The brief

Analyst view

• Polkadot 2.0 is live: asynchronous backing, Agile Coretime and elastic scaling are all shipped.
• JAM, a RISC-V compute layer to replace the relay chain, has client teams chasing a 10M DOT prize; parachains move onto it in 2027.
• DOT supply is now capped at 2.1B; yearly issuance fell by more than half on March 14, 2026.

Technical approach

As reported

Shared security

Many chains, one validator set

Polkadot's validators check the blocks of every connected chain (parachain), so a new chain gets strong security without recruiting its own.

Coretime

Compute sold by the slice

Agile Coretime replaced long parachain slot leases with buying processing time on shared 'cores' as needed, lowering the cost of entry.

JAM

A minimal, general core

JAM shrinks the relay chain to a small machine that runs any 'service': heavy work in parallel on cores, then a short step that updates shared state.

PolkaVM

RISC-V instead of WebAssembly

Programs compile to RISC-V, a simple open chip instruction set that translates quickly into native code, so untrusted code runs fast.

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