Polkadot Shared Security

@Polkadot is known as a layer zero protocol that promotes interoperability and shared security among blockchains through its Relay Chain, and XCM (Cross-Chain Message). But what does "shared security" actually mean?

In #cryptocurrencies, security is measured by the economic cost required to change the official history of a blockchain. Shared security offers a solution to achieve economic scalability for blockchains.

It's crucial to consider the economic aspects that will influence the level of security

• The factors required to change the history
• The economic cost of prevention
• The probability of alteration (costs)

When blockchains are more secure, it means that they have a higher resistance to attacks like "double spending" Double Spending: The goal is to reach a consensus on the validity of transactions. However, it is possible to manipulate this system to launch an attack.

Types of Shared Security

• Inherent Shared Security: Strictly designed to offer shared security as an intrinsic feature (Polkadot).
• Shared Security via Roll-Ups: Separate security, execution, and data availability into modular components (zk-rollup and optimistic rollup).

@Polkadot aims for the multichain future by offering shared security among Parachains.

• Parachains, specialized chains, connected to the Relay Chain and benefit from shared security regardless of financial conditions.

What sets the @Polkadot ecosystem apart is that economic disparities do not impact security conditions. This is because every single parachain shares the same shared security mechanism.

The Parachain slot won by @Moonbeam in December 2021, got a record-breaking fundraising of 35,759,931 DOT (US$210,268,397). In contrast, one of the latest winning parachain slots was secured by @HashedNetwork with fundraising of 5,354 DOT (US$324,929).

Another fundamental aspect of shared security in @Polkadot is the utilization of #WebAssembly (Wasm) in defining state transition functions for each Parachain.

Validators have a critical role in ensuring the security of the Polkadot network by validating the execution of blocks and transactions.

Every validator participates in executing blocks from the Relay Chain, but only a specific subset of validators is responsible for executing blocks from Parachains. This division of responsibilities among validator subsets is referred to as Execution Sharding, and it plays a crucial role in enabling Polkadot to scale effectively.