The Polkadot projection released a detailed roadmap on Mon for the highly predictable rollout of parachains and slot auctions, which should marking the total launch of the protocol.

The roadmap is divided into three master stages. The current phase is the Rococo testnet environment, where developers can exam mechanisms to communicate between diverse Polkadot parachains, its analog of shards. The platform uses a mechanism chosen Cantankerous-Chain Message Passing-lite, or XCMP-lite, to allow parachains to send tokens and generalized messages to each other past going through Polkadot'south relay chain, the fundamental coordinator of the network.

The Rococo testnet was launched in August 2020, but the component features have yet to be fully completed. Once details like dispute resolution and approving voting are completed, the Polkadot codebase will finally reach feature completion.

Notwithstanding, that won't mean that the parachains volition exist implemented just yet. The next phase will be holding a vote to enable parachains on Kusama, Polkadot'south "canary network." Kusama can be considered as a middle footing betwixt a testnet and a mainnet, featuring a higher tolerance for experimentation while still holding existent economical value.

Once the parachains on Kusama are stable, and all audits are completed, an on-concatenation vote volition be triggered on Polkadot to introduce parachain auctions.

There are no indications of the precise timelines for these milestones. Representatives from Polkadot could non be immediately reached for clarification.

Nonetheless, the rollout of parachains was expected by many to occur in the first quarter of 2021, which is already more than than halfway through. There also appear to be bug with the Rococo testnet'south stability. For instance, one of its parachains has been stuck on block 1036, which is timestamped for Monday, around 9 pm UTC. A Monday GitHub pull request titled "New Genesis," which comes later a deleted branch named "Bkchr-rococo-nuke-187", suggests that at that place has been a significant stability incident for the testnet. Alex Melikhov, CEO of Polkadot parachain candidate Equilibrium, told Cointelegraph that the projection is "optimistic nearly the timeline of the Polkadot parachain launch," even though "The latest updates to the Rococo testnet are indicating the necessity of further amendments to the technology." Standing, he offered a view of the potential timelines once the Kusama launch is complete:

"Given the ane-calendar month interval until Polkadot deployment then declared by Gavin, we will expectedly see DOT auctions launched quite shortly."

In the meantime though, Polkadot's DOT token has rallied to new all-fourth dimension highs. The token gained 10% to reach over $30 on Tuesday, which adds to an already impressive rally from $ix at the starting time of 2021. The token is at present in a shut fight for the 4th position by market capitalization with Cardano's ADA, later decisively taking XRP'due south spot earlier.