The Week in Polkadot: Monthly Active Accounts Hit All-Time High

Welcome to Decrypt’s Week in Polkadot, our regular round-up of the latest developments in the Polkadot ecosystem.

The number of monthly active accounts on Polkadot reached an all-time high in April, the highest since the start of 2022 when parachains, one of the ecosystem’s key distinguishing factors, first launched.

Meanwhile, ahead of the community vote on Polkadot’s JAM Upgrade being implemented, many parachains, including the smart contract platform Moonbeam, achieved near record highs in active users.

You can find out a full breakdown of the statistics here.

According to an analysis by blockchain research firm Messari, transactions on Polkadot also rose 48% in the last quarter. XCM messages—which Polkadot uses to communicate with blockchains which use other consensus mechanisms—were up 94% quarter-over-quarter and 314% over the past 6 months.

Asynchronous Backing comes to Relay Chain

Asynchronous Backing, a new approach to how parachain blocks are validated by the Relay Chain, has been enabled on Polkadot.

The Web3 Foundation says that the new update will allow blocks to be produced faster, boost available block space, and enable higher utilization of parachain blocks. This could help use case applications across gaming and DeFi.

Compared to traditional ‘Synchronous Backing,’ the new system may lower the risk of discarding potentially helpful block data.

With Asynchronous Backing, multiple unincluded parablocks can now exist in the Relay Chain pipeline simultaneously.

Parablocks are nuggets of transaction data which are sent from various parachains back to the Relay Chain for validation.

In traditional synchronous systems, if a block is not added immediately, it is often discarded, which can waste the network’s computing power unnecessarily.

StellaSwap gets new analytics dashboard

StellaSwap, one of the most popular DEXs for Polkadot-based tokens, is now available on Dune Analytics.

The new public dashboard will allow StellaSwap users to access key metrics about the peer-to-peer marketplace on Dune. These include daily volumes, pool breakdowns, swap volume, active accounts, and unique accounts.