An Introduction to Polkadot [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

An Introduction to Polkadot [pdf]

polkadot.network

40 pointslegrande12 comments

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“The more beautiful the brochure, the more careful you should be.”

Common saying amongst Dutch investors.

PC Soft, makers of a RAD tools called windev makes the best brochures

https://windev.com/storage/en_US/ebook/newfeatures/3/

RAD is a strange market though, tools are real, and customers make real business apps with it

The marketing is usually very .. unusual

I used some WinDev and WebDev at my last job. The tool isn't that bad, it's nice to have everything that just works from my IDE. On the other hand, I'm not a huge fan at all of using closed-source software. I also don't like using products for which the marketing is putting semi-nude women everywhere. Some people complained about that marketing aspect (https://www.jdp-pub.org/avis/windev-catalogue/) and they toned it down, so what's in that link is actually tame compared to what they did before.

I love this. This quote is the most valuable part of this post for me.

p.s. even if they have a beautiful brochure, they still have the name “polkadot”.

"Don't judge a book by its cover."

Common saying amongst reasonable people.

Somewhat of a bs saying really. I get the point, but the cover has the title, and we all do an initial assessment of the book by the title.

For a slightly more technical and less marketing-heavy description of polkadot:

https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/learn-launch

Polkadot is a pretty interesting cryptocurrency. Like Ethereum smart chain, Binance smart chain, and Kucoin Smart chain, other cryptocurrencies can be built upon it’s network. A list of existing coins can be reviewed here although many of these cryptocurrencies/tokens are on multiple networks: https://coinmarketcap.com/view/polkadot-ecosystem/ I think Reef started out as Polkadot only, IIRC.

When auditing smartchain coins, I find it best to answer the following two questions: 1) are the applications or coins people are developing on it good? And 2) Is my own smart contract development on it likely to be a good experience?

If you own Polkadot, you can and should be staking it somewhere for 12-16% annual interest.

the questions you need to ask yourself when dealing with any chain related questions is "what part of the blockchain trilemma does this chain sacrifice"

That question is why ethereum and bitcoin are the dominant chains, and nothing else ever takes off

On a related/unrelated note, the website says:

> Polkadot development is on track to deliver the most robust platform for security, scalability and innovation.

This is absolutely meaningless. I absolutely hate these kinds of websites that doesn't just say what the fuck the thing is.

Even in the PDF, they don't spell it out until Page 4.

...THIS IS BLOCKCHIAN...

Cool. I'm out!

Literally the 2nd sentence on their webpage:

> Polkadot enables cross-blockchain transfers of any type of data or asset, not just tokens.

That doesn’t say what it is.

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