How to become a millionaire with Polkadot in a few years

2021年10月22日

Hello and welcome to my first ever post. My posts will be skewed towards fundamental analysis of crypto projects based on my 5 years of experience in crypto from a standpoint of software engineering and cyber security. I thought I would make an educational post about why DOT is going to make people millionaires within a few years max. While I know this site is mainly used for technical analysis, this post will be to educate users on another aspect of Polkadot that 99% have no idea about, Polkadot crowd loans.


Quick history lesson:

Polkadot - DOT – is a blockchain network similar to Ethereum. Gavin Wood (founder of Polkadot) is also one the original founders of Ethereum. He saw the issues Ethereum would have with network congestion and decided to leave and launch 2 separate projects, Polkadot and Kusama. Both projects have been in development for over 5 years, Polkadot began trading around August of 2020 and Kusama December 2019.


Polkadot vs Ethereum

Here is a simple explanation of how Ethereum works vs Polkadot

Ethereum’s blockchain

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^ The above line represents ETH’s blockchain. NFT trades and mints, decentralize exchange swaps, transfers, basically everything that happens on ETH happens on this one chain. With the introduction of NFT’s, the Ethereum network has never seen as high usage as it does today. Because of this when the network is under high usage a single Ethereum transaction can cost upwards of $300. The cost is based on the complexity of your transactions, so actions such as minting NFT’s on Ethereum can sometimes cost thousands! While the ETH foundation has a solution in development it is still many months away.

The network congestion is the issue that Gavin Wood predicted and the one that Polkadot has solved with precision. Before we talk about Polkadot , we must first discuss Kusama (KSM). On Ethereum when developers want to test their code for their token or if the Ethereum developers need to introduce changes to the network itself they perform it all on the test net. The Ethereum test net works exactly like how it was explained above, everything on one chain. With Kusama/Polkadot its different, Kusama = the test network, Polkadot = the main net. Kusama’s purpose is to test everything new that will be introduced to Polkadot but remember that design wise they are identical. And lastly, even though Kusama is the canary test network, all projects on the network still have real value and are tradable on the market such as KAR , SDN , and MMOVR as some examples.

Now onto Polkadot’s architecture:


Polkadot’s relay chain

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Like Ethereum the above line represents the relay chain, this is the main chain of Polkadot but there is one huge difference, this chain does not allow any other transactions besides staking and swapping DOT. All other functions must be done on what is known as a parachain.


What is a parachain?

To keep it simple a parachain is a slot for a project to exist on polkadot. The architecture looks similar to a ferris wheel:

viator.com/tours/Fremantle/Fremantle-Ferris-Wheel/d22027-108164P1

The seats represent the parachains, and they are all connected to the middle which is the relay chain. There can only be a maximum 100 parachain projects on Polkadot.

To become a parachain a project must win a parachain auction. The auction works by users (holders of DOT) voting for a project they want to succeed. Users agree to ‘bond’ (contribute and lock) their coins to that project for 48 weeks. The 48 weeks is how long a parachain will last before that project must once again be voted back in. By participating in a crowd loan users are rewarded with tokens (more on this later).

When auctions are live this is how the screen looks on the web page: wiki.polkadot.network/assets/images/kusama-crowdloans-0237f5d573dee5e221b51678b2ed25f1.png

On the right side you can see the contribute button, you would click that and enter how much you want to contribute. The ‘count’& ‘raised’ next to contribute represent how much has already been contributed so you can get an idea of who is going to win.

Now that you understand how Polkadot’s auctions work lets talk about how people will strike gold and become rich (which many have already done on Kusama).

Kusama has already had multiple successful parachain auctions, the sound logic is the projects that won on Kusama will surely win on Polkadot. Some examples of projects that have won are the ones I mentioned earlier such as SDN , MMOVR , KAR , and more. To understand why people will get rich from these crowd loans lets compare buying into the crowd loan vs buying the project once its tradable.

What advantage does a crowd loan give vs buying the token?

The main advantages of contributing to the crowd loan are:

- Locking your DOT/KSM vs swapping them
- Bonus tokens

Disadvantages:

- Your KSM/DOT are locked for 48 weeks
- Your crowd loan tokens are vested for 48 weeks

When you buy a token traditionally you would swap token 1 for token 2 at whatever the market rate is. With crowd loans you are not swapping but instead locking token 1 (DOT/KSM) and receiving token 2 which vests over 48 weeks essentially giving FREE money.

Projects also offer bonus tokens if you choose to contribute in the early weeks of parachain auctions. Parachain auctions happen for 1 week per auction, when you choose to contribute to projects take note of what week you contributed. Here is how bonuses traditionally work:

You contributed:

Week 1 = 30% bonus
Week 2 = 20% bonus
Week 3 = 10% bonus
Week 4-8 = none.

Even if the project doesn’t win till week 8 but you contributed week 1 , you will still get a 30% bonus.

Project example #1 – Moonbeam

moonbeam.network

Summary: Moonbeam won the 2nd week of the Kusama auctions after KAR. The summary of what Moonbeam is in simple terms is a protocol that makes deploying Ethereum contracts on Polkadot easy. This is basically how every meme coin will launch on polkadot/kusama, the ability to take their existing code from Ethereum and deploy it through moonbeam. The Kusama equivalent of MoonBeam is MoonRiver. Lets review how their auction went:

Kusama auction round won: Week 2
Contribution bonus from week 1: 30%

With a bonus of 30% if you contributed 1 KSM (Kusama) to the crowdloan back in May, you received 15 Moonriver (MOVR) tokens in exchange.
Exact number is 14.5, verifiable here but am rounding for example: moonbeam.foundation/moonriver-crowdloan/rewards/

The crowdloan happened in May, 1 Kusama = $500 at the time, Moonriver is now nearly $400! coinmarketcap.com/currencies/moonriver/

Rounded up math example:

Lets pretend you have $20,000 to invest:

You contribute 40 KSM worth $20,000
You receive 600 MOVR rounded (again this is vested over 48 weeks)
400 (rounded up price of MOVR) x 600 (MOVR tokens) = $240,000

THAT IS $240,000 OF FREE MONEY, and remember your 40 KSM are just locked you did not lose them. From your $20,000 you now have a whopping $260,000.


This is 1 project out of the 100 that will becoming to the ecosystem over the next few years, let that sink in.

Here are a few of my favorite projects that have already won a parachain auction for Kusama that will most likely win on Polkadot:

Acala - Decentralized Finance hub of DOT (Karura, ticker: KAR on Kusama)
Astar (formely PLASM) - Build decentralized apps on DOT (Shiden ticker: SDN on Kusama)
Phala - private smart contracts on DOT (Khala on Kusama , is currently an ETH token PHALA)

One very important note is that in my opinion most institutional level investors are waiting for the main net launches of these protocols, the success of these projects will be a 10x from where they currently stand on Kusama.

The date is tentative but Polkadot's main net parachain auctions are set to begin NOVEMBER 11TH , less then 1 month. DOT will soar which means locked up tokens gain value, plus free money from the crowd loan projects as institutional funds reign in is how people will become millionaires with Polkadot.