Presentation given at Hong Kong Ethereum/Polkadot meetup, Dec 2018.

1. Parity Polkadot
Platform for Connected Blockchains 3.0
@gavofyork

2. Themes in Blockchain 3.0
● Governance
● Scalability
● Future-proofing
● Developability
● Interoperability
● Efficiency

4. Polkadot:
Web3 Foundation, protocol, token,
many teams, implementations
Substrate:
Parity Technologies, software stack,
Substrate chains, many tokens and
chains
Polkadot Protocol “Ethernet”
Substrate Software “PC”

5. Polkadot is designed to be composable!

6. ● Hot-swappable, pluggable Consensus
● Hot-upgradeable, pluggable STF
● Light client
● Chain synchronisation
● Pub/Sub WebSocket JSON-RPC
● Transaction queue
● Pervasive, secure networking
● JS implementation
● Modular SRML if you want
● Interchain connectivity via Polkadot

7. THE STATE OF CHAINS
Substrate

8. Polkadot
Key ingredients:
● Referenda
● Adaptive quorum biasing
● Council
● Lock-voting
● Approval voting
● Treasury
● Delayed autonomous
enactment
Governance to PoC-3

9. Tabled motions
All motions are inherently executable
Coinhodlers
Council
Polkadot Governance mechanisms (up to PoC-3)
Rotating
approval
vote
Proposes motion
Sponsors motion
Public proposed
motions
Motion 2Motion 1
Table motion
with negative
turnout bias
Most sponsored
motion tabled
periodically
with positive
turnout bias
Coinhodlers lock-vote for tabled motions
Council may cancel motion
by unanimous vote
Member may veto a council motion once

10. Polkadot
● Public bonded proposals
● Bond returned only when
voted on
● Anyone may bond more DOTs
to sponsor a proposal
● Every period T, most sponsored
proposal tabled for vote
Tabling Referenda

11. Polkadot
● Lock-duration, stake-weighted
voting
● Only the winning voter’s
tokens locked
● Super-majority required to
carry for turnout below 100%
● Winning motions
autonomously enacted after
some cool-down period
Referenda

12. Polkadot
Desire: Avoid spurious/irresponsible
votes carrying bad proposals
● Winning voters’ tokens are
locked for “cool-down” period
● Proposal only enacted after
cool-down period
● Cool-down allows (non-staked)
losers to sell/divest
Delayed Enactment

13. Polkadot
You can pledge to lock for an
additional period in order to
increase voting power:
● votes = tokens * periods
Each period is two weeks, up to a
maximum of 12 weeks.
Lock only happens if voter wins.
Validators automatically get the
maximum multiplier.
Voluntary locking

14. Polkadot Delayed enactment and voluntary locking
Alice Bob Charlie
“No” “Yes” “No”
1 DOT;
8 weeks lock
3 DOTs;
6 weeks lock
4 DOTs;
2 weeks lock
“Yes”: 9
“No”: 8 Unlocked
Locked
Time (weeks)
Vote ends (passes)
0 2 4 6 8
Proposal enacted
Bob tokens locked
Alice Bob Charlie
“No” “Yes” “No”
1 DOT;
8 weeks lock
3 DOTs;
4 weeks lock
4 DOTs;
2 weeks lock
“Yes”: 6
“No”: 8 Locked
Unlocked
Time (weeks)
Vote ends (rejected)
0 2 4 6 8
Alice tokens locked
Charlie tokens locked

15. Polkadot
Desire: no strict quorum, but
super-majority required increases as
turnout lowers
● “Positive turnout bias”
● aye * √turnout > nay
Can be inverted to give opposite
bias:
● aye > nay * √turnout
● “Negative turnout bias”
Adaptive Quorum Biasing

16. Polkadot Adaptive Quorum Biasing: Ayes to carry, % of voters
Positive turnout bias
Negative turnout bias
Turnout Ayes to carry
(voting)
Ayes to carry
(electorate)
1% 91% 0.9%
5% 82% 4%
20% 69% 14%
50% 59% 29%

17. Polkadot
Delegated body for default
decision-making apparatus
● May vote to schedule
additional referenda
● Majority-council: simple
majority referendum
● Unanimous-council: Negative
turnout bias referendum
● Unanimous-council may also
cancel a referendum
● Council member may also veto
(postpone) a single council
motion, but only once
Council

18. Polkadot
Rotating approval vote
● Elections staggered so one
seat at a time
● Basic stake-weighted approval
voting mechanism
● Candidates bond themselves
● Bond returned when elected
● Top runners-up persist until
next election
● Outright losers forfeit bond
● Term limit (e.g. 6 months) or
deposed by referendum
Council elections

19. Polkadot
Oraclising these groups differs in
ease:
Medium (protocol changes):
● Long-term node operators
● Parachain operators
● Relay-chain transactors
Hard (subjective oraclisation):
● Dapp teams
● Client implementers
Future governance directions

20. Polkadot
Coming this month:
- Substrate 1.0 beta (prototype
your own para-chains and
dapps!)
- Polkadot PoC-3 (para-chains,
governance and GRANDPA
consensus)
What’s up?

21. Polkadot
Coming April 2019:
- Polkadot PoC-4 (interchain
messaging!)
- Substrate 1.0 final
Coming second half 2019:
- Polkadot launch*
(* assuming audit goes well :-) )
What’s up?