Developers are abandoning Bitcoin and Ethereum in favor of this little-known crypto platform

(Image credit: Shutterstock / REDPIXEL.PL)

There’s a new player in town when it comes to cryptocurrency app development, and it’s called Polkadot. The crypto platform is proving itself to be the first-choice for developers, drawn to its flexibility and its fast-growing community.

Recent reports have claimed Polkadot saw a 44 per cent increase in developer activity for the 12 months ending in May, while Bitcoin and Ethereum both saw modest declines. Blockchain gaming, crypto wallets and security solutions are among the projects already making use of the Polkadot platform.

One of the main ways that Polkadot differentiates itself from other crypto platforms is that it doesn’t operate apps through smart contracts, instead allowing developers to build their own blockchains. Polkadot’s decentralised relay chain allows independent blockchains to exchange information with one another, whether they are public or private.

Connecting the dots

“Polkadot is a network protocol that allows arbitrary data—not just tokens—to be transferred across blockchains,” the Polkadot website explains. “This means Polkadot is a true multi-chain application environment where things like cross-chain registries and cross-chain computation are possible. Polkadot can transfer this data across public, open, permissionless blockchains as well as private, permissioned blockchains.”

Polkadot has been created by British programmer Gavin Wood, the co-founder of Ethereum and the man behind some of the core components of the blockchain industry. The new platform has already raised millions of dollars through a combination of public and private funding, while its own Dot tokens have surged in value.

Although Polkadot is still only trading at a fraction of the value of Ethereum and Bitcoin, its popularity with developers is certainly noteworthy. And as the industry continues to develop, the demand for easy-to-use, secure crypto platforms will only grow.

Via Outlier Ventures

Barclay Ballard

Barclay has been writing about technology for a decade, starting out as a freelancer with ITProPortal covering everything from London’s start-up scene to comparisons of the best cloud storage services.  After that, he spent some time as the managing editor of an online outlet focusing on cloud computing, furthering his interest in virtualization, Big Data, and the Internet of Things. 

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