Gavin Wood unveils JAM, a planned replacement for Polkadot's relay chain, at Token2049 Dubai

Parity Technologies / Web3 Foundation/Polkadot JAM

Gavin Wood presented the JAM Gray Paper, a design that would replace Polkadot's relay chain with a smaller, general-purpose core able to run arbitrary services. Existing Substrate-based parachains would keep running through a built-in parachains service. The Web3 Foundation launched a 10 million DOT prize to fund independent implementations.

• Replaces WebAssembly with a new Polkadot Virtual Machine.
• Combines ideas from Polkadot (sharded cores) and Ethereum (shared smart-contract state).
• Needs approval by DOT holders through on-chain governance.