Lot of expectation brewing around Polkadot parachain.  The networking protocol is hailed to be a better option for developers as the development time for blockchain developers is greatly reduced. Thus, developers can avoid the idea of building from scratch.

For clarity, “The Polkadot network makes cross-chain communication possible thus enabling interoperability by connecting multiple blockchains into one unified network. Every Parachain that is built within Polkadot makes use of the Substrate modular framework which supports the developers building applications within parachains in a way to fit their particular needs.”

The network makes it possible for arbitrary data and tokens to be transferred across blockchains. Thus, they make it possible to have cross-chain registries and cross-chain computation possible.

A recent concern is that the Polkadot parachains are full of promise, but their lack of a launch date leaves users wondering. The mainnet has been officially live for more than a year now.  With the final roll out decentralized apps will be able to launch on the network.

While all these are happening there is lot of curiosity building around “Polkadot’s parachain auctions.”

For clarity, “A parachain slot is a scarce resource on Polkadot and only a limited number will be available.”

For a new parachain to be added to Polkadot it should be a part of the available parachain slots.  It is important to note that with increased numbers of parachains ramping up, there will be only few “parachain slots” which will be unlocked every few months.

The ultimate aim is to have 100 parachain slots and these slots will be divided between the parachains and the parathread pools.

Acquiring a parachain slot is important to ensure guaranteed block inclusion at ever Relay block for a particular parachain.

Parachain slots get sold by way of unpermissioned candle auction. Candle auctions are different from open auctions.  Candle auction is a variant of open auctions. In the candle auction, the highest bidder will be considered the winner.

Online candle auctions make use of random numbers to decide the moment of termination of the auction process. However, Parachain slot auctions will not use termination of the auction process, rather they will follow “open phase” and the auction will be retroactively determined and the normal close will be done considering that the auction has ended at some point in the past.

So, in an open phase online candle auction, the bids will continue to be accepted; however, the close moment will be retroactively determined.  Thus, the close moment can precede the bid moment.