Relay Chain

November 21, 2023 - Around 2 mins mins to read

Understanding the Relay Chain

The Relay Chain is the central chain in the Polkadot network, which is an architecture that connects specialized blockchains and public blockchains in a unified network. It is designed to be a diverse multi-chain and translation architecture.

The main purpose of the Relay Chain is to coordinate the overall system and the connected parachains. Parachains are individual layer 1 blockchains that operate simultaneously on the network. However, the Relay Chain has limited functionality and does not support smart contracts.

To validate the Relay Chain, all validators of Polkadot stake the network’s native DOT tokens. The architecture allows for various transaction types that enable validators to interact with governance mechanisms, parachain auctions, and nominated proof-of-stake (NPoS).

Polkadot has the ability to support multiple execution slots, similar to scores on a CPU. Each slot can run one process at a time. Polkadot utilizes two subscription models, namely parachains and parathreads, to facilitate these slots. Parachains have dedicated slots for their chains and run continuously, while parathreads share slots among a group and are only called upon occasionally, resulting in less frequent execution.

As a result, most of the computation within the Polkadot network is delegated to specific parachain or parathread implementations that can handle specific use cases. Polkadot imposes no constraints on what parachains can do, except that they must be able to generate a proof that validators assigned to the parachain can validate.