News from the Finders Program (September 15th to September 21st)

News found by the community. Curated by the community. Backed by OpenGov.

Written by yay.oi

News

• With the passing of Referendum 1161, Polkadot parachain auctions have ceased and Agile Coretime is live! Coretime sales commenced at block 22602000, just after 09:00 UTC on September 19th 2024.
• Thanks to Pull Request 398, implemented in Polkadot Runtime 1.3.0, base fees on all System Chains have been reduced by 50%, resulting in USDT transfers on Asset Hub now costing less than $0.0050.
• In the final ever Polkadot parachain auction, multi-chain lending platform Kylix Finance wins Auction 81 with a self-funded bid of 10K DOT.
• Polkadot Roots is a new Dot Events Bounty initiative aiming to build grassroots communities, providing community members tools, resources, and support to host engaging meetups that showcase Polkadot's vision and technology.
• PolkadotKit, a project by Finsig, has received a Web3 Foundation Decentralized Futures grant to develop native light client packages for iOS and Android. This will allow Smoldot to be directly integrated into mobile apps, removing the need for intermediary layers and fostering more secure and efficient decentralized applications.
• The Web3 Foundation has awarded a Decentralized Futures grant to blockchain consultancy and infrastructure builder Deep Ink Ventures. They plan to continue their work using their decentralized, community-driven model of venture building, and aim to attract more startup funding from VCs, angel investors, and businesses.
• Peaq announces their significant contribution as an anchor LP to the Borderless USD $100M DePIN III Fund, which will support the expansion of DePIN ecosystems.
• Omnichain interoperability protocol LayerZero has integrated Peaq, giving their DePINs the ability to connect with over 80 blockchains, providing access to cross-chain interoperability and liquidity, and facilitating easier project migrations.
• Enterprise blockchain solutions provider H3aven has partnered with Tanssi and will be leveraging their infrastructure to provide customizable blockchain solutions for their clients. This partnership will free up additional resources for them to focus on scaling and customization of their ecosystem, and enhancing user experience.
• Applications for Cohort Three of Decentralized Voices are open, but this time expect some significant changes. DV delegates will be delegated voting power on both Kusama and Polkadot,and the number of delegates will be reduced to five. The length of delegation is being increased from three to four months, and at its conclusion, delegates will be awarded 3500 DOT for their service.
• Amforc is requesting 65K DOT to cover transaction fees and existential deposits to showcase the scalability of Polkadot by spamming the Relay Chain to maximum capacity for a period of 30 minutes. At least 80% of the DOT requested will be returned directly to the treasury through transaction fees, with the effective cost to the treasury estimated to be 10.2K DOT.
• Referendum 1162, to set up an on-chain Authority to distribute free .DOT usernames for users of the new Polkadot app, contained a wallet address error. Voters are kindly requested to resubmit their votes to Referendum 1177.
• Due to a mistake in sale price units, the base price of coretime on Polkadot is 1 nanodot rather than 10 DOT. Whitelisted Caller Referendum 1172 needs to pass by Thursday 26th September to ensure that the five cores on the market do not sell for an unintentionally low price.
• Blankos NFTs will begin migrating to Mythos Chain on Polkadot starting from September 23. All player inventories are expected to be visible on the new Blankos Marketplace by September 30th, and trading is expected to be re-enabled by mid to late October.
• Gavun Wud announces the WUD/Hydration LP Burn NFT Campaign, with participants who burn a minimum of 0.22 pool shares rewarded with a Bronze NFT Card. Top burners will potentially receive additional Silver, Bronze, Gold, and Diamond Tier cards, all of which will have unique utilities in the Flappy Wud game.
• The Kus has teamed up with Gavun Wud yet again to drop some exclusive NFTs in Flappy Wud. Players with more than 5000 cumulative points have a chance to encounter the very rare rainbow flash Kus power-up, which may drop one of a series of 12 collectable Kus NFT trading cards.
• Holders of Sovereign Nature Initiative (SNI) POP NFTs claimed at Polkadot ecosystem events can now log in to the SNI portal and choose one NFT to evolve into Orbo, a primordial orb that is said to one day grow into the fabled DOTphin.
• Unique Network announces it will launch a developer environment for NFT XCM transfers, initially between Unique and Asset Hub. Interested parachains are invited to register their interest to be added to help develop and test NFT XCM functionality.
• Week 2 of the DOT Incentives campaign has commenced on Stellaswap. This week's theme is Stablecoins, with additional DOT incentives added to the USDT-USDC and USDC-USDC.axl pools. Initial APRs peaked at 95%!
• Cross-chain XCM transfers of axlUSDC are now enabled between Moonbeam and Pendulum.
• Archax, the first regulated digital assets exchange in the UK, has partnered with Centrifuge and Anemoy to bring the UST Liquid Treasury Fund (LTF) to its users.
• Cross-chain swaps powered by SimpleSwap and Chainflip have arrived on Talisman Wallet. Users can now swap tokens between Polkadot, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Manta Pacific, and Bittensor, and to native Bitcoin as a destination.

Events

• Parity’s Chrissy Hill delivered the first keynote of Polkadot Decoded Asia on September 16th, where she talked about maintaining the delicate balance between decentralization and compliance in Web3.
• On Day 1 of Polkadot Decoded Asia, Sota Watanabe (Astar) presented an ambitious plan to onboard one billion users onto Web3.
• The first panel discussion at Polkadot Decoded Day 1 featured Joanna Liang (Jsquare), Rui (Hashkey Capital), Larry Ma (SNZ), and Gokhan Er (IOSG Ventures) as they shared the VC perspective about the Polkadot ecosystem and its most promising sectors.
• On September 16th, Mark Cachia presented his keynote about the Web3 Foundation x Scytale Polkadot Ecosystem Fund.
• Charu Sethi (Unique Network) presented her keynote about the advancements of NFTs in the Polkadot ecosystem, and unveiled Unique Network’s cross-chain development NFT XCM.
• The second panel at Polkadot Decoded Asia Day 1 discussed the viral growth of Polkadot's global community, featuring Rhee (Moondance Labs), Tracy (Oneblock+), Kristen (Polkaworld), Dr Cao (AIWEB3), Patricia Arro (Polkadot SEA/Openguild).
• DJ Hà Trang spoke about how Polkadot use cases can become more accessible through aggregation on user interfaces such as SubWallet, on September 16th.
• On Monday 16th, Aziz Zainuddin decoded the complexities of liquidity abstraction and the role that Stellaswap plays in the Polkadot ecosystem.
• The headline event of Polkadot Decoded Asia Day 1 on Monday September 18th was a keynote by Polkadot founder and chief architect Gavin Wood covering the future of Web3 governance and individuality.
• To celebrate the imminent launch of Peaq, the Genesis event on the 17th of September in Singapore featured a panel with the founders, a panel with the industry shapers, and numerous networking opportunities.
• Polkadot hosted Natti and Warp Lizard from Talisman to hear about some big updates including cross-chain swaps, new nominator pools, and a UI redesign, on September 17th.
• At Token2049 Singapore on 19th September, there was a panel discussion featuring Brendan van der Heiden (MapMetrics), Sim Khela (Farmsent), and Jeff Outlaw (YOM) on why so many DePIN projects are choosing to migrate to Peaq.
• On September 19th, Polkadot hosted Dónal Murray and Robert Klotzner (Parity), Aurora (Lastic.xyz), and Sergej (RegionX) to celebrate the launch of Agile Coretime and discuss what it means for the future of Polkadot.
• On Day 2 of Polkadot Decoded Asia, September 17th, Seraya Takahashi (Web3 Foundation) shared the progress of W3F funded grants and what's in store for the future.
• Max Rebol and Mario Altenburger (Harbour Capital) announced their plans to raise a $100M Polkadot ecosystem fund, at Polkadot Decoded Asia Day 2.
• Luca von Wyttenbach's keynote explained how Polimec's decentralized model is redefining project financing, on September 17th.
• John Linden (Mythical) shared his thoughts on Tuesday about Web3 gaming and how it will boost social interactions and give control back to the players and community.
• On September 17th, Michael Bennallack explained how Mandala Chain will onboard the next 100M Web3 users through retail, enterprise, and government integrations.