Polkadot's New Engine: PolkaVM Quietly Innovates the Execution Environment

In the Web3 space, Polkadot has been known for its advanced technology, but it also appears distant from users due to its complexity. Although Polkadot pioneered modular blockchains and achieved innovative features such as cross-chain interoperability, secure sharing, and quick chain deployment, it once matched Ethereum in popularity, it also faces numerous challenges beyond technology. The auction prices for Polkadot's slots are high, the total locked value of Hydration is currently only about $40 million, and although Kaito's listing once sparked heated discussions, users' understanding of its value remains unclear.

In response to the question "Do we really need so many blockchains?", PolkaVM offers a pragmatic answer: let the code run first, then discuss the value blueprint. It does not overly emphasize the "modular paradigm" or "collaborative economy", nor does it try to persuade users to become advocates for the infrastructure. Instead, PolkaVM demonstrates a back-to-basics approach by adopting the RISC-V architecture, enabling almost unmodified Solidity contracts to run on Polkadot.

PolkaVM: Reshaping the Execution Environment

PolkaVM is a next-generation execution environment created by Parity, where the core focus is not on compatibility but on the innovation of the underlying architecture. It is based on RISC-V—a modern register-based chip architecture designed to replace the traditional EVM stack logic. This change brings higher execution efficiency and lower resource consumption, while being closer to the hardware level.

The main features of PolkaVM include:

• Adopts a register architecture and 64-bit system, closer to modern CPU design, improving execution efficiency.
• Multi-dimensional Gas measurement model, supporting billing for execution time, memory usage, cross-contract calls, and ZK computations, among other aspects.
• Compatible with the Solidity toolchain, developers can directly use familiar tools such as Remix, Hardhat, and MetaMask.
• It is expected to connect with the LLVM toolchain in the future, natively supporting programming languages such as Rust and C.
• Optimize user experience by simplifying complex operations such as existence deposits.

PolkaVM has been launched on the Westend testnet (AssetHub), allowing developers to connect directly for testing.

The Practical Applications of PolkaVM

Unlike many "new virtual machines" that remain in the theoretical stage, PolkaVM has completed several key practical deployments, demonstrating its strength as a usable execution environment:

1. Uniswap V2 has been successfully deployed on the PolkaVM testnet, demonstrating its capability to handle complex AMM systems.

2. The Safe multi-signature contract is the first to achieve trustless operation on PolkaVM, demonstrating that PolkaVM can support significant on-chain fund security applications.

3. The mainstream development toolchain has been initially integrated, including Remix, Hardhat, and MetaMask, allowing developers familiar with Solidity to get started with zero barriers.

These successful cases demonstrate that PolkaVM can not only run contracts but also support important on-chain fund management and complex DeFi applications.

The Potential and Challenges of PolkaVM

Despite the promising prospects that PolkaVM has shown, it still faces some challenges:

1. The ecosystem is still in its infancy, and mainstream DeFi, NFT, and GameFi applications have not yet fully developed on PolkaVM.

2. Although the development toolchain has been initially established, it still lacks a complete official SDK, CLI tools, deployment templates, and dedicated indexing tool adaptations.

3. The incentive mechanism has not been clarified yet, but this precisely provides a first-mover advantage opportunity for small teams.

Future Outlook of PolkaVM

PolkaVM is not just an independent project; it marks the beginning of the reconstruction of the Polkadot execution layer. With the migration of relay chain functionality to the Asset Hub, Polkadot is shifting from being a technical pioneer to a more user-friendly direction.

The RISC-V foundation of PolkaVM lays the groundwork for supporting more complex on-chain business logic in the future, potentially accommodating high-performance scenarios such as AI agents and on-chain reasoning. More importantly, it provides developers with a progressive development path: starting from smart contracts, gradually migrating to dedicated independent application chains.

Overall, PolkaVM represents an important upgrade to the Polkadot ecosystem. It does not rely on new narratives but instead drives the development of Web3 through practical technological innovations. Although it is still in the early stages, the potential of PolkaVM has already emerged, making it worthy of close attention from developers and investors.