Polkadot has quickly gone up the ranks and became one of the biggest cryptocurrency projects. Its native token DOT was recently denominated at a 1:100 ratio. After the event, early Polkadot investors can benefit from a nearly 2,000% ROI.
This became possible following the latest company developments, mainnet launch news, and DOT listings on several prominent cryptocurrency exchanges.
Although the original Polkadot whitepaper saw the light of day in October 2016, it wasn’t until a year later when the project raised funds via an initial coin offering (ICO). It occurred after Dr. Gavin Wood, and Peter Czaban founded the Web3 Foundation – a non-profit organization supporting the research and development of the Polkadot network.
The Foundation concluded a rather successful ICO in October 2017 and raised over $140 million by selling 50% of the 10,000,000 DOT token supply. Despite some unfortunate events that led to the loss of over half of the raised funds, Polkadot endured. The company conducted two private sales – one in 2019 and one in the summer of 2020.
Built on top of the Substrate blockchain framework, all Polkadot-based chains and apps can transact and transfer data with other Substrate-based chains. In other words, the Polkadot network allows interoperability and scalability for all networks that employ it.
Some of the most recent developments include launching a testnet designed for parachains and their related technologies dubbed Rococo. By integrating Polkadot with Cumulus and HRMP, Rococo enables developers to register a Substrate-based chain as a parachain and message the Relay Chain, and “write logic for parachains to send messages to other parachains through the Relay Chain.”
During Polkadot’s ICO in October 2017, DOT tokens were sold at an average of $30 per coin. At the time of this writing, one DOT costs just shy of $6 but there’s a catch.
On August 21st this year, the DOT token was effectively redenominated by a factor of 100. This means that existing holders received 100 new DOT for the old ones they held. In other words, those who purchased 1 DOT at $30 back in 2017 now hold 100 DOT priced at $6 each, giving a total value of $600 for one coin.
In other words, ICO investors have seen a massive increase of roughly around 2000%.
The journey wasn’t without its bumps, though. Despite the initial warnings of the team, some cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance and Kraken listed the DOT token prior to its redenomination, which caused some confusion and even cost investors some money.