After the hugely successful debut of the much-awaited Parachain auctions in June this year, Kusama is set to roll out the next auction competitors. The Kusama Council has scheduled five more Parachain auctions for weeks to come, and the Polkadot community can’t wait!

While bidding participants may know the beginning and end block times, the crucial termination block inside the ending period is slated as five days. What this does is that it makes sure none of the participants can predict the termination of the auction. In essence, every project has an equal opportunity to acquire value. 

The Polkadot community should expect the first Parachain auction of the incoming round to begin on the 1st of September. As we count the weeks and days down to the next auction, let’s get to know the Kusama Parachain auction competitors worth keeping an eye out for.

#1. Centrifuge (Altair)

Altair is arguably one of the strong competitors in the next round of Parachain auction rolls into town. It describes itself as “one of the fastest spinning stars in the galaxy, and is also the bridge from Centrifuge to Kusama.” Users can tokenize and finance real-world assets (RWA) on Kusama.

Altair is the home for users in terms of tokenizing experimental assets. It blends the latest experimental features nicely with Centrifuge-built infrastructure to fund RWA. And it will manage to pull this off before they go live on the Centrifuge chain. 

Users and members should expect to use Kusama for minting non-fungible tokens (NFTs) arts and financing unexplored and obscure tokens once Centrifuge is live on Polkadot. Centrifuge (Altair), however, will need to host a Parachain loan offering (PLO) before they secure enough DOT to win an auction. 

So participants who lock DOT for the network’s Parachain slot in their crowd loan get Centrifuge tokens as a reward. Centrifuge hopes to use this reward as an incentive and compensation for holders of DOT tokens. The network plans to mint this reward until it is distributed to every participant who staked their DOT as Centrifuge seeks its Parachain slot.

#2. Calamari Network

Calamari Network is one of the unique competitors to look out for in the upcoming Parachain auctions. The network is regarded as the plug-and-play privacy-preservation protocol. It was created to service the DeFi stack on Kusama as well as the Manta Network on Polkadot.

Calamari Network is extensive on scalable privacy and interoperability. This is why its creators built it on zkSNARKs to leverage scalable privacy and on Substrate to leverage interoperability.

Calamari’s token ($KMA) is the network’s first and new community-driven deflationary utility token. It allows the generation of redemption rewards, token burns, and rebate rewards from the network’s privacy-preserving network usage. KMA’s initial distribution is at 10 billion tokens, and unless the community consumes KMAs for the crowdloans, there will be no new tokens. 

One thing is certain, and Calamari will use this KMA token to reward token holders through a rebate and redeem mechanism. In addition to that, the $KMA token also carries governance functions. The team at Calamari hopes to start its Parachain loan offering in line with the sixth Kusama Parachain auction.

#3. Kilt Protocol

KILT Protocol is the open-source fat blockchain protocol that will be competing in the next round of the Kusama Parachain auction. The blockchain protocol is for issuing claim-based revocable, anonymous, and verifiable credentials in Web 3.0. 

It also allows its end users to lay claim to arbitrary attributes of themselves. In addition to such ownership, trusted entities can certify these attributes and store claims as certificates or self-sovereign credentials.

KILT is working towards expanding and incorporating new business models for owners of trust. The reason is that trusted entities are permitted to issue out credentials in exchange for money. At the moment, KILT is preparing for the coming round of the Kusama Parachain auction with hopes of securing early slots via Kusama crowdloan.

4.5 million KILT coins of the network’s initial distribution are mapped out to encourage community participation and that they vote for KILT’s auction bid. One unique thing about this is that the reserve is designed in a way that doesn’t attract extra inflation into the KILT system.

KILT also plans to launch its Parachain with activated functionality after it secures the Kusama Parachain slot. What this means is that it will begin with staking and its initial token economy from the start.

#4. Loom Network

Although Loom has been around for a few years now and is one of the competitors in the Parachain auctions, they are newbies to the Polkadot ecosystem. The Loom Network is a multichain interoperability platform existing since early 2018. It is optimized for scaling decentralized applications (DApps) that need a fast and smooth user experience to thrive. 

New users can get on the Loom-based DApps that offer them user experience like in traditional applications. Besides impressive scalability, the Loom network provides developers around the world with superb usability. These are critical features needed in building and creating DApps that are functional and high-performing. 

The Loom Network boasts solid integrations to platforms or networks like Bitcoin, Binance Chain, Tron, and Ethereum. Such integration is vital because it permits developers to integrate assets from major chains in the crypto sphere. Besides, they could also create a DApp once and still manage to offer it to users on all platforms concurrently. 

Loom network uses a LOOM token that is proof-of-stake to secure Basechain, the network’s mainnet. Holders of this token can stake it to assist in securing Base Chain and earn rewards along the way. 

Conclusion

Parachain slot auctions are held to utilize both Kusama and Polkadot’s habit of empowering developers and egging them on to create fresh and functional crypto assets and DApps on their blockchain. 

Competing projects like Centrifuge (Altair), Kilt Protocol, Calamari Network, and Loom Network will slug it out with several other projects for a Parachain auction slot. With the successes of the first round of auctions, we can only hope this round, beginning with the sixth, promises fresh and exciting results.