By
Benjamin Njiri
April 23rd, 2024
Polkadot achieving top 10 status right out of the gate is an impressive feat, and there’s plenty of room for growth given the number of projects currently building on a network that aims to bridge assets, enhance voting systems, and permit cross-chain conversation.
DOT, the native token of interoperable blockchain network Polkadot, has bulldozed its way into the top 10 coins by market capitalization. The token, which underwent a referendum-mandated x100 redenomination on August 21, occupies seventh spot at the time of writing, sandwiched between long-established cryptos such as Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in sixth and Litecoin (LTC) in eighth.
DOT Marks the Spot
Unlike BCH and LTC, the value of DOT has been steadily rising over the past week and has in fact surged by 18% in the last 24 hours. Curiously, CoinGecko appears to be the only major tracking platform recording the full circulating supply of DOT tokens. CoinMarketCap has not yet listed DOT, with some users suggesting that vested interests are to blame: CMC was acquired by Binance earlier this year, and the latter’s BNB token is currently ranked #10 by CMC.
Whatever the reason, Polkadot achieving top 10 status right out of the gate is an impressive feat, and there’s plenty of room for growth given the number of projects currently building on a network that aims to bridge assets, enhance voting systems, and permit cross-chain conversation. Talked-about entrants to the Polkadot playground include Moonbeam, an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform that makes it easy to build interoperable applications, and community-governed defi platform MANTRA DAO.
Twitter Users Urge CoinMarketCap to Rank DOT
Crypto Twitter isn’t always an embodiment of reason or truth, but in the wake of DOT’s price rally, many accounts expressed the belief that it could challenge Ethereum’s dominance, particularly given the repeated delays to Ethereum 2.0. Others petitioned Changpeng Zhao and CoinMarketCap to follow CoinGecko’s lead and confirm DOT’s top 10 status. The DOT token currently carries a price of $4.17 with a market cap of $4,237,653,343, placing it above competitors such as Tezos, EOS and Cosmos.
Polkadot’s native token is used for network governance, staking, and bonding. Token-holders can add new parachains by locking up DOT, with funds released to the account that bonded them after the locking period has elapsed and the parachain been removed.
DOT’s runaway success comes after Bitfinex announced margin trading for DOT pairs on its platform, with maximum leverage set at 3.3x. Trading pairs DOT/USD and DOT/USDT went live on Bitfinex at 09:00 UTC, August 25. Kraken, Binance, Huobi, and OKEx already support DOT tokens, which were unlocked at block number 1,205,128 on August 18.
Polkadot: A Project 4 Years in the Making
Polkadot’s much-anticipated mainnet went live in May, the culmination of four years’ dedicated development work following $145 million raised during the height of the 2017 ICO boom. Created by Ethereum co-founder and ex-Microsoft developer Gavin Wood, Polkadot was intended as a sharded protocol that would connect disparate blockchains to provide scalability. Chains that utilize Polkadot are known as parachains, with the protocol’s first parachain testnet – Rococo – having launched earlier this month. Roco integrates the Polkadot network with Cumulus and HRMP (Horizontal Relay-chain Message Passing).