Polkadot ($DOT), a blockchain network often referred to as a “blockchain of blockchains,” has recently surpassed Cardano ($ADA) in terms of development activity.
Polkadot’s development activity, along with that of its pre-production network Kusama, was superior to that of the smart contract platform Cardano over the last 30 days, according to data shared by on-chain analytics firm Santiment.
It’s worth noting that development activity is a metric that measures development activity in projects’ public GitHub repositories and excludes work in private repositories.
Santiment tracks development events rather than just GitHub commits because, according to the company, its methodology “successfully avoids” specific pitfalls, such as projects forking others in order to “inherit” their commits and contributions.
An “event” is a platform action such as pushing a commit, creating an issue, creating a pull request, forking the repository, and so on.
A simple count of total commits would then not accurately reflect the activity of a developer who created a fork, because they would not be responsible for the original team’s work. A fork counts as one event in Santiment’s “events” metric.
Cardano came in third place in terms of development activity, but it led the ranking last year. By market capitalization, it continues to outperform larger cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum ($ETH) and Bitcoin ($BNB).
Other notable cryptocurrencies involved included Decentraland ($MANA), Status ($SNT), Cosmos ($ATOM), Filecoin ($FIL), and Internet Computer ($ICP).
Polkadot’s active user numbers increased 300% during last year’s cryptocurrency market rout, according to CryptoGlobe. Polkadot’s main blockchain, known as the relay chain, does not support smart contracts, but other blockchains linked to it do.
As a result, Polkadot is expected to grow into a cryptocurrency ecosystem that competes with other smart contract networks such as Ethereum, the BNB Chain, and others. It was launched in 2020 and includes a number of technical features that will assist it in reaching its goal.
DOT is the Polkadot network’s native cryptocurrency and its governance token. According to CryptoCompare, DOT holders can stake their tokens to vote on network upgrades and help decide Polkadot’s future by actively participating in its governance.
Notably, according to CryptoCompare data, both ADA and DOT have had similar performances over the last 30 days, with the former rising 43.2% and the latter rising 41%.
