Substrate imbues Polkadot with a range of features that make it the ideal platform for building DeFi solutions on, including:
Speed: Polkadot has a block time of just six seconds and most transactions are considered final after less than a minute. This makes it ideal for building applications where speed is critical — like decentralized exchange (DEX) platforms.
Scalability: Polkadot can currently handle more than 1,000 transactions per second (tps), compared to just ~25 tps for Ethereum at its peak under ideal conditions. According to Polkadot’s founder Gavin Wood, this could eventually reach as high as 1 million tps, with the use of sharding and optimized parachains.
Interoperability: Arguably Polkadot’s biggest advantage is its interoperability. This means applications built on Polkadot and its parachains can easily interact with those on other blockchains (including Ethereum). Producing the first interoperable DeFi ecosystem.