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We reached a significant step towards implementing parachain functionality on Polkadot – we launched a new testnet specifically designed for parachains and their related technologies, dubbed Rococo. The Rococo testnet integrates Polkadot with Cumulus and HRMP.

With a turnout just shy of one third of the tokens, the recent Polkadot redenomination poll was a major result for stakeholder decision-making. This number is all the more impressive considering that both the Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies abstained from the voting.

A vote has been started that will alter the course of Polkadot and define the final denomination of its native DOT token. It affects all Polkadot stakeholders. If you have claimed your DOT on the mainnet, or you plan to, then you can — and should! — vote.

The use of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in combination with the Substrate blockchain modular framework is providing new solutions to enable real-use applications on the next generation of the web.

Polkadot is designed to take back our digital sovereignty and agency from powerful third-parties, while also providing the foundation for new business models, services, organizations—and even entire societies and economies—to take shape and thrive into the future.

On-chain governance and autonomous enactment give the token holders agency, the vehicle to express their opinions and the guarantees about the impact that their expression has.

The new paper Overview of Polkadot and its Design Considerations expands on the white paper, presenting a comprehensive and updated description of Polkadot’s design components and subprotocols. Some of these are outlined here.

The genesis block of the Polkadot network was launched on May 26th. To celebrate, we have created the first builder’s bounty with over $6000 DAI to be won, split over three challenges.

Polkadot’s highly-anticipated release follows three years of intense development work. Mainnet launch builds on the success of Kusama canary network release in 2019.

Westend provides a testing environment for our infrastructure partners to test their Polkadot and Kusama deployment and processes.

A referendum was just held on Kusama regarding whether or not to redenominate DOTs on Polkadot in a 1:100 ratio. Web3 Foundation used this referendum to gauge sentiment from the community before the launch of Polkadot.

Polkadot is a next-generation blockchain protocol connecting multiple specialized blockchains into one unified network.