Polkadot has always been a bustling restaurant. From simplified Web3 experiences to real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platforms, it offers a menu to suit every taste.

However, the blockchain ecosystem still faces challenges such as high costs, complexity in creating parachains, limited interaction between parachains despite existing communication protocols, and auction-based parachain slot acquisitions that are both costly and time-limited.

That’s why the Polkadot community rejoiced when the next steps for the ecosystem were made public in a technical paper (called the JAM Gray Paper) at the Token2049 conference in April 2024. The “Gray Paper” by Polkadot founder Gavin Wood takes a significant step forward in positioning Polkadot as an operating system on which anything can be run, by proposing Join-Accumulate Machine (JAM) as a possible future direction for the current Relay Chain protocol.

Polkadot’s on-chain transactions involve each parachain performing calculations independently and sending the results to the Relay Chain for verification. Relay Chain serves as a base layer through which parachains and related decentralized applications (DApps) connect and communicate. It provides security and transaction certainty to parachains by providing the opportunity to switch between chains.

JAM, on the other hand, offers a hybrid approach that combines the strengths of Polkadot and Ethereum. “We provide a comprehensive and formal description of Jam, a protocol that combines elements of both Polkadot and Ethereum,” the introduction to the Gray Article states:

“In a single coherent model, JAM combines a global singular permissionless object environment, much like the smart contract environment pioneered by Ethereum, and secure sideband computation over a scalable network of nodes pioneered by Polkadot.”

The main tasks of the JAM upgrade will be to ensure the integrity of transactions and support Turing-complete calculations. The technical aspects detailed by Wood also aim to increase efficiency while keeping operational costs to a minimum. To increase the adoption of blockchain as a trusted infrastructure, JAM aims to increase compatibility and accessibility by creating a simpler platform that makes it easier for users and developers to participate.

Polkadot relies on transaction processing, where each transaction is individually verified by validators and included in blocks.

There are no traditional transactions with JAM. Instead, all transactions are permissionless and initially run through a Refine phase. Adding a new service on the chain is possible by specifying the Refine, Accumulate and onTransfer entry points. In the refine phase, work packages, including transaction and blockchain data, are accepted and output is produced.

The accumulate function takes the output and integrates it into the chain state. OnTransfer, on the other hand, enables switching services within six seconds of transaction execution time.

Thanks to its permissionless design, JAM allows code to be distributed and executed for a fee based on the computational resources used, similar to Ethereum’s gas system. It differs from other smart chains by working transaction-free with the above-mentioned system.

DOT remains the primary currency within the JAM framework. It will continue to be used to pay fees, participate in governance and staking, and strengthen the ecosystem.

Published a decade after Gavin Wood’s Ethereum Yellow Paper, Gray Paper offers a new vision and direction for the future of parachains. Although still in the research phase, the new framework offers the community and developers a “pay-as-you-go” model to access Polkadot, one of the most populous blockchain ecosystems with the potential to turn it into a supercomputer where anything can be built and run.