On July 22, 2019, Gavin Wood delivered a speech on Polkadot’s China Tour Hangzhou. The main content was Polkadot’s 5 milestones, Kusama network and Parathreads.
After a lapse of one year and three months, Polkadot has experienced many major technological advancements. The parallel thread development first mentioned in Gavin’s speech at that time is nearing completion. Kusama has also experienced significant progress. The KSM token has a maximum increase of 70 times. Ecological development Thousands of miles in a day.
However, the two keywords mentioned in Gavin’s speech-“nested relay chain” and “Poca holy grail”-became the most noticed words in the speech.
So, what is the internal relationship between Kusama and the “nested relay chain” and the “Pokkar Holy Grail”, and what do these connections mean to KSM?
1. Polkadot Holy Grail and Nested Relay Chain
In his speech, Gavin mentioned the five milestones developed by Polkadot, namely Genesis, Earth, Water, Fire, and Metal.
When referring to the last stage of Polkadot “Metal”, Gavin said: “This stage focuses on deep expansion and will launch a’nested relay chain ‘, so that the DOT tokens of the Polkadot network are not only to ensure network security. Security Token.”
What does the nested relay chain mean?
Gavin continued to explain that this function will allow Polkadot to expand from the first phase of the 100 parachain cross-chain network to the parachain tree structure, thereby increasing exponentially, achieving a multi-layer parachain structure, and expanding the number to thousands. Even with millions of parachains in the end, if each layer of the parachain architecture can reach a rate of 100,000 TPS, eventually the entire multi-layer Polkadot network can be expanded to 1 billion TPS.
This is Polkadot’s ultimate holy grail, which is Polkadot’s nested relay chains .
Let’s understand this passage from another perspective.
Before the launch of the nested relay chain, Polkadot had only one architecture: one relay chain + 100 parallel chains . And in the early stage, these 100 parachains will not go online at once, but will go online gradually in batches. The first batch of parachains online are “system parachains” serving the relay chain.
When Polkadot’s development reaches the fourth stage mentioned earlier, namely Fire, the Polkadot network will be high-performance.
Gavin said in his speech that in the fourth phase of Fire, the speed and scalability of the Polkadot network have been increased to the greatest possible extent. At this stage, the “transaction parallelization” function will be introduced, which essentially uses as many CPU cores as possible when verifying blocks. And WASM Ahead of Time Compilation (WASM Ahead of Time Compilation), which allows the network to compile the logic of the time structure of the WebAssembly stored on the block locally and run faster, so that it must be run by a separate compiler than it is now. Run faster.
So, how did Polkadot go from the fourth stage of fire to the fifth stage of gold? How to take the first step?
By studying various Polkadot public information, Kusama is very likely to be the first step in the nested relay chain and a milestone in opening the Polkadot Holy Grail.
why?
In fact, when we ask why, we are essentially asking “What is the Kusama network?”
2. What is the Kusama network?
To put it simply, Kusama is Polkadot’s test network, the Canary Test Network. To be more complicated and accurate, you have to refer to the introduction of Polkadot Lightpaper (Pokadot Lightpaper).
According to Polkadot Lightpaper, Kusama Network is an early, unaudited and unmodified early version of Polkadot, the purpose is to test Polkadot’s network technology and economic incentive policies in the real world. This is also the best testing ground for parachain developers before deploying functions to Polkadot.
For Kusama Network, there is an impressive note in the white paper, “Play with chaos on Kusama, Polkadot’s wild cousin”, which translates into Chinese means “playing chaos on Kusama Network, Polkadot’s wild cousin.”
All in all, Kusama is Polkadot’s simplest, unaudited, but exactly the same testnet as Polkadot.
So, what does Kusama Network have to do with Polkadot’s ultimate holy grail “nested relay chain”?
Let’s turn our perspective back to Gavin’s speech at Polkadot in China in 2019.
In his speech, Gavin said, “We launched Kusama to test those parts that we don’t know. In other words, Kusama is a pre-provided test network that is not artificial, real, and has actual economic value. To ensure the authenticity of this test network, we must also inject corresponding economic value into this test network, so that testers and network initiators participating in the test can take the test seriously.”
