Coretime

On Ethereum, you are able to access computational resources (core) by paying fee in ETH and the program that is executed is the smart contract in the EVM. The price paid to execute the same contract may vary quite significantly depending on external conditions that you have limited control on. Unpredictability in how much fees a dApp can incure over time is a known headache for dApp developers as well as users.

On Polkadot, you are able to rent a core (and very soon, multiple cores) or pay-as-you-go in DOT to execute blockchain runtime in Wasm. The differentiating feature when compared to other chains is that Polkadot has a rent control mechanism which can either increase or decrease the price each month within known bounds. This allows deployment of dApps that have a predictable fee model.

Purchase Coretime

Polkadot uses its coretime system chain to perform coretime sales. Here are some apps that allow you to make coretime purchases.

• Lastic
• RegionX

Bulk Coretime

You can check the current price for renting a core for a month on either of the apps listed above. After successfully renting the core, your parachain can start producing blocks 24/7. At the end of the rental period, you are provided with a rent-controlled rate to renew the core for another month.

On-Demand Coretime

Your parachain may not be required to produce blocks 24/7 and perhaps it is okay to produce a block every hour or at the end of the day. On the relay chain, anyone can pay the market determined on-demand block production fee and produce a block on behalf of the parachain. This option is a great choice for new parachain projects to be cost effective. If there is a lot of demand for the on-demand parachain services, it can be upgraded to use bulk coretime instead.

Coretime Secondary Markets

It is possible to purchase bulk coretime and then split the coretime into regions and sell it to parachains. Performing secondary market sales of the cores in this way will disable the rent control measures and when the core comes up for renewal, bulk coretime needs to be purchased at a market price rather than at rent controlled price.