Polkadot, which has formally introduced smart contracts, has posted early results below expectations. A week after the smart contract feature officially launched on Jan. 27 local time, the number of deployed contracts stood at 19. It is a very low figure compared with the early days of Ethereum or Solana.

The market has assessed the response as somewhat surprising, given Polkadot has long been in the spotlight for scalability and modularity. In particular, Polkadot has been seen as a platform suited to decentralised application, or dapp, development through its parallel-chain structure and cross-chain features. That has prompted a string of comments that it has fallen short of expectations in terms of real-world use.

In response, the Polkadot development team said, "Early on-chain data is hard to attach much meaning to," and added, "The smart contract feature will be gradually expanded through various ecosystem integrations and partnerships." It was interpreted as emphasising long-term development potential rather than short-term performance.

Polkadot is also pushing an expansion strategy based on Ethereum Virtual Machine, or EVM, compatibility and ink!, its proprietary contract platform. Alongside providing developer-friendly tools, it plans to raise usage by attracting new dapps and integrating external protocols.