The canary project of Astar Network, a Polkadot-based multi-chain DApp hub, has won Kusama’s third parachain auction, held today.
As a result of the third parachain auction for Polkadot’s experimental sister-network, Kusama, Shiden, the sister-project of the leading Polkadot-native layer-two decentralized app hub, Astar Network (previously Plasm Network), awarded the network.
Shiden was able to secure the space by bonding a total of 137,020 Kusama (KSM) tokens. It valued at approximately $29 million at current pricing.
Shiden is an innovative contract platform for decentralized applications based in Kusama. It further supports several blockchains and contracts written in the Ethereum Virtual Machine and WebAssembly programming languages.
On Kusama, the project intends to supply layer-two technology, including Plasm and Optimistic rollups, as well as layer-three technology. As of June 29, Plasm has changed its name to Astar Network. It indicates that it has broadened its focus from Polkadot-based layer-two technology to include multi-chain support for EVM and WebAssembly.
Optimism Offered the Technology
It is a provider of Ethereum scaling solutions. This is according to an announcement made on the MakerDAO forum on March 9. Sam MacPherson is the co-founder, and chief technology officer of game company Bellwood Studios. He specifically indicated that the MakerDAO community will be launching an official DAI on Optimism L2. Also, the Optimism Dai Bridge would provide enhancements over existing implementations.
According to him, the rollups rely on posting the data on the blockchain and providing a challenging time for potential fraud evidence. This is why Optimism now demands a seven-day lockup period when withdrawing tokens back to layer-one (Ethereum).
He went on to say that the Maker protocol has the potential to decrease this lockup period. It will also allow for near-instant withdrawals of Dai.
Layer Twos as the Most Popular Choice
In scaling solutions for Ethereum, layer twos emerged as the most popular choice. With co-founder Vitalik Buterin predicting that rollups will increase network capacity by approximately 100 times and alleviate the network’s scaling issues until sharding implemented in the network.
When projects bid in parachain auctions, they fight for a position on one of the network’s 100 parachains. These are comparable to sharded side chains that connect with the network’s main “relay chain” to enable customized operation and transaction processing.
When a project’s supporters agree to lock KSM toward their parachain bid in exchange for governance tokens, auction conducted through a crowdlending mechanism.
Thus far, Kusama’s parachains have been assigned to the canary networks of significant Polkadot-based projects. With Acala Network’s Karura receiving the first slot on June 22 with far more than 500,000 KSM bonded — at the time, worth over $90 million. Moonriver took second place the following week with approximately 206,000 KSM in related bonds.
Khala Network and Bifrost lately separated by less than 3,000 KSM, indicating that the upcoming parachain auction will contest.
