Parity’s Polkadot Dev Update #3

After a long, cold January, Polkadot has been making headway and we are rapidly approaching our PoC-1 milestone. This encompasses a basic Proof-of-Stake relay chain which can have its block execution logic upgraded without hard forks and it also includes the groundwork for adding parachains, although the implementation of those will be left to PoC-2.

Other work on Polkadot that is ongoing at Parity Tech’s HQ is the integration of the WASM-based “runtime” code with existing type definitions. Additional changes are being made to the Parity Ethereum implementation to allow it to spin up a parachain. Also, for relay-chain block production we are integrating the abstract consensus algorithm with the Polkadot state.

We made progress on solutions that will make the Parity Bridge work with chains running dynamic validator sets, thereby laying the foundation for integrating it into Polkadot eventually. Meanwhile, we are working on extending the Bridge’s functionality to arbitrary message passing at full steam. An initial version of the Bridge is now pretty much ready for test deployment and we are confident to see the first Kovan <> Ethereum mainnet Bridge up-and-running shortly.

On the Javascript side, we are busy with the WASM execution module. We have completed all the runtime hooks/externalities and work is ongoing to ensure that all the tests exposed by the Rust implementation match and pass. Our next step will be to follow the Polkadot Rust implementation with the Genesis block execution.

As always if you would like to follow the team’s work on Polkadot, please join the dedicated Riot channel we have set up for all the techie stuff: #polkadot-technical:matrix.org.

You can also join the Parity Tech Riot channel if you have any questions for any of the team, or just simply want to join the conversation: #parity-watercooler:matrix.org.