Parity's strategic shift: from infrastructure provider to Web3 product builder

Over the past twenty-four months, Polkadot has faced a difficult crossroads: its blockchain technology reached a world-class level, but the real application ecosystem is just beginning to take off. Beyond the decentralized finance segment, progress in other Web3 spaces moves at a snail’s pace. External developers have not built on Polkadot with the expected intensity, creating a bottleneck in ecosystem expansion.

This reality changed when Gavin Wood returned to Parity as strategic leader. The decision was decisive: if the market does not build Web3 applications on this infrastructure, Parity will have to do it themselves.

This is not about creating simple demos. It is a fundamental strategic pivot: moving from “Parity develops infrastructure, the ecosystem builds applications” to “Parity prototypes products that genuinely replace Web2 services, validating in the field whether Polkadot’s technology delivers on its promises.”

Why the External Developer Model Failed

Pierre Aubert, Vice President of Engineering at Parity, was clear in his diagnosis: two years of third-party bets simply did not work as expected.

“Twenty-four months ago, we assumed Parity would build the blockchain infrastructure layer and external developers would bring applications,” Aubert explained. “The reality was different. Now, our plan is to prototype some small applications internally, using this decentralized architecture in our own systems — what is known as ‘dogfooding’ — to demonstrate that it is indeed viable.”

The shift in perspective includes reimagining everyday scenarios. For example, at the Web3 Summit, Parity was still buying tickets through traditional Web2 providers and validating access with centralized systems. These are exactly the points where decentralization could intervene.

The Hidden Advantages of Decentralization

Pierre’s argument goes beyond technical efficiency: “If centralized systems meet your current needs, there is no immediate reason to change. But in access control, the advantages are obvious.”

For example, a hotel card that multiple people can easily copy is a security bottleneck. In a decentralized Web3 system, only the user can generate their own access certificate, eliminating that vulnerability vector.

Then there is the issue of privacy. Traditional web services constantly leak data: “Every six months, some company suffers a hack and my address, passwords, and banking information are exposed,” Aubert noted. “Polkadot should offer ‘security by default’: because your data belongs to you.”

A ticket buyer could prove their residence using zero-knowledge proofs without revealing their exact address. Even if the system were compromised, sensitive information would remain protected. “Although systems are very mature today, if they can be decentralized, they will be better and more secure,” he concluded.

How Parity Improved Its Internal Productivity

Since Aubert took on the role of Vice President of Engineering, he has implemented basic but profound organizational changes. “Nothing complicated,” he clarified. “Just establishing standardized processes, clarity of responsibilities, and fair evaluation criteria.”

The result was remarkable: productivity skyrocketed.

According to his observation, engineers thrive in environments with clear rules and fairness. “If you earn more than me, it’s because you are truly better. This transparency is what works,” he affirmed.

His approach prioritizes results over apparent effort. “Some people work hard and make it obvious, but do not generate results. Others work smart, maybe only twenty hours a week, but achieve real impact. That’s what we value,” he explained.

The most common problem when an engineer does not produce results is not personal but management-related: vague objectives, lack of clarity about responsibilities, and absence of a defined decision chain. “Clarity is the most important. A responsible person should be able to decide: ‘Are we going left or right?’ Once established, the team moves forward without friction.”

Polkadot Hub: Product Success, Process Lessons

Was Polkadot Hub a success? “Yes and no,” Aubert responded diplomatically.

As a product, the final result is solid. But the path revealed significant engineering errors.

Initially, the team chose PVM for its superior performance. After a year, they discovered an unexpected bottleneck: most large Ethereum smart contracts did not work on PVM.

“We underestimated the complexity of the EVM ecosystem,” he admitted. “Things like testing frameworks (Anvil), Gas allocation… all required porting EVM support to the system, greatly complicating the project.”

The lesson was brutal but clarifying: before starting, you must write and think deeply. In the crypto industry, many say “It doesn’t matter, just do it!” Every time Aubert hears that, he asks for a document. “Many things that seem simple end up being complex, and the project extends beyond expectations.”

The Dual Strategy: EVM First, PVM Later

For Polkadot Hub, the strategy now is pragmatic: the major Ethereum DeFi protocols will be deployed first on EVM. It makes sense: these projects will not gain significant performance advantages using PVM.

“Their contracts basically read a balance, execute logic, write the result. The bottleneck is in data read/write, not computation,” Pierre clarified. “EVM is sufficient for them.”

PVM shines in compute-intensive tasks. In the future, operations that today occur off-chain could happen on-chain: real-time ZK-SNARK calculations, for example.

“There are many things you can do in PVM that you cannot in EVM. This benefits the crypto ecosystem: putting more logic on-chain reduces strange off-line practices and dependence on third-party oracles,” he noted.

The Decentralized Stack: Computing, Storage, Notifications

Gavin drives product iteration cycles every two weeks. These prototypes will typically use smart contracts, although some services (storage, notifications) will probably be independent parachains.

In computing: Polkadot already has a mature system.

In storage: It is the most complex task. Parity is developing on-chain integrated storage, but other teams are also working on this: DataHaven (from the ecosystem), Eiger (low-level primitives), Moonbeam, and JamDA.

“Several storage solutions will probably coexist,” Aubert predicted. “We need cheap decentralized storage for photos, and also fast storage for frequent reads/writes but small data volumes.”

JamDA would function as temporary storage (data expires in 28 days if not renewed), while systems like Filecoin could serve as long-term storage. The key difference with IPFS: “IPFS does not guarantee availability. You upload a document but cannot guarantee it will remain readable in the future.”

Eventually, the entire stack will be protected by Polkadot’s security, but initially, existing systems could be used as a transitional risk calculator.

In notifications: The goal is to replace centralized servers that today act as intermediaries connecting users behind firewalls.

“The challenge is decentralizing that function without traceable metadata. In systems like Signal, others know I am chatting, but not with whom. In our system, even that should not be visible,” Pierre described.

The Final Goal: The Decentralized Cloud

Essentially, Parity is rebuilding very common Web2 systems — computing, storage, notifications, identity — under a decentralized architecture.

“Step by step, we are building a ‘cloud’ or ‘server’ decentralized. All components are gradually refined,” Aubert summarized.

This is no small task. It determines whether Polkadot can claim its position in the next era of the crypto ecosystem.