This is a new series of our Biweekly updates on Polkadot and their ecosystem!

The majority of the readers probably know that Polkadot is a platform built to connect and secure blockchains, independent of design and purpose. The Polkadot network relies on a sharded model. Polkadot’s parachains have unique state transition functions. Polkadot has a Relay Chain — the main chain of the system, which handles validation and finalization of blocks proposed by parachains.

The highlight of this report is the news on the BTC-Parachain. The Web3 Foundation has given a grant to Interlay to work on a trust-minimized Polkadot-Bitcoin bridge. The BTC-Parachain uses XCLAIM (Cross-chain Message Passing) to enable issuing and redeeming of tokens 1:1 backed by Bitcoin: PolkaBTC. The underlying XCLAIM framework itself is not specific to Bitcoin or Polkadot and can be used between any two suitable blockchains. XCLAIM is financially secure, dynamic and permissionless, fast and efficient. XCLAIM is on average 95% faster and 65% cheaper than using HTLC atomic swaps with Bitcoin. The team are now implementing a PoC for a BTC-Parachain in Substrate and Rust.

Polkadot mainnet is about to go live, as the first Chain of substrate, ChainX has been fully prepared for it. ChainX is planning to cooperate with Polkadot to develop ChainX’s parachain on Polkadot. All code of ChainX will be open-source when Polkadot goes online. What’s more, the team are committed to promoting the development and implementation of Bitcoin applications. ChainX is also planning to access more inter-chain assets, Ethereum, EOS, ADA, etc.

Earlier this year OAX Foundation announced a strategic initiative to build a parachain within the Polkadot network, opening doors to DeFi opportunities and expanding the potential that decentralized exchanges hold in digital asset trading. OAX Foundation aims to remedy the limited utility of OAX ERC20 tokens by building OAX’s own blockchain, built on Substrate as part of the Polkadot network. The parachain should support DeFi APIs and allow for the creation of UX friendly DApps. At present, the team is focusing on four key features: ERC20 functionality, atomic swap, fee delegation and MultiTransfer.

We’ll also focus on The Polkadot Tech Stack, a subset of the Web 3.0 Tech Stack, which consists of the open-source technologies contributing to and relying on Polkadot, Kusama and Substrate. It is meant to be used for decentralized application (Dapp) development within many possible verticals including DeFi, Gaming, Provenance and many others not pictured below. At the moment it’s a work-in-progress.

Last but not least! It’s time to claim DOTs! Check out a step-by-step guide to connect your DOT allocation on Ethereum with a native Polkadot address. You’ll find tools to verify your claim and then check the balance of your Polkadot address. This site is only for holders of DOT allocation indicator tokens.

More news to follow!