21 Dec 2021
Parachains are now producing blocks on Polkadot
The onboarding process for Polkadot’s first batch of five auction-winning parachains began with the start of a lease period of 96 weeks on Dec 17th. All five parachains have successfully onboarded to the network and are producing blocks.
The winning parachains from Polkadot’s first batch of auctions were Acala, Moonbeam, Astar, Parallel Finance, and Clover. After building an impressive level of community support through crowdloans, they raised close to a total of 100M DOT locked ($2,354,936,040).With just over five years in existence, Polkadot stands among the top 10 cryptocurrencies in terms of market cap. The ecosystem intends to grow its current slot allocation of 5 to 100 parachain slots—the maximum capacity for the Polkadot Relay Chain. Slots for the parachains are allocated to different blockchain projects focused on various niches, including DeFi, NTFs, loans and investments, and smart contracting, in line with Polkadot founder Gavin Wood’s vision for an interconnected blockchain future.The next batch of Polkadot auctions will begin on Dec 23rd, and will feature 6 auctions in total, with the 6 winning parachains to be onboarded around Mar 11th, 2022. Crowdloans are open, and the auction can be followed here.