Polkadot Crowdloan

Polkadot Crowdloan alludes to the most common way of staking Polkadot (DOT) tokens to support specific projects in the Polkadot Slot Auction. In return, participants can receive rewards from the projects.
Polkadot (DOT) is an open-source protocol that permits different blockchains to exchange data and applications. In the Polkadot ecosystem, there are two types of blockchains. The fundamental chain is called the Relay Chain, while parallel blockchains are each called a parachain. You can think of Relay Chain as the core of Polkadot that can interface different parachains. Like Ethereum Plasma chains, Parachains can deal with transactions freely of the Relay Chain. This permits Parachains to significantly improve blockchain scalability.
To interface parachains to the Relay Chain, parachain projects need to lease a parachain space through the Parachain Slot Auction. Projects can bid for a space in the auction by staking DOT, the native token of Polkadot. Projects that will stake the most DOT tokens can turn into a Polkdot parachain and lease the opening for 12 to 96 weeks.
To gain more DOT tokens for the bidding, parachain groups can utilize Polkadot Crowdloan to get DOT from the community. Crowdloan is a crowdsourcing system that permits participants to support specific parachain projects by staking DOT. In a crowdloan campaign, participants that stake DOT can receive rewards from the project. These rewards can take many forms, for example, tokens from the parachain they support. When they take part in the crowdloan, the marked DOT will be locked up in the project's opening auction bid. In the event that the project wins the bidding, it can lease an opening to interface its parachain to the Relay Chain. The DOT tokens obtained from the crowdloan will be locked into the parachain space for the whole lease period (between 12 to 96 weeks).