And, “We hope that the Kusama test network can continue to exist. Even after the test is completed, it will still exist as an independent blockchain network after the mainnet is launched.” And apart from major attacks, no one has the authority to shut down Kusama network.
As a result, we saw a very interesting phenomenon, that is, as a test network, Kusama will continue to run and will not be shut down unless it encounters an irresistible attack. And as Polkadot technology advances, Kusama will continue to upgrade the network, which is very different from the regular blockchain testnet. For example, after the EOS mainnet goes online, the testnet will be shut down. After ETH2.0 goes online in the future, Many ETH testnets will also be shut down.
Questions follow. Kusama Network continues to evolve. What will it become?
In the words of Cao Yin, the managing director of Digital Renaissance, Kusama will eventually become a “wavelet card”, a “faster and fairer Polkadot”, and possibly the Polkadot Holy Grail-Nested Relay Chain -The first step.
3. Kusama, the first step in the Boca Holy Grail
For the Polkadot Holy Grail, the nested relay chain, there are at least three distinctive features.
First of all, Polkadot’s ultimate architecture “nested relay chain”, that is, thousands of relay chains are linked together by a “bridge”, and each relay chain has 100 parallel chains. Secondly, Kusama is Polkadot’s test network and will not be shut down, and its technology has improved with Polkadot’s progress. Finally, according to Gavin’s statement, Kusama will eventually be connected to Polkadot via the bridge.
Therefore, naturally I will think of: Kusama is likely to become Polkadot’s “first choice”, or natural order, when developing the second relay chain after the first relay chain is fully functional.
Why do you think so?
Because Gavin has publicly stated that a transit bridge will be established between the Kusama network and the real main network of Polkadot in the future.
Let’s turn our perspective back to Gavin’s speech, Gavin said:
” A transfer bridge will be established between the Kusama network and the future Polkadot real main network , so that the parachains in the Kusama network can be linked with the parachains on the Polkadot network, and Kusama’s tokens can also be exchanged with Polkadot’s DOT tokens. In terms of the ultimate goal, the entire Kusama network will also be a network managed and promoted by the community, and will operate in parallel with the Polkadot mainnet.”
Not only that, the current development progress of the Kusama network has even surpassed Polkadot. For example, Gavin said at the recent Polkadot China Tour Beijing station that the parachain will be launched on Kusama first.
In summary, Kusama is to link with Polkadot’s main network, and its development progress is even higher than that of Polkadot’s network. Therefore, it is the best choice for Polkadot to expand the second relay chain. Of course, it is not ruled out to re-develop a new relay chain, but directly choosing Kusama is the easiest and fastest way.
So, what impact does this have on the Kusama network’s token KSM?
4. What impact will this have on the Kusama network?
Teacher Yin Cao once wrote in the article “Why did I relocate KSM after getting off the bus for $3? Also talk about what KSM is,” said Kusama is a more community-based Polkadot mainnet.
When talking about the importance of Kusama, Cao Yin said it like this, “So it can be said that Kusama is a more community-based Polkadot mainnet. He is not a shadow of Polkadot, just like yfii is a more community-based and fairer yfi. Most people in the community did not realize this.”
He also emphasized that “even Gavin may not even realize the true value of Kusama.”
Regarding the price of KSM, he also made no secret of his views, “As news of the kusama parachain auction comes out in the future, the reasonable value of kusama should be one-fifth or even one-third of Polkadot. Therefore, I We will continue to increase kusama until KSM reaches one-third of Polkadot’s market value.”
In addition, the existence of Kusama can actually make the Polkadot network more fair.
We know that in the process of bidding on parachains, there is likely to be a phenomenon of “large-scale control”. For example, an institutional investor controls slot resources by holding a large number of DOTs. At this time, it may “coerce” the project party to “cooperate” , Such as the acquisition of tokens at low prices, and other situations that may hinder the development of the project.
At this time, the options available to the project party include becoming a parallel thread and running for a parachain on Kusama. Therefore, the existence of Kusama, in a sense, has also promoted the development of Polkadot in a more equitable direction.
In summary, Kusama is not only the “wild cousin” of Polkadot, but also the first step in Polkadot’s search for the Holy Grail. In the future, as the Kusama Parachain goes online, what role will it play? We will wait and see.
