Polkadot Summit concludes, JAM chain provides efficient computing infrastructure

The Polkadot annual summit sub0 Asia officially concluded yesterday in Bangkok, Thailand. Facing challenges in growth in recent years, Polkadot founder Gavin Wood explained in his speech how Polkadot 2.0 and JAM chain will bring new technological innovations.

Polkadot Encounters Headwinds in Recent Years

Ecological Growth Hindered

Due to the introduction of Layer2 solutions like Arbitrum and Starknet launching Stack strategy, allowing developers to quickly build a new Layer2 network, the trend of combining multiple chain ecosystems as a development strategy increasingly overlaps with Polkadot's parallel chain positioning.

On the other hand, compared to the Polkadot ecosystem, Ethereum network has relatively higher attention and growth potential.

In recent years, many projects have transitioned from Polkadot to the Ethereum ecosystem. Projects like Manta and Astar Network have already built Layer2 networks based on the Stack mentioned above on Ethereum, gradually shifting their focus away from Polkadot's original chain.

Astar collaborates with Polygon AggLayer to launch Astar zkEVM mainnet

Personnel Changes

Perhaps due to the failure of the aforementioned strategy, indirectly affecting Gavin's retention at Parity Technologies, he announced the replacement of the CEO position last year. Subsequently, citing insufficient resources, a significant personnel reshuffle was carried out, with an estimated layoff of over 300 employees.

Polkadot Founder Gavin Wood Steps Down as Parity CEO: CEO Was Not My Dream Job

Token Price Suffers Prolonged Slump

Due to the factors mentioned above, coupled with overall market conditions during the Chinese New Year, the governance token DOT's price of Polkadot has been stuck in the range of 3 to 8 US dollars for a long time, still far from its historical high of 55 US dollars.

Today, the price of DOT token is around 11 US dollars, still lagging behind the price surges of other top ten cryptocurrencies.

Polkadot's Transformation Journey Continues

Polkadot 2.0

Since the year before last, the team has been attempting a major network update, referred to as Polkadot 2.0, which includes the cancellation of existing relatively parallel chain slot auctions, the introduction of asynchronous verification, Agile Coretime mechanism, etc., considered a significant update for its long-term development by the community.

According to the content of the summit's speeches, Polkadot 2.0 is expected to be rolled out not in stages but more likely as a large-scale update at once.

JAM Chain

Polkadot will launch a new network called JAM chain. According to Gavin's speech yesterday, JAM chain will be a stateless decentralized network, serving as Polkadot's new computing infrastructure, providing multi-core computing capabilities.

JAM Chain is not traditionally a smart contract network and does not have the concept of transactions. All work items on the JAM chain network will be packaged as work packages for sub-computation, going through three stages: refine, accumulate, and transfer, to enhance computing efficiency.

Anyone can create services on the JAM chain, with services referring to a certain operational flow, somewhat similar to the concept of smart contracts in the EVM network. Creating a service model requires compliance with specific formats and inputs.

Technological Innovation Does Not Guarantee Market Adoption

The Polkadot team has indeed made many significant innovations in recent years and continuously strives to optimize existing systems. However, whether the market and projects will choose to join the Polkadot ecosystem for these technological innovations amidst today's market environment poses significant challenges and difficulties.

Recommended Reading: What are the Three Key Factors Driving Growth in the Web3 Industry? Unique Analysis Framework by Cryptocurrency Analyst
Reason for Recommendation: Reading this article can provide a clear understanding that project growth typically stems not only from technological innovation but also from market narratives and token incentive effects, achieving all three simultaneously for the best growth results.