A brief overview of the activity taking place on Polkadot

Polkadot is one of the more anticipated Proof-of-Stake networks and smart contract challengers to Ethereum, the most prevalent dapp platform today. The network initially raised $145 million via a token sale in October 2017 and then sold an additional 500,000 tokens through a private sale in 2019. The network is in the process of fully launching in a series of six steps until it reaches core functionality. Through the first step, Proof of Authority (PoA) participants have been able to claim and stake their tokens (DOTs).

The network is currently on the second step of its launch process, Nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS), where the system is now comprised of a decentralized set of validators. With the ability to become a validator now open, numerous staking service providers now have an occupancy on the network. As is the case for other PoS networks like Tezos and Cosmos, users can stake their tokens with a validator to earn rewards.