Polkadot Parachain Slot Auction Projects to Put on Your Watchlist

After years of development, the popular blockchain network Polkadot reached a big milestone as it started the Parachain auctions. Parachains are an integral component of this network, which are project-specific blockchains that can be customized as per different use cases within the main blockchain called the Relay Chain.

The Relay Chain is the backbone of the Polkadot network, which is responsible for its consensus, transaction settlement, and security. All the parachains on the network benefit from these features. 

The Parachain slot auction officially began early in November and before that the team was using Polkadot’s Canary Network Kusama to test out the concept. Now the auction is happening to win the slots for parachains to be added to the Relay Chain. Those who win the auction get to deploy their project on Polkadot for about two years, up to 96 weeks exactly, with the option to renew. 

All the slots will be auctioned off by mid-December, and once all of them are won, they will go live simultaneously on December 17. With already more than 100 million DOT, worth over $3 billion locked, it effectively reduces its circulating supply in the market.

This progress made by Polkadot demonstrates the strength of its community as they pledge their DOT tokens for their chosen ventures. This highlights that the community is invested in the success of the project, which was founded by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood. 

Now, the projects currently vying to win the Polkadot parachain slot auction includes:

Manta Network: Privacy-preserving DeFi Stack

Manta Network, which secured the seventh slot in the Kusama parachain slot auctions, is building a privacy-preserving DeFi stack. As the DeFi ecosystem hits new highs, $260 billion, it has been increasing the need for projects that serve the privacy needs of the market.

Manta Network uses zk-SNARK to ensure end-to-end anonymity while maintaining high throughput and cross-chain interoperability. The project has had three funding rounds in 2021 and is backed by prominent investors, including ParaFi Capital, CoinFund, Alameda Research, Spartan Group, CMS Holdings, DeFiance Capital, ConSensys, Digital Currency Group, and many others.

The Manta Network is working on two protocols based on zk-SNARK. The Decentralized Anonymous Payment (DAP) protocol allows users to swap the tokens of Polkadot and its Parachain with corresponding private tokens. The decentralized Anonymous Exchange (DAX) protocol meanwhile is a private AMM, where users can anonymously trade private versions of the tokens. Decentralized private lending protocols, synthetic asset protocols, and other DeFi services are also part of the project’s future roadmap.

Litentry: Identity Aggregator

This cross-platform identity verification platform enables DID aggregation, verification, and credit calculation/grading while mitigating the difficulty of resolving agnostic DID mechanisms by integrating all DID standards into a modularized identity model.

Its key features include a reward for indexed identity databases, fee for credit, and staking for being an identity Registrar. 

Litentry also allows deposits in DeFi with its LIT token as one of the deposit currencies. In the future, it says, users would be able to set up small DAOs to vouch for its members as well.

SubDAO: Cross-chain Platform to Link DAO and DApp

SubDAO allows its users to create their own decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) and connect it to their DApps, without requiring any tech knowledge. The team is working on offering a cheap, reliable, and fast way for everyone to create DAOs and DApps across different chains. 

The project’s architecture consists of several components, including a SubDAO node which is customised chain node for the network built by Substrate 2.0; Template Library for managing and providing various DAO Templates for different types of organisations; SubDAO Guard, which is the original DAO of its network that provides basic management functionalities; Asset Vault to provide basic features of managing assets for each DAO; SubDAO Airfone for developers to connect their DApps with the DAOs; and Front End which will contain all information related to DAO.

SubDAO is backed by CMS, Huobi Ventures, OKEX Blockdream Ventures, Infinity Labs, Divergence, Kinetic, Signum Capital, and others.