The Best Platforms Building On Polkadot

What are some of the best-decentralized finance projects that are built on top of the Polkadot (DOT) blockchain?

Lots of new traders and investors and others with developer skills are looking at these types of new projects, to determine where to put both their capital and their effort. With sweat equity as a significant factor in blockchain investments, it’s good for people to have an understanding of where innovation is happening on top of the Polkadot DeFi infrastructure.

History of Decentralized Applications 

As vanguard innovators started to find ways to create new platforms (often called DApps) on blockchains, Ethereum emerged as the front-runner for blockchain systems that facilitate these kinds of activities.

After all, Ethereum has name recognition, a lot of community support, and a thriving cryptocurrency market for its token, Ether. It became known as the smart contract handling blockchain and was often seen as the only option for developers.

Eventually, however, many found the high gas fees of the Ethereum network off-putting, and as the system went through a hard fork and various upgrades, the community began to discover other alternatives for decentralized application platforms. One of them was Bitcoin SV or Satoshi’s Vision, which allows data to be put onto a Bitcoin blockchain.

Another was Polkadot, with its own token and decentralized network, and its own community support. Eventually, people found that by running various types of infrastructure on Polkadot and Kusama blockchains, they could build DApps on this alternative ecosystem.

So what are some of these dev teams doing to push forward on what’s possible in the DOT blockchain environment?

Meeting the Challenges

Briefly, these innovators have some specific challenges to overcome.

One is interoperability – finding ways to bring information from one place to the other, i.e. from off-chain systems to specific on-chain systems in the DApps themselves. We’ll get into this with a closer look at what several of these platforms are doing right now for users. Another major concern is user experience, which has to do with the interface and the ways that the apps provide for activities like lending and staking. A third challenge is incentives – making sure that parties like developers and validators have the incentives that they need to participate.

With that in mind, here are some of the top decentralized community-supported apps that found a home on the Polkadot blockchain.

Parallel Finance

Among the major advances in using DOT/KSM assets, Parallel Finance has its own reputation as a “decentralized Money Market protocol” that allows users new ways to lend, borrow and stake their crypto.

The crowdlending platform is essentially fulfilling part of that idea that was born with fiat P2P lending systems. The whole peer-to-peer lending phenomenon has taken on a new dimension with the ability to seamlessly transfer value between stakeholders. Take a look at how this DApp provider is improving DeFi with chain bridging. 

Moonbeam

Billed as a full native Ethereum project on Polkadot, Moonbeam has a lot to offer. A set of development tools helps with incentivization.

Another appeal of the Moonbeam project is its use of oracles to make that important bridge from off-chain to on-chain data housing.

With the right build to offer this convenience, Moonbeam is becoming a place where crypto fans can do business. Another feather in Moonbeam’s cap is its web3-compatible API. Community supporters looking to position their chosen platforms will often point to this type of capability as a way to promote that interaction through virtual gateways.

Acala

The Acala project is based on the idea of a ‘Polkadot Defi hub’ with different kinds of support for a variety of related activities.

This project uses Polkadot parachains running parallel to primary blockchains and offers its own decentralized stablecoin, aUSD. It also offers the opportunity for liquid Polkadot staking, and the use of an automatic market maker in an EVM-compatible system.

In terms of incentivization, Acala incentivizes nodes in particular ways to keep things moving. It also advertises “micro gas fees” to distinguish it from legacy platforms like Ethereum, where high fee costs were an issue. Community governance is another principle powering the Acala ecosystem.

PolkaFoundry

This project is a little different than some of the DApps above.

Part of the objective of PolkaFoundry is to create those secondary support systems for a thriving d-app, for example, document storage, and identity and access management.

Running data feeds through oracles, PolkaFoundry promotes different kinds of frictionless DeFi and NFT transactions and a process continuity for users.

Centrifuge

As a new type of platform based on Polkadot, Centrifuge is a decentralized finance asset protocol with promise for those who want to do more with their crypto.

This platform allows stakeholders to tokenize real-world assets, for practical control of traditional investment-linked in a profound way to the blockchain.

For example, tokenized real estate assets use a traditional asset class and connect it to a decentralized economic model, to allow for different kinds of staking and other activities. Invoice factoring might be another real-world use of this type of asset management system.

Using its CFG token, Centrifuge allows for tokenizing assets like royalties and other residuals denominated in fiat currencies. Its builders describe it as a “robust decentralized ecosystem” with the kinds of bridging that investors need to facilitate on-chain borrowing and smart contract transactions. The token itself can be used to pay transaction fees and allow users to participate in on-chain governance.

The company is also exploring privacy-enabled NFTs on a peer-to-peer platform.

Centrifuge spokespersons call it a “bridge between the real world and DeFi,” with all of the opportunity that this kind of system implies.

All of these newcomers represent part of the sea change toward DeFi-connected systems that will show us what’s possible with “the future of money.”