Substrate-based decentralized exchange, Polkadex has won the 16th Polkadot parachain slot auction, after raising 973,324 $DOTs ($12.2M worth) from more than 2,300 contributors within its community. The decentralized order book joins Litentry, a decentralized identity aggregation protocol, and Unique Network, a scalable blockchain for composable NFTs, as the winners in the latest Polkadot parachain slot auction.
The success of Polkadex comes on its third time of asking, becoming the first parachain auction to cross 90% of its target cap, set at 1 million $DOT, and the largest crowdloan funding in Batch #3 of the auctions. Litentry raised 943 842 $DOT, approximately $11 920 726 at current prices from over 3,400 contributions while Unique Network came in third with 822 943 $DOT ($10 393 765) from 3,500+ contributions.
By winning the 16th parachain slot auction, Polkadex opens up its doors to greater utility in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. The win enables the DEX to become interoperable with other Polkadot parachain projects and build DeFi applications on the transparent and secure Polkadot blockchain. It also aligns with the project’s goal of combining the safe and non-custodial fomart of DEXs, with the advanced trading features and accessible and user-friendly structure customary of centralized exchanges.
Additionally, joining the Polkadot parachain will push development and innovation within the Web 3 and DeFi ecosystems for Polkadex users. It allows Polkadex Orderbook and Polkadex’s whole slate of products to support Polkadot-native assets from all other parachains, and gives the Polkadot ecosystem access to its first cross-chain, non-custodial order book-based exchange with high-frequency trading.
Speaking on winning the 16th parachain slot auction, Polkadex COO Deepansh Singh, thanked the Polkadex community praising the move as “a first for Polkadot and a first for DeFi as a whole”.
”Thanks to the Polkadex parachain we will be able to bridge assets with the Dotsama ecosystem and now users will be able to trade Polkadot ecosystem tokens from across the whole spectrum of parachains,” Singh added.
A clear path to winning
The road to winning the auction and amassing a whooping 97% of its auction cap was boosted by the strong incentives Polkadex offered its members. The auction cap of 1 million $DOT was accompanied by a rewards pool of 2 million $PDEX tokens, 10% of the total supply, giving contributors a reward of 2 $PDEX tokens for every $DOT contributed.
The $PDEX tokens provide holders with several utilities withing the platform including staking, governance, and IDO investing, among other utilities. Additionally, the native token can also be used to stake in the Thea Protocol and earn additional rewards for enabling deposits and withdrawals on Polkadex Orderbook.
Notwithstanding, the top 1,000 contributors in the Crowdloan campaign will receive an exclusive utility-based NFT that will enable discounted trading and transaction fees on the Polkadex order book, once it goes live in the coming weeks.
“We’re extremely proud of the way the Polkadex community led the charge during the Crowdloan campaign, especially during the week of the auction,” said Dagmara Handzlik, Head of Marketing at Polkadex. “Polkadex is proof of how important a strong community is to the overall success of a project and we could not be more excited to deliver the products we have been building with the eager support of Polkadexers.”
Finally, the Polkadex community also welcomed crypto partners to help them reach the crowdloan target. These partners included Polkadot DeFi platforms such as Parallel Finance and Equilibrium, and centralized exchanges like KuCoin and Kraken, which gave its community more opportunities to participate and more rewards for contributing.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice
