Thread by @anthonyc3004

1/ I've been wanting to learn about Polkadot $DOT, the layer 0 blockchain ecosystem founded by Gavin Wood @gavofyork who wrote the code for Ethereum.

2/ This video, recorded back in Jan 2021, is a great @RealVision interview with Gavin in which he explains the idea and how it all works. For anyone who wants to know about $DOT it's a great watch.

3/ I won't summarise it as there is a LOT of information contained in the 1 hour video but a few take-aways for me:

Ethereum technology was invented 6+ years ago now so Gavin thinks world ready for Blockchain 3.0 new technology.

4/ Key idea is that Polkadot is a platform of platforms, a blockchain that sits underneath other blockchains providing core security etc. Then on top of that you can run other blockchains (called parachains).

5/ The consensus is built into the blockchain so that instead of hard forks (as seen in #BTC and #ETH histories) you will see different parachains trying out new approaches and the best can be adopted into the main Polkadot consensus protocol.

6/ But really the aim is that each parachain be optimised for its own use case (ie Defi requires different priorities than #NFTs etc) and all benefit from the Polkadot base. While Polkadot also gains by having 100 parallel blockchains running on it (validating transactions etc).

7/ Polkadot is designed to solve for the high gas fee problem of #ETH.

Gavin Wood sees it as an answer to chain maximalism.

8/ You can definitely draw a parallel btw the aims of Web 3.0 to move away from an internet dominated by a few scale players ($FB etc) and the aims of Polkadot to move away from a few scale blockchains (#ETH etc).

Really enjoyed watching this interview. END.