56% and is now the sixth-ranked cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Wooden additionally highlighted the undertaking’s achievements within the space of achieving full decentralization, including:

“With 274 validators, run by round 200 impartial operators and backed by over 7,000 particular person nominating accounts, Polkadot is arguably essentially the most decentralized high-value (and subsequently safe) community in existence.”

As a multichain interoperability protocol, bridging and connectivity stay a significant yardstick for figuring out the undertaking’s successes. In keeping with Wooden, 2020 noticed the emergence of tasks like Acala and Moonbeam geared in direction of enabling Ethereum compatibility.

Acala is Polkadot’s foray into the decentralized finance, or DeFi, house whereas Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible toolkit for sensible contract deployment.

Polkadot’s blockchain constructing framework, Substrate, already confirmed protocol-level integration capabilities in 2020. Substrate 2.0 launched in August with options like “off-chain employee” permitting builders to entry data from outdoors the blockchain without having exterior oracles.

In keeping with Wooden, Polkadot’s growth in 2020 grew considerably with the group boasting over 100 groups and tasks engaged on various use circumstances. “China alone has over 30 groups which might be constructing techniques, tasks, and elements for the Polkadot ecosystem,” Wooden added within the 2020 roundup.

Again in November, China’s Blockchain Service Community added Polkadot to its listing of supported public blockchains.

Addressing plans for the brand new yr, Wooden recognized ongoing work on the cross-chain interoperability entrance as a significant focus for 2021. In keeping with the Polkadot founder, Substrate 3.0 which can carry Ethereum compatibility may launch earlier than the top of the primary half of subsequent yr.