Momentum 6 Portfolio Spotlight: ParaState
ParaState is providing critical interoperability infrastructure that addresses the shortcomings of Ethereum through its WebAssembly VM.
Overview
Many industries have been able to extend the applications of blockchain technology to real-world use cases since Ethereum introduced smart contracts. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) made it possible for developers to create dApps for virtually any sector.
Scalability is one of the major issues most dApps that run on EVM have been facing. The architecture is rigid, making it hard for starters to code. The number of languages and developer tools available on EVM is also limited.
ParaState is providing critical interoperability infrastructure that addresses the shortcomings of Ethereum through its WebAssembly virtual machine. This WASM VM applies similar concepts as new smart contract platforms like NEAR, Oasis, and Cosmos. ParaState VM’s distinguishing feature is its compatibility with Ethereum code allowing projects already running on Ethereum to migrate to the Polkadot ecosystem with just a few or no changes to the code.
How it works
Ethereum-compatible smart contracts can enjoy high-performance on-chain runtime modules through ParaState. Developers creating products for Ethereum can opt to deploy their products in the multi-chain Polkadot ecosystem. What’s more, these developers can migrate non-Ethereum projects to WASM and not worry about security or speed.
Those who use ParaState’s SSVM-EWASM pallet benefit in the following ways:
Gas fees and operating costs are dramatically reduced.
A larger developer community comprising Polkadot, Ethereum, WASM, and various LLVM communities uses it.
Efficiency improvement across various computer architectures is guaranteed since SSVM can use ahead of time (AOT) compilation.
Plato, ParaState’s public testnet, is already running as a standalone Substrate blockchain. The platform’s priority is on fast delivery and execution of novel research on production while committing to open-source values and radical transparency on its development journey.
Geminis Network is the first Parachain supported by the advanced technical stack from ParaState.
What makes ParaState unique?
ParaState has been referred to as “Ethereum on steroids.” ParaState offers some unique features to tackle some of the challenges facing developers today:
Support for multiple languages. Almost all Ethereum smart contracts are written in Fe or Solidity. ParaState is more diverse as developers can write code in more than 20 languages. On top of writing code using common languages such as C++, Rust, Go, and Java, developers can use domain-specific languages such as Certik’s DeepSEA and MOVE from Facebook. With the Rust SDK, developers can use Rust to create dApps on ParaState technical stacks.
DAO-based governance. One of the uses of the $STATE token is governance. Those who hold STATE tokens will have a say in how the ParaState DAO treasury is utilized, the incentives for the community, and which development/upgrade routes should be taken.
High throughput. ParaState and other parachains will offload much of the heavy lifting that comes with executing computations to the network of validators on the Polkadot network. ParaState and other Polkadot parachains will have 100x the throughput of Ethereum and process about 1,000 transactions per second.
Modularity. The SSVM-EWASM solution from ParaState comes as a plug-and-play module, enabling any Substrate ecosystem project to introduce support for Ethereum-based smart contracts. New projects are provided a streamlined entry point to the Polkadot ecosystem. Projects running on Ethereum can also be deployed on Polkadot.
$STATE
The $STATE token is ParaState’s path to decentralization. This token’s utility is embedded into the ParaState’s runtime functionality. A small percentage charged as a license fee will be paid to the ParaState DAO treasury whenever the ParaState runtime runs a smart contract. The long-term development reserve gets 10% of this license fee while 90% goes to the treasury DAO.
Licensing fees produce ParaState’s primary revenue stream and help fund all future developments on the platform. All license fees are payable using the respective token of the blockchain using ParaState. A basket of these currencies will back the STATE token in its treasury. ParaState will release 1 billion $STATE tokens over five years with different vesting schedules.
History and roadmap
The team at ParaState has achieved a lot and is still on track to make their dream a reality. The SOLL compiler grant from the Ethereum Foundation started this journey. The development team built ParaTime for the Oasis Network to enable Ethereum compatibility one year later. ParaState received a grant for EWASM pallet integration from W3F.
ParaState closed a seed fundraising round in Q1 of 2021. A strategic fundraising round later followed in Q2 of 2021, when ParaState launched the public testnet, Plato. Another private fundraising round was closed in Q3 of 2021, followed by a grant from the ICON Foundation for the Substrate sidechain.
The team seeks to participate in the Polkadot parachain auction through community votes in the first quarter of 2022. In Q3 2022, the plans are to bring the EWASM pallet to all the Polkadot parachains. In the first quarter of 2023 and onwards, ParaState EWASM will be positioned for mass adoption in the multichain ecosystem.
Infrastructure is king
Even though NFTs and the metaverse have been the hottest topics in the DeFi space of late, we cannot forget how crucial it is to have the necessary infrastructure for mass adoption. Blockchain interoperability is something we must focus on to achieve the goals of the Web 3 world. ParaState has been fronted as one of the solutions that takes interoperability to the next level by providing more languages for developers to use when writing code, and a fast and more secure environment for creating and deploying various dApps.