DOOT! - Newsletter Edition 89

In this week’s edition:

1. Editorial: DOOM vibes, from on-chain JAM to the buzz at Denver, and some Wag developments.
2. Top Story - On-Chain JAM, In-Life Buzz!: bullish news on running DOOM on JAM and what people are bullish about at EthDenver.
3. Featured Update - Campaign for BNC!: there’s no time to spare for the second phase of Bifrost’s Liquid Wave Campaign.
4. Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between February 27th and March 3rd.
5. Extras: Credits and anything else.

Editorial

What is up, my friends!

The markets appear to be rotating from Doom and Gloom to Boom. Surely, it is bullish news for the Web3 industry? That said, some folks might be playing it wrong, and you start to question whom you can trust. In some cases, you might even discover some truths.

Perhaps it should be more about less trust, more truth, as Dr. Gavin Wood demonstrates running the classic game DOOM on the JAM Chain over in the Polkadot ecosystem. This exciting news aligns with the bullish sentiment coming out of ETHDenver. As such, in our top story this week, we will be taking a closer look at the recent on-chain JAM as well as the in-life buzz.

We also have some recent WagMedia news to update you on. Niftesty has continued to evolve the development of our Discord-to-website integration. While the bot functionality is progressing in the background, you may have noticed the faster loading, better emphasis on creators, and the uplift from our recent rebrand.

Check out our website for the latest news and community content, without needing to join our Discord. It also provides convenient, open, and transparent visibility of our funds. Meanwhile the other visible development is with our treasury partner Bifrost. Not only have they kicked-off the next stage of the Liquid Waves Campaign, but they have also announced a content bounty. To help provide some inspiration, we have put together a featured update.

As always, feel free to sign up to receive an email notification when our weekly newsletter is available, with all the latest stories and updates.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - On-Chain JAM, In-Life Buzz!

Written by yay.oi

What’s slayin’, Doomguys? This week, while the leader of the free world was fomenting fiscal friction in the Sinosphere, Polkadot’s Ambassador-at-large was countering the chaos, flexing his diplomatic détente with a pixelated peace offering.

Gavin Wood, as reported in Celebrating DOT Chinese Community, has long recognized the value of developers and investors in China. With JAM, the next major iteration of Polkadot, on the horizon, his recent tour of China highlighted his ongoing connection to the region.

Finally wrapping up in Shenzhen on March 5th, the JAM tour reached its pivotal