In 2025, Polkadot is crossing the watershed of its past 10 years — from 'only building infrastructure' to 'truly supporting the application era.'
Over the past decade, Polkadot has focused all its energy on the most difficult and foundational tasks: multi-chain architecture, security models, parallel scalability, Substrate/SDK engineering systems, which is what Gavin Wood referred to as 'the first ten years was about core tech.'
As the core capabilities of Polkadot 2.0 take shape, upgrades like Agile Coretime, Elastic Scaling, and Async Backing, which will be launched in phases from 2024 to 2025, will be finally integrated into the 2.0 system in SDK 2509, allowing Polkadot's throughput, confirmation speed, and block space supply to comprehensively enter a new level.
Performance issues, this can be considered as writing a good answer!
The migration in November 2025 will concentrate the underlying logic of assets, governance, staking, etc., into the new Asset Hub, upgrading it from a 'system parallel chain' to the super entry point of the ecosystem, where future REVM and PVM will operate.
According to information disclosed by Parity, REVM is expected to go live at the end of 2025. Solidity developers will be able to deploy smart contracts directly on Hub just as they do on Ethereum. This is a positive response to the years of rhetoric about the 'high development threshold of Polkadot': EVM compatibility has been thoroughly filled, and ecosystem applications now have real growth soil. Moreover, JAM is simultaneously entering the engineering implementation phase, and the architectural blueprint for Polkadot's future decade has become clear.
The technical 'second epoch' has laid the groundwork, but more important changes are actually happening within Parity itself.
Over the past decade, Parity's role has been that of an infrastructure company that 'only builds protocols, not applications.' However, as Polkadot finally acquires the capability to support large-scale applications, a question naturally arises: who will build the first batch of products truly aimed at users?
I believe this is the true turning point of the second epoch — not only a technological iteration but also a strategic shift in Parity's role from 'building the foundation' to 'leading product development in the ecosystem'.
In the second epoch, how to participate in the product era.
Polkadot officials also candidly stated in their review that this is a decade of 'building the foundations'. Technically flawless, but it has left Polkadot always in a state of 'strong foundation but weak entry' — users have no unified place to enter the ecosystem, and developers do not know which chain to deploy their applications on, further amplifying the sense of disconnection in the experience between parallel chains.
Specifically, the old Polkadot lacks a unified entry point, which structurally restricts ecosystem growth. For example:
Core logic is decentralized across multiple system chains.
Applications must rely on XCM to be composed.
Users are dispersed across different public chains, leading to broken paths and higher experience thresholds.
Each parallel chain operates independently, and traffic cannot form a scale effect.
In this context, not creating products means that the entire ecosystem remains in a 'good but fragmented' state, and will not form a true network effect. It is also easy to understand that Polkadot must create an entry point that everyone can access, allowing applications to have soil to grow.
So is now the best time to create products on Polkadot? Absolutely.
The technical conditions of Polkadot have truly matured to the point where it can support user scale and application complexity, as mentioned at the beginning:
Agile Coretime, Elastic Scaling, and Async Backing are being launched in phases from 2024 to 2025, and will be finalized as the core capabilities of Polkadot 2.0 in SDK 2509.
Assets, governance, staking, and other logic are migrated to the new Polkadot Hub, forming a unified user and execution landing point.
REVM / PolkaVM will soon be mounted on Hub, providing native carriers for both Solidity and high-performance execution environments.
Developers can deploy directly on Hub, and the overall experience is clearer and more natural than at any point in history.
Taking advantage of the momentum, the product era has officially opened.
What key products is Parity building?
1. Polkadot Mobile: next-generation mobile entry.
Parity has publicly stated that it will rebuild existing Polkadot Apps, upgrading to 'Polkadot Mobile', clearly positioning it as the main mobile entry point for the Polkadot ecosystem, rather than merely a wallet or browsing tool.
In the roadmap, this app will deeply integrate asset viewing and management, governance participation, staking, and subsequent individuality mechanisms, making the path of 'downloading an app to enter Polkadot' genuinely established, no longer relying on users to piece together wallets, browsers, and various parallel chain front ends.
2. People Chain / Individuality: Native Identity Layer
In interviews and technical articles in 2025, Gavin Wood defined Proof-of-Personhood and Project Individuality as Polkadot's 'core bets for the next stage': the goal is to distinguish 'a real person' from 'limitless robot accounts' on-chain.
This identity/personhood verification layer is designed as the cornerstone for governance, preventing Sybil attacks, enhancing security, and distributing incentives 'by person rather than by address.' The official team has clearly stated that the relevant processes will be integrated within Polkadot Mobile and coordinated with Polkadot Hub/ecosystem applications.
3. Productization of the Hub: Application and Asset Portal
After completing the migration of assets and core states, Asset Hub / Polkadot Hub is no longer just a 'system parallel chain', but is deliberately shaped into a 'portal for assets and applications':
For users, this will gradually converge token management, cross-chain assets, contract interactions, swaps, staking, and governance operations, providing a clear answer to 'where to use Polkadot'.
For developers, the accompanying documentation, metrics page, contract deployment entry, and contract calling interface of the Hub will become a default landing point, allowing applications to avoid building scattered entries across numerous parallel chains and instead rely on Hub for foundational traffic and discoverability.
4. Service layer based on JAM: medium and long-term product space.
JAM is designed as the next-generation protocol framework for Polkadot. Its design documentation and FAQ mention that JAM will support 'services', allowing various execution environments and on-chain services to run on it, rather than just a single VM.
This means that in the future, system-level products such as identity services, data availability services, and high-performance contract execution environments can be hosted on JAM, with the network providing unified scheduling and billing, offering ecosystem dApps capabilities similar to 'cloud services.' However, this area is still in the engineering promotion and phased testing stage.
Where are the real opportunities for developers?
Once the entry point is illuminated, the ecosystem can truly begin to compete, innovate, and differentiate, making opportunities for developers more tangible. The changes of the second epoch have reaggregated all of this:
Hub becomes a unified entry point.
REVM/PVM becomes a unified execution landing point.
Mobile centralizes user paths.
Individuality opens new incentive and identity scenarios.
Coretime makes scalability no longer an issue.
We have listed several obvious ecological opportunities for your reference:
1. Wallets, accounts, and user experience products.
Polkadot's 'MetaMask' and 'Phantom' still have vacancies. For example, AA wallets, hybrid account systems, abstract UI for Hub asset layers, social login, relationship graphs, etc., represent a nearly brand new blue ocean.
2. Next-generation DeFi
Based on Hub + REVM, the rebirth opportunity liquidity center is EVM compatible natively, with cross-chain combinations occurring naturally.
3. AI Agents and high-performance applications: PVM provides a new track.
On-chain reasoning, AI Agents, game logic, complex synchronization systems... this is the track that Ethereum cannot do better but Polkadot can natively support.
4. Cross-chain aggregation experience: integrating the advantages of XCM into applications.
Cross-chain routers, aggregated transactions, unified interfaces, multi-chain asset operations... Hub will allow 'cross-chain' to be used by users seamlessly for the first time.
5. Developer tools and infrastructure.
Indexing, validation, automation, deployment, monitoring, SDK, GraphQL... these all represent vast engineering space that the official team won't undertake, but the ecosystem must.
Final words.
With the core capabilities of Polkadot 2.0 taking shape, Hub migration completed, and REVM and PVM about to go live, Polkadot's infrastructure has entered a stage where it can stably support application development long-term. The focus of the second epoch is no longer on validating the underlying design itself, but on enabling these capabilities to truly generate value at the product and ecosystem levels.
In other words, the next focus will shift from 'infrastructure construction' to 'effective supply at the ecosystem level.' The new system formed by Hub, Mobile, Individuality, and REVM/PVM provides a unified landing point and growth path for ecosystem applications. The real increment will depend on whether the ecosystem can utilize these capabilities to build services and products aimed at a broader user base.
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