The Polkadot platform team stated their willingness to start auctions for the sale of slots for launching parachains on the experimental Kusama network from June 15, 2021.
Kusama started operations in 2019. According to a blog post, the first active parachain called Shell launched in May 2021. The developers upgraded it to Statemine, the Statemint equivalent of the Polkadot mainnet.
Statemine supports several features including:
storage and transfer of native Kusama tokens (KSM); transfers of permitted fungible assets such as non-algorithmic stablecoins; free creation, release, and transfer of both fungible assets and NFT.
“Statemine's usefulness as a standalone chain is significant, but as a community member and resource, its value increases exponentially,” the statement said.
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To create this community, the team developed the concept of Parachain Slot Auctions - "a market-efficient way to select the parachains to add to the Kusama network."
The auctions are supposed to start on June 15th. Participants will place bets indicating the range of continuous slot rentals (up to eight periods of six weeks) and the number of KSMs they are willing to block for that period.
Each auction will last a week, with five planned initially.
The closing selection of the parachains will be made by the Kusama Council and KSM holders. Community-trusted projects will be prioritized, said Polkadot creator Gavin Wood.