Polkadot’s evolution toward asynchronous backing: The journey to 1,000 parachains

Polkadot (DOT), an avant-garde interoperability network, is set to undergo transformative expansion, with plans to enhance its ecosystem by introducing the asynchronous backing update.

Currently, the ecosystem accommodates a limit of 100 parachains—individual blockchains interlinked within Polkadot’s structure.

Yet, the core developers are ambitiously pushing towards a future where this number could burgeon to 1,000 parachains. This amplification isn’t just about numbers—it’s about harnessing technology to redefine scalability in the world of blockchain.

Central to this ambitious plan is an update named “asynchronous backing.” Delving into the mechanics, this update is not just a minor tweak. It’s slated to slash the parachain block time by 50%—from a current 12 seconds to a brisk six seconds. Furthermore, it’s set to enhance the block space for each block by a staggering 5-10 times its current size.

Sophia Gold, the engineering lead at Parity, explained its significance by stating that asynchronous backing facilitates “flexible scheduling for our future scaling work through elastic scaling and instantaneous coretime.”

She further elaborated on the grand vision for Polkadot, pointing to a credible roadmap that envisions the support of 1,000 parachains and over a million transactions every second. Gold stated that Polkadot is expecting to catapult its number of validators to around 1,000 by the end of 2024, marking it as “the most significant evolution of parachain consensus since its inception nearly two years prior.”

In terms of its deployment, the forthcoming release of asynchronous backing is on the horizon for Polkadot’s Rococo testnet. This was revealed by Parity Technologies, a frontrunner in its contributions to Polkadot, at the sub0 developer conference held in Lisbon. As for its mainnet release, it remains a watch-this-space situation.