Lastic – new Polkadot Coretime Marketplace
Polkadot 2.0 Blockspace As A Service (BaaS) will be on-chain in Q2 2024. Lastic to deliver an excellent Marketplace for buying & selling Blockspace.
In June, at Polkadot Decoded, Dr. Gavin Wood announced Polkadot 2.0.
The main change is shifting from Parachain Slot Auctions to Coretime Lease.
In the previous model, Parachains were allocated through a competitive bidding process. The Projects fought for limited slots on the Polkadot Network by auction, locking DOT for two years. It was a big success, bringing 50+ Parachains to the Ecosystem.
Polkadot Coretime Lease offers a different approach to resource management – Selling Blockspace in Bulk or Instantaneous:
- Bulk Coretime leases a stable & predictable resource allocation. Blockspace will be bought for continuous 28-day periods. Unused Blockspace may be sold as an NFT in Timeslices.
- Instantaneous Coretime lease offers Blockspace on Demand. Small Projects, Medium Projects, dApps, Smart Contracts, and traditional Firms can buy an amount of Blockspace that suits their needs.
At first, BaaS (Blockspace-As-A-Service) will be cheap, but then the price will naturally adapt to the current demand. It's a Market where everyone can join. Currently, the new model is on Rococo Testnet (Q4 2023), soon to be implemented on Kusama (Q1 2024) & Polkadot (Q2 2024).
Lastic has already started working on a Coretime Marketplace. Let's see how's it going!👀
It won one of the Grants on the 19th round of the Web3 Foundation Grants Program. The main goal is to develop a User Interface (UI) tailored for Polkadot BaaS.
Lastic Marketplace's focus:
- Facilitate the purchase & sale of Coretime
- Aim to normalize pricing
- Present User-Centric payment options
- Possible launch subscription
- Cover futures offerings
The primary User base:
- Parachain teams looking for blockspace to expand or optimize their Projects
- dApp Developers aiming to ensure smooth & scalable operations
- Smart contract Developers seeking efficient Blockspace Management
- Collators & Validators striving for enhanced Network optimization
- Coretime Providers looking for a transparent space to offer their services
- Polkadot Analysts & Analytics Providers in need of real-time Coretime data
- MEV Actors aiming to maximize their strategies
- DOT Holders keen on understanding & optimizing their blockspace Assets
Due to Broker Pallet still in deployment & not tested yet (now on Rococo Testnet, Kusama Q1 2024 & Polkadot Q2 2024), Lastic is currently:
- Devising a Static Mockup with Simulated Data
- Illustrating User interactions with the future Coretime Chain
It already has the functionality to add Wallets, & You can try connecting a Test Wallet.
Go to -> Figma UI
Give it a try cause it's an Intuitive User Interface
To deliver an awesome Marketplace, it's not only about the UI but all the features on it.
- Coretime should be bought, sold, transformed easily & intuitive by the Market Participants.
- Projects of all sizes should find the right amount of Blockspace for their needs.
- The renewals of Bulk & Instantaneous Coretime must be safe & predictable so Blockchains running on a Core don't stop producing Blocks.
Lastic Marketplace has some great ideas already 💡
- Connecting Coretime Providers and buyers to form long-term partnerships for Market Stability
- Buying Blockspace in front for a known price, like in Forward Contracts in the Energy Market
- Offering tailored additional Blockspace for Projects with sudden increased demand
- Insights and analytics of current offers for smaller Projects, DApps, and Smart Contracts to help them buy the exact amount of Coretime they need on the Instantaneous Market
My idea for dope Features for Lastic:
- Coretime Quotas Blockspace Buyer can put a mark on his purchase at a certain number of Timeslice (time) or Capacity (kB/Mb) so he knows (gets heads-up) when to focus on the next purchase. Example 85% used Timeslices or 85% Data Storage.
- Time & Capacity Calculator Blockspace Buyers can type a desired period (in Timeslices) & receive an estimated Capacity (in KB/Mb) They would need based on Their assumed Usage, Historical Data, and real-time Pricing Models. Plus, the 🔄️way around
- Interactive Slider Blockspace Buyer uses the Slider to adjust Time or Capacity value & see how one affects the other. It is best to help choose the correct Instantaneous NFT on the Marketplace.
- Instantaneous Coretime Utilization Semi Pie Chart (with arrow) Shows Blockspace Buyers the current demand for the NFT in the particular month. Shows how Hot is the Core NFT Market (Price Trend)🔥
- Bulk Coretime Sold > Ideal Probability Chart In Polkadot 2.0, some Cores in Bulk will be offered each month. If Sold > Ideal, the Bulk Coretime price rises. Example: 30 new Cores in September. Ideal = 25.
If sold above, the price rises. The Chart would update continually based on Historical Data, Current Sales, and Trends & show in % the probability of Sold > Ideal in the current month. - User Feedback & Blockspace NFT Sellers Rank Users will use data to choose who they will buy Blockspace from.
- Collab with BitGreen, a Community-driven Carbon Credit Marketplace & their Green Polkadot Dashboard Estimation on the environmental impact of Coretime usage, Energy consumption & Carbon footprint
- Coretime Usage Efficiency Chart Shows dApps, Smart Contracts, small Projects, medium Projects, and Paratasks (old Parachains) similar to Your Project based on the Data You provided for comparison. It also shows the weight of each kind of Project in the total Marketplace.
Aurora Popyseed from Lastic developed a Python-based Pricing Simulation till the Coretime is implemented. Look at Her bright take on the current risks of future Coretime.
If 50 new Bulk Cores were offered at the start of Polkadot BaaS for 1–2k $ each -> one bad Actor with 50–100k$ could buy all Cores & block them with possible renewals. That's a very cheap way to block an 8Bil $ Ecosystem.
Two outstanding Polkadot Ecosystem Agents develop Lastic:
- Aurora Popyseed https://x.com/poppyseedDev
- asynchronous Phil https://x.com/ph_lux
For questions & info on further development:
- Lastic Page https://www.lastic.xyz/
- Lastic Telegram
