How did Polkadot [DOT] fare in Q1 2023? Here’s everything you need to know

• Polkadot had a steady run in Q1 2023, with a 51% QoQ increase in market cap 
• Despite this, DOT recorded losses of 5.6% over the last three months

Polkadot’s [DOT] performance in the first quarter of 2023 was a mixed bag. While it forged high-profile partnerships to increase its reach, DOT failed to make a mark on the charts.

Read Polkadot’s [DOT] Price Prediction 2023-24

Consider this – While most major cryptos like Bitcoin [BTC] and Ethereum [ETH] accumulated impressive gains, DOT shed 5.6% of its value over the last three months, data from CoinMarketCap revealed. In fact, the token recorded a steeper drop last week as it fell by more than 11% to its press time price of $5.915.

Polkadot in Q1 2023

Blockchain analytics firm Messari published a detailed report on the performance of Polkadot in the first quarter (Q1) of 2023.

One of the highlights was the network’s rapidly growing developer ecosystem. Since 2018, Polkadot’s full-time developer count has risen by more than 16 times, to over 750 at the end of Q1 2023.  Polkadot’s total developer count grew by 2% year-over-year (YoY) as well.

The findings of the report were corroborated by ProofofGitHub, with the same revealing that the chain was the third most-actively developed network on 21 April.

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GitHub Daily Development Activity:

#1: 1397 Vega Protocol
#2: 775 Cardano
#3: 695 Polkadot / Kusama
#4: 639 Internet Computer
#5: 624 Status
#6: 531 Hedera
#7: 450 Decentraland
#8: 427 Cosmos
#9: 387 IOTA
#10: 372 Uniswap pic.twitter.com/ffuxZjOIUo

— ProofofGitHub (@ProofofGitHub) April 21, 2023

As far as financials are concerned, Polkadot noted a steady run in Q1 of 2023 – With a 51% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) increase in market cap and a 28% QoQ revenue growth.

The report also underlined the growing adoption of the cross-consensus message format (XCM) as the number of XCM channels increased 60% QoQ. XCM, introduced in May 2022, greatly aided Polkadot’s interoperability with parachains and other consensus-driven systems.

The total number of parachains hit 41, with six new additions in Q1. However, Polkadot’s parachain slot auctions registered a sustained decline in total DOT bonded. Parachains are a type of blockchain with enhanced capabilities, including interaction with the relay chain and inter-parachain communication.

Expansion of the NFT landscape

Polkadot’s NFT ecosystem has continued to make giant strides.

For instance – Mandala Metaverse announced the release of its Cryptonauts NFT collection on the Astar Network, the decentralized application layer of Polkadot.

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1/ Mandala Metaverse (@enterthemandala), a cross-platform game and interoperable metaverse, has chosen @AstarNetwork for its NFT drop, leveraging features that are available #OnlyOnPolkadot. pic.twitter.com/cnK3Zcf4AG

— Polkadot (@Polkadot) April 21, 2023

Its booming landscape was underlined by Santiment’s datasets, with the same showing a phenomenal increase in NFT sales volume and transactions on the Polkadot network throughout April.

Source: Santiment

Realistic or not, here’s DOT market cap in BTC‘s terms

DOT’s bearish sentiment gains strength

On the derivatives front, the number of open trading positions, or Open Interest (OI), fell by 1.89% in the last 24 hours.

Moreover, funding rates, which represented the cost of holding bullish long or bearish short positions, turned negative on many exchanges. This is a sign that more investors are now positioned for price losses.

Source: Coinglass