Polkadot moves towards sharding as Acala Network secures first Rococo parachain slot
29 Mar 2021 #Polkadot
Polkadot’s vision for a sharded parachain ecosystem is moving toward becoming a reality. The Polkadot ecosystem continues to progress, with DeFi platform Acala Network becoming the first to win a parachain slot on the Rococo testnet. Acala, the self-described decentralized finance hub for Polkadot, announced it had secured the slot on March 26.
Acala was launched in January 2020, with the DeFi consortium striving to create a cross-chain open finance infrastructure for the Polkadot ecosystem. In February, Acala launched an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) based on Polkadot’s Substrate framework, facilitating interoperability with Ethereum-based assets.
The official parachain launch takes the platform a step further towards its goal of providing cross-chain interoperability on the rapidly expanding Polkadot ecosystem. Polkadot’s multi-chain “parachain” ecosystem will use sharded sidechains to process transactions in parallel. Parachains are acquired in an auction process whereby projects try to outbid each other for the slot.
Polkadot launched Rococo as a parachain testnet in August 2020 to test it’s inter-shard communication protocols before projects progress to deploying on Polkadot’s sister-network Kusama, and eventually the Polkadot mainnet.
Acala also has plans to launch a dollar-pegged stablecoin designed for use across any Polkadot-based project. A new Polkadot DAO Alliance has also been announced on March 26 to promote the development of decentralized governance in the Polkadot ecosystem. The Alliance was launched by eleven genesis members, including leading Polkadot projects SubDAO, Plasm, Phala, Stafi, Bifrost, Darwina, Zenlink, and DeepDAO. The alliance also hopes to establish a development fund for Polkadot-based startups, with the announcement stating:
“The Alliance will establish a DAO Ecosystem Development Fund with several million dollars to offer financial support for early-stage projects of DAO and Web 3.0.”
The rapid growth of Polkadot has propelled its native DOT token up the crypto market cap charts in 2021 as it has gained 250% since the beginning of the year, and is currently trading at $32.70 at the time of writing.
Top Cryptocurrencies with Price Predictions
| # | Crypto | Prediction | Accuracy | CVIX | Price | 24h | 7d | Market Cap | Volume 24h | |
| 1 |  BTC |
Bitcoin predictions | 86.8% | 25 | $47 196.24 | -0.90% | 3.21% | $888 165 398 031 | $28 837 572 321 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 |  ETH |
Ethereum predictions | 73.6% | 52 | $3 398.91 | -4.99% | 2.10% | $399 589 395 021 | $18 208 097 601 | |
| 3 |  ADA |
Cardano predictions | 70.8% | 64 | $2.35 | -2.73% | -2.59% | $75 328 517 583 | $2 502 610 105 | |
| 4 |  BNB |
Binance Coin predictions | 63.6% | 70 | $409.43 | -3.42% | 0.29% | $68 840 128 039 | $1 526 352 217 | |
| 5 |  USDT |
Tether predictions | 95.2% | 1 | $1.000772 | 0.01% | 0.06% | $68 306 683 609 | $68 957 512 774 | |
| 6 |  XRP |
XRP predictions | 71.6% | 54 | $1.072339 | -2.16% | -0.49% | $49 994 826 614 | $3 103 899 431 | |
| 7 |  SOL |
Solana predictions | 60.4% | 90 | $141.39 | -8.05% | -21.59% | $41 967 915 927 | $4 484 230 918 | |
| 8 |  DOT |
Polkadot predictions | 62% | 81 | $33.64 | -3.04% | 13.14% | $33 221 971 526 | $2 377 880 173 | |
| 9 |  DOGE |
Dogecoin predictions | 68% | 66 | $0.241295 | 0.66% | -1.25% | $31 687 836 517 | $2 275 287 430 | |
| 10 |  USDC |
USD Coin predictions | 94.4% | 1 | $1.000646 | 0.05% | 0.04% | $29 328 222 348 | $2 841 145 920 | |
| 11 |  UNI |
UniSwap predictions | 69.2% | 57 | $24.44 | -7.08% | 8.72% | $14 946 944 071 | $538 878 731 | |
| 12 |  AVAX |
Avalanche predictions | 66% | 69 | $64.90 | -2.78% | 33.59% | $14 296 604 632 | $2 005 002 749 | |
| 13 |  LUNA |
Terra predictions | 65.2% | 67 | $35.17 | -7.63% | -14.27% | $14 128 224 406 | $1 175 443 764 | |
| 14 |  BUSD |
Binance USD predictions | 94.4% | 1 | $1.000776 | 0.04% | 0.07% | $12 836 275 840 | $5 753 613 485 | |
| 15 |  LINK |
Chainlink predictions | 71.6% | 57 | $28.11 | -6.49% | 3.99% | $12 747 308 610 | $1 498 687 851 |
