The Polkadot community has approved the Join-Accumulate Machine (JAM) Protocol upgrade in an almost unanimous vote, with backing from over 31 million DOT tokens.
The Polkadot team received the JAM Protocol proposal in early May, along with reasons why it should replace the existing Polkadot Relay Chain, presented in a Gray Paper.
Polkadot Community Passes JAM Protocol Upgrade
The Polkadot team announced the news on social media platform X shortly after the Polkadot platform celebrated its fourth anniversary. Polkadot founder Gavin Wood introduced the upgrade’s Gray paper at the Token2049 crypto conference. The ratification of the JAM Protocol signifies the Polkadot community’s willingness to accept and oversee the JAM upgrade under the Technical Fellowship’s supervision. However, no immediate changes are expected.
According to Wood, the upgrade is a significant milestone in Polkadot’s evolution. By replacing the existing relay chain with a more modular and minimalistic design, it will bring greater efficiency and improvements to the network.
“@polkadot community has ratified #JAM as its next major protocol evolution with a near-unanimous governance vote. Work on getting the Graypaper to v1.0 continues.”
A Long Drawn Process
The JAM Protocol was approved in several stages, including proposal submission, community discussion, and voting. The Polkadot community took its time evaluating the upgrade’s impact and considering the potential benefits and risks. The JAM upgrade will be closely monitored to ensure it delivers the anticipated benefits.
Greater Efficiency And Flexibility
The JAM Gray Paper was unveiled in Dubai and combines elements from Polkadot and Ethereum. The upgrade introduces a global singleton permissionless object environment similar to Ethereum’s smart contract environment. This comes with secure sideband computation that is parallelized over a scalable node network. JAM guarantees seamless compatibility for developers who use Substrate for blockchain development and deployment. This is facilitated by parachains specifically designed to support Substrate-based blockchains. JAM operates exclusively with DOT, eliminating the requirement to issue new tokens.
This helps simplify interactions while leveraging Polkadot’s existing infrastructure. Polkadot has also introduced the JAM Implementer’s Prize, a 10 million DOT reward pool, to encourage the creation of implementations in different programming languages to create a robust foundation for the ecosystem.
Four Years Of Polkadot
Polkadot celebrated its fourth anniversary on 26th May. Since its genesis block, Polkadot has become one of the most prominent blockchain networks designed to provide speed and scalability. The protocol’s governance token is DOT, which it asserts is not a security because it has evolved into software. This has helped distinguish the token from competitors that have come under intense scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission. DOT remains among the few digital assets that have not been classified as a security by the SEC.
Polkadot has seen considerable activity over the past few months, with the team announcing the launch of the highly anticipated Asynchronous Backing upgrade. The upgrade enables a more optimized approach to how the Relay Chain validates parachain blocks.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
