The start of 2022 at Polkadex

Parachain auction, Crowdloan, PolkaIDO public beta, Orderbook private beta… all this and more in just over a month. 2022 = year of Polkadex

The start of 2022 has been an absolute whirlwind at Polkadex. Kicking off with the launch of PolkaIDO to the public testnet all the way to the beta tester launch of Polkadex Orderbook, January and February have been crazy so far. Combine all that with the launch of the Polkadex Crowdloan and Polkadexers have got themselves quite a start to the year. With so much going on, it can be hard to keep up with it all. That’s why we’ve put together this highlight reel of the past month and a half. Catch up now!

What a start of the year for the Polkadex network! Between expanding to 140 active validators (27% growth over the last month and a half) and reaching over 1,350 nominators (24% growth), the network seems to be growing faster than ever! In fact, the total amount of PDEX staked on the Polkadex network has increased around 47% since the start of the year and stands at almost 1.5 million PDEX! Also important to note is the fact that the amount of PDEX migrated over from Ethereum is now over 1.1 million. More PDEX staked means the annual percentage yield (APY) for staking PDEX is going down. However, the APY projection is still at an awesome 45.5%, which means we are still in the extra-high yield early days. In case you have not done so already, here are guides to migrate your PDEX and start staking. For anybody looking to transfer their native tokens, we made this short but helpful tutorial to help you unlock your PDEX once 28 days have passed after your latest migration.

The Polkadex developer team hit the ground running in 2022. Not only did Trail of Bits begin the final audit of Polkadex Orderbook and its components January 3rd, PolkaIDO was released to the public testnet just two days after that! Between working on PolkaIDO tester feedback and working with the audit team to resolve bugs, the Polkadex dev team also had time to work on preparing Polkadex for the parachain auctions. Together with the Parity team, our devs prepared the Polkadex network to become the first ever seedling parachain candidate. They also worked with our Launch Partners Equilibrium, Bifrost, and Parallel Finance to make sure they were all set to support the Polkadex Crowdloan.

While launching PolkaIDO to the testnet and working on the Polkadex Crowdloan launch would seem to be all-consuming, the Polkadex dev team was also able to dedicate a big chunk of their time to development on Polkadex Orderbook. In a huge milestone moment, Polkadex Orderbook was launched to private beta testers on February 4th. The dev team has already released a second iteration with an improved UI since then as it also continues to work through the feedback from our stellar group of beta testers. The next version of the Orderbook beta will comprise the trusted execution environment (TEE) connected to the blockchain (Polkadex testnet): our most important milestone yet.

When we said 2022 would be the year of Polkadex, we meant it. Coinpedia featuring Polkadex as one of the top DEX’s to watch in 2022 proved the point further. And that’s just the start of all the media features in 2022 so far. Thanks to the launch of the Polkadex Crowdloan, Polkadex has also been featured on articles by CoinMarketCap, CryptoDaily, Yahoo Finance, Coinquora, and more. Most recently, The Street quoted Gautham as he augured the coming of a new generation of decentralized exchanges.

On the video side of things, we have to thank CryptoWise, KIR Finance, and Minus Wells for their wonderful, can’t-miss interviews with Vivek. The launch of the Polkadex Crowdloan was also covered in videos by KryptosChain, KIR Finance, Minus Wells, and more YouTubers.

Last but not least, Vivek was hosted by the Bifrost team for an exciting Twitter Spaces AMA in which he spoke a little bit about the growth phase set to take place post-launch!

It’s always better when we’re together

- Jack Johnson

If there’s anything to take away from the start of 2022, it’s that Polkadex is all about partnerships. To start off the year, Polkadex was selected for an early access test drive of CoinMarketCap‘s newest live chat feature.

Most of the partnerships we announced so far in 2022 originated as a way to support the Polkadex Crowdloan. For example, our Launch Partners (Equilibrium, Bifrost, and Parallel Finance) provide support for the Polkadex Crowdloan and provide liquid DOT and extra rewards to participants who contribute directly through them. Our exchange partners, KuCoin, Gate.io, and MEXC Global allow their users to contribute to the Polkadex Crowdloan without leaving their accounts. Meanwhile, our wallet partners like Nova, Fearless, and Talisman give Crowdloan participants a friendlier user interface through which they can contribute their DOT. We even partnered with data providers like Subvis.io to help participants track all the Polkadex Crowdloan developments!

We also announced a partnership with Simplex that makes buying PDEX easier than ever. You can now buy PDEX directly with over 100 fiat currencies!

Last but not least, in great news for all Polkadex network participants, we partnered with Staking Rewards! This means validators and nominators (aka anybody staking on Polkadex) can now analyze their staking strategies, track the network’s nodes, and calculate their PDEX rewards in one easy-to-use platform.

It’s nice to know that you can rely on your friends during the moments you need them most. The Polkadex community could not have been more supportive throughout the start of 2022... It is the year of Polkadex after all. Thank you all for all the support. It was nice to hang out with you all in the different AMAs we have done over the past month and a half. It really helps to feel your support in live events. It really makes it feel like together we are unstoppable.

How unstoppable? Here’s how the Polkadex community has grown since the start of the year:

• The Polkadex Crowdloan has reached over 125k DOT contributed. That’s over 2 million USD in support of Polkadex’s parachain!
• We distributed PolkaIDO test tokens to almost 2,000 public testers!
• The Polkadex Twitter page added 1.3k new followers to reach 61.3k.
• The Polkadex official subreddit grew 7.6% to reach 1,500 members, while the YouTube channel grew by 7.2% as it actually surpassed 1,500 subscribers.
• There was a 16% increase in the amount of Polkadex followers on Linkedin and an 8% increase in the Polkadex Medium follower count, which is close to 4k followers.
• The recently-launched Polkadex local Telegram communities (Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Indian, and Turkish) grew by 24% and now total over 5,500 members.
• The Polkadex Discord server continues to become the ‘main square’ for Polkadex town. Since January 1st, the member count has increased 20% and is around 2,400.

The Polkadex community also grew in a different way in the start of 2022 with the incorporations of Dagmara Handzlik and Faisal Ahmed to the Polkadex team. As Head of Marketing, Dagmara is a seasoned fintech marketing pro ready to steer the Polkadex ship through the next phase of growth. Meanwhile, Faisal is a talented Rust engineer ready to take on one of the most important aspects of Polkadex: the interoperability layer.

The year of Polkadex is here and things are getting hotter than ever. Here’s what’s coming next:

⚫️ Orderbook beta improvements

⚫️ Interoperability layer released to beta testers

⚫️ Orderbook public testnet release

⚫️ More PDEX exchange listings and native hardware wallet support

Between securing a parachain slot and getting closer to launching Polkadex products, the rest of the year is set to be filled with milestones. Follow the channels below so you don’t miss out on any updates from the Polkadex team!

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