Zeitgeist Will Migrate To The Polkadot Relay Chain

Zeitgeist is delighted to announce that we will be migrating from Kusama to the Polkadot relay chain in the coming weeks. This has been a very carefully considered move for us, and not one that we take lightly.

After recent activity amongst the Polkadot community, it’s become pretty obvious for those who pay attention that Zeitgeist was working on a Polkadot parachain slot. We are now ready to disclose that Parathread 2092 was indeed Zeitgeist, and we were thrilled to have won Polkadot’s parachain slot auction number 32. Our bid of 37,270 DOT back in November 2022 was enough to win the auction and secure us a position as a Dot parachain until November 2024.

Exhaustive Research

Before we get into the details of timeline (in light of the recent dialogue within the ecosystem), let’s focus on the why we’re doing this:

We understand this may come as a surprise to some of you, but we as a team felt that bidding for a Polkadot parachain slot amidst current market conditions was an opportunity seriously worth considering.

Our team began exploring the possibility of becoming a Polkadot parachain back in July 2022 during key executive meetings. In the course of these discussions, we recognised the commercial benefits of operating as a Polkadot parachain, and agreed to look into the feasibility of a migration from Kusama.

After exhaustive research and feasibility confirmations, we felt it would be in the best commercial interests of Zeitgeist to go ahead with a bid. Our blockchain team monitored the Polkadot auctions, and moved forward with a bid in the 32nd slot auction which began on 16 November 2022. After careful review and budgeting, we self-funded a number of bids, eventually winning the auction to secure our place at the cost of the above-mentioned 37,270 DOT.

The price of DOT at the time of the winning bid was $5.95, and because Zeitgeist keeps a portion of our treasury in DOT, it made good business sense to commit to the slot, knowing that these assets will be locked for two years. When one takes into account that parachain slots on Polkadot were costing upwards of 400,000 DOT+ in early 2022, a price below 10% of this range was extremely attractive.

Commercial Benefits

In addition to the slots being attractively affordable, the commercial benefits of being secured on the Polkadot relay chain are myriad. As a project with ambitions of being utilized by corporates around the world, it is paramount that our brand reflects the expertise and adeptness that is associated with the Polkadot emblem.

While there is absolutely no doubt in our minds that Kusama as a relay chain is more than sufficient enough for our needs, we needed to look beyond what we are doing within the silos of the Dotsama ecosystem and consider how future clientele of the Zeitgeist SDK would view our tech. It is obvious that Polkadot is the world renowned brand of the Substrate stack in the minds of such clientele, and thus the association is one that makes prudent business sense.

Further to the brand image considerations, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the suite of assets on Polkadot parachains have substantial liquidity and trading volume in comparison to their Kusama counterparts. These volumes are important for us as we begin to integrate with numerous Polkadot-based DEXs and roll out interoperable functionality with these parachains.

The sheer scale of the Polkadot environment when compared to that of Kusama’s is undeniable, and for us to tap into such a vast array of assets and software makes for an exciting prospect as we strategize the future of Zeitgeist in 2023 and beyond.

Roadmap Evolution

Moving to Polkadot was not necessarily part of our original plans as a project, but the evolution of the Dotsama ecosystem, especially considering current market conditions, gave us reason to pause and contemplate various possibilities in our roadmap. We have always communicated that we ourselves are an evolving protocol who are continually adjusting and adapting to the environment within which we operate, but remember also: we will always seek to make decisions that will ultimately benefit our own ecosystem.

As a team of blockchain developers, we remain huge “fanboys” of Kusama. It is a phenomenal relay chain, and one that we would recommend to any project seeking to leverage the power of blockchain with the efficiency and benefits that the Substrate stack offers. As an isolated ecosystem, Kusama has innumerable benefits to offer its users, and we will always recognise its position as an authority in the industry.

The Planned Migration

We plan for the migration of the Zeitgeist protocol from Kusama to Polkadot to be as smooth a process as possible. All assets and wallets will be migrated with minimal disruption to our users, and functionality should not be affected. Of course, there may be a handful of hiccups in the process, but we expect these to be few and far between.

Our team of engineers have a number of final adjustments to make before the migration happens, and we hope to have the move in full swing by March 2023. You may well have seen some of the dialogue in the ecosystem in the last few days, and this is borne out of an error in our runtime that requires Polkadot governance to mitigate. It is in essence the same issue we had with our runtime when we secured our second slot on Kusama.

Polkadot governance approvals of this nature normally take 60 days to be finalized. However, we have asked the Polkadot technical committee to fast-track this, and after some aforementioned dialogue, they have approved our request.

This means that the proposal should now be executed on 24 February, after which we will adjust our runtime and begin the process of the migration. The final adjustments will likely take a few days, and we expect to be a fully functional Polkadot parachain by March!

We encourage all users and stakeholders to keep an eye across all communication channels such as Twitter, Email, Discord and Telegram during what is an important period for us.

This is an extremely exciting time and exhilarating step for us, and we cannot wait to get stuck into this new chapter of the Zeitgeist story. We appreciate your continued support of our mission!