Polkadot (DOT) has been raising eyebrows for the past couple of months equally the interoperability-focused altcoins has gained 625% in the past three months.

The promise that interoperability between blockchains will be a feasible solution to the high Ethereum gas fees plaguing the crypto market has made Polkadot's development of parachains attractive and the number of projects choosing to build on DOT continues to grow alongside it'due south popularity as a staking platform.

Polkadot parachains operate similarly to the Ethereum 2.0 sharding proposal, which creates independent blockchains built for a particular purpose. Many projects building on Polkadot, like Moonbeam, Equilibrium, and Acala, develop their own parachains where the project's tokens would act every bit a native currency used to pay for transactions.

DOT token cost, USDT at Binance. Source: TradingView

According to data from Staking Rewards, over 63% of DOT coins in circulation are locked upward in staking mechanisms. Meanwhile, the progress of Polkadot'due south evolution seems ahead of its competitors. Co-ordinate to PolkaProject, a site which tracks development activeness, there are currently over 370 projects actively edifice on the platform.

Polkadots aggressive pace of development and the looming expectation of the official parachain mainnet launch in 2021, DOT cost has seen immense growth in its futures contracts.

DOT futures aggregate open interest. Source: Bybt.com

Over the by ii months, DOT's $73-million aggregate futures open involvement grew by 690% to $575 one thousand thousand, becoming the fourth-largest derivatives market behind Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Cardano (ADA).

Surprisingly, Litecoin (LTC), which held tertiary place since the dawn of futures contracts, lost its incumbent position. Moreover, data signal that this was non purely a technical adjustment, as Polkadot's on-chain and trading metrics vastly outperform Litecoin's.

It is worth noting that DOT'southward open up interest faced a 23% cut between Feb. 21 and 27, as its cost plunged 27% to $28.

DOT trading book and on-chain metrics strengthen

Regardless of the cost movement, low trading activity reflects a lack of interest from traders and a reduced inflow from new entrants.

LTC, ADA, DOT ten-twenty-four hours boilerplate trading volume, USD. Source: TradingView

Although starting from a much lower base of operations three months ago, DOT's trading book soared in January, while Litecoin dropped by fifty% after peaking at a $13 billion daily average. Meanwhile, DOT'southward aggregate spot trading volume at exchanges has grown to $four.3 billion, a 660% increase.

DOT daily active addresses. Source: polkadot.subscan.io

Polkadot's on-chain metrics also provide insight into its rise use, growing from 1,600 daily active addresses to 6,000. The 275% growth for a network whose mainnet launch was less than eight months ago seems impressive.

It might take some time for Polkadot's on-chain metrics to get closer to Litcoin's and Cardano'southward hundreds of thousands of agile addresses simply this is not problematic considering how nascent its technology is.

The VORTECS™ score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market atmospheric condition derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, contempo price movements and Twitter activeness.

VORTECS™ score (green) vs. DOT price. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro

In add-on to surging open interest at major derivatives exchanges, the VORTECS™ score has risen to lxxx on February. 26 and Feb. 27. Over the following v days, DOT price managed to rally by another 13%.

Polkadot'south "flippening" of Litecoin'southward futures open interest signals that investors are far more than interested in its scaling and interoperability potential, every bit opposed to Litecoin'southward narrow-focused search for privacy through the integration of the MimbleWimble protocol.

Every bit for the relatively small number of DOT's active addresses, this should exist monitored going forwards, but as of now it shouldn't concord back the token's price appreciation.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the autho r and do non necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading motion involves risk. Yous should conduct your own research when making a decision.