Polkadot's OpenGov Ignites Proposal Surge and Voter Engagement

Source: Vladimir Kazakov - Adobe Stock

• Polkadot migrated from Gov 1 to OpenGov in June, a move that has spurred a surge in growth and user engagement, with the number of proposals surging over 400%.
• The number of parachains has also grown, with the number of L1 blockchains secured by Polkadot now hitting 50 as the number of transactions this year hit 100m, or over 9m a month.

It’s been a massive year for Polkadot, one of the most robust blockchain networks in the market. As an end-of-year report by Parity Technologies shows, the network has recorded massive growth to now include 50 Layer 1 blockchain, close to 100 proposals, and over 100 million fee-paying transactions.

The report, which is the first-ever delving into the Polkadot eco’s growth, explored the key figures and major developments this year, from protocol updates to adoption statistics.

One key figure that has steadily grown is the number of parachains, which now stands at 50. A parachain in the Polkadot eco is an application-specific network that runs parallel to and can be validated on the main blockchain, known as the Relay Chain. Some of the more popular ones include Acala, which is a DeFi platform; Interlay, which connects Polkadot to BTC, Cosmos, and other chains; and Moonstar, which is EVM-compatible and connects to the Ethereum eco.

Transactions on Polkadot surged in 2023, with some of the popular parachains driving this growth, the report shows. Combined, the eco recorded over 100 million transactions in the first ten months, or close to ten million transactions a month. For context, Bitcoin processed about 145 million transactions this year.

The number of transactions peaked towards the end of the year when the network recorded an average of 11 million transactions monthly for three months.

As the graph above shows, Phala and Origintrail led the charts for transactions, bringing in over 3.6 million transactions monthly. Other popular parachains included Moonbeam and Astar which each recorded at least a million transactions daily. Polkadot, the main chain, was averaging about 350,000 transactions a month, which is a testament to how critical to the eco parachains are.

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Other major developments this year included the launch of OpenGov on June 15th. The revamped governance was an upgrade on Gov 1 and it streamlines governance, separating aspects such as the Council and Technical Committee from the governance pipeline. With flexible voting, better proposal submission and management, and agile delegations, OpenGov enables more direct control from the community and makes Polkadot more decentralized.

OpenGov was first launched on Kusama in mid-January, the canary network where Polkadot proposals are first given a run before transitioning to the main chain.

This year also saw the launch of native USDC on Polkadot for the first time. Launched in September, it has steadily grown, and by mid-December, there were over 4.5 million USDC tokens on the network’s Asset Hub.

Staked tokens continued to grow and by the end of November, the network had over 709 million staked DOT.

Some metrics dwindled through the year like GitHub commits and active developers, who now stand at around 800. However, 2024 looks set to be a year of implosion for Gavin Wood’s robust blockchain network.