awesome-hez/playbook.md

The Polkadot Playbook

The minimum set of information you need to be able to explain Polkadot to others.

What is Polkadot?

• Polkadot is a scaling solution for Web3¹ applications and services.
• Polkadot scales through data and execution sharding, allowing for parallelized throughput.²
• Polkadot provides shared security and interoperability to services build on it.³
• Polkadot creates abundant, flexible, and high quality blockspace.⁴
• Polkadot uses a novel "cynical" rollup to provide fast finality while using minimal resources.⁵

What unique things can you do on Polkadot?

• Build applications which execute automatically (without initial user input).
• Build applications with full control over block construction and transaction execution.⁶
• Build applications which dynamically scale up and down execution cores.
• Build applications which execute at sub-second speeds.⁷
• Build applications that can permissionlessly upgrade and evolve over time.⁸

Why choose Polkadot?

• Billions of dollars of economic security provided to itself and applications running on it.
• Fast finalization times, on average under 30 seconds.⁹
• Executing and scaling on standard "gaming" hardware.¹⁰
• Polkadot SDK is the most robust and flexible blockchain framework.¹¹
• Secure cross-chain interoperability through trustless bridging protocols.¹²

Where is Polkadot leading?

• 50+ active roll-ups live on Polkadot.¹³
• Among the highest Nakamoto coefficients in the blockchain ecosystem.¹⁴
• 2nd largest developer community after Ethereum.¹⁵
• Blazing fast execution speeds compared to other blockchain VMs.¹⁶
• One of the largest functioning DAOs, managing the functionality of the network and tens of millions of dollars in assets for development.¹⁷

---

1. Learn more about Web3:

   • The first time the term "Web3" was used:
     • https://gavwood.com/dappsweb3.html
   • A blog post describing the importance of Web3:
     • https://gavofyork.medium.com/why-we-need-web-3-0-5da4f2bf95ab
   ↩︎

2. Explanation of sharding on Polkadot:

   • https://polkadot.com/blog/polkadot-v1-0-sharding-and-economic-security
   ↩︎

3. A high level overview of shared security:

   • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKQOSPfM-W0
   ↩︎

4. A blog post explaining the term "blockspace":

   • https://www.rob.tech/blog/polkadot-blockspace-over-blockchains/
   ↩︎
5. • The ELVES paper, formally describing Polkadot's cynical rollup:
     • https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/961
   • A tweet summary of the ELVES paper:
     • https://x.com/rphmeier/status/1807884271157187007
   ↩︎

6. For example:

   • Build applications where end-users pay no transaction fees.
   • Build applications more resilient to MEV.
   • Build applications which can prioritize tasks and processes.
   ↩︎

7. A demo of a Polkadot SDK blockchain producing blocks every .5 seconds:

   • https://twitter.com/bkchr/status/1818027282688352591
   ↩︎

8. Learn about forkless runtime upgrades in Polkadot:

   • https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/learn-runtime-upgrades
   ↩︎

9. Learn more about cynical rollups:

   • Compare that to optimistic rollups which may take up to a week to finalize!
   • Cynical rollups actively check that a block is valid, rather than waiting for someone to report it is invalid.
     • See ELVES paper footnote above.
   • Compared to "instant finality" consensus, block production is separated from finality, reducing network stalls:
     • https://polkadot.com/blog/polkadot-consensus-part-1-introduction
   ↩︎
10. • Hardware requirements for running a Polkadot Validator:
      • https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/maintain-guides-how-to-validate-polkadot#requirements
    • Compared to expensive and centralized machines needed for vertical scaling or ZK provers.
    ↩︎
11. • Polkadot and Kusama are built with the Polkadot SDK.
    • All 50+ live parachains, and many more in development, all use Polkadot SDK.
    • Many projects outside of Polkadot also use the Polkadot SDK.
      • https://www.availproject.org/
      • https://midnight.network/
      • https://entropy.xyz/
      • and more...
    ↩︎
12. • Native bridging protocol for applications secured by Polkadot:
      • https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/learn-xcm-transport
    • An overview of external bridges on Polkadot:
      • https://polkadot.com/blog/the-landscape-of-trustless-bridges-on-polkadot
    ↩︎
13. • A list of active parachains on Polkadot:
      • https://polkadot.subscan.io/parachain
    ↩︎
14. • The Nakamoto Coefficient is one measure of decentralization and resilience.
    • A third party service comparing the Nakamoto Coefficient:
      • https://nakaflow.io/
    ↩︎
15. • Graph of blockchain developer ecosystems:
      • https://twitter.com/Polkadot/status/1577016988697706496
    • The raw data is being generated using this open source repo:
      • https://github.com/electric-capital/crypto-ecosystems
    ↩︎
16. • PVM and other VM benchmarks:
      • https://github.com/koute/polkavm/blob/master/BENCHMARKS.md
    ↩︎
17. • Polkadot Treasury Account:
      • https://polkadot.subscan.io/account/13UVJyLnbVp9RBZYFwFGyDvVd1y27Tt8tkntv6Q7JVPhFsTB
    • Information about the Polkadot DAO:
      • https://polkadot.com/platform/dao
    ↩︎