What Does Polkadot Mean?
Polkadot is a sharded blockchain protocol that lets multiple blockchains communicate and work together efficiently, allowing them to split heavy workloads and prevent bottlenecks. At its core, Polkadot protocol is a translation architecture that allows users to combine, decentralize, and scale blockchains as needed. Since networks comprised of a single blockchain are limited in the number of transactions they can process in a set period of time, they were impossible to implement into real-world applications without the use of Polkadot.
Techopedia Explains Polkadot
Polkadot protocol is what allowed blockchain technology to move from small-scale projects to larger, real-world applications. Previously, each blockchain worked independently. If the demand for one increases to where a single chain could no longer handle the influx of transaction requests, there would be a correlative increase in wait-time and transaction fees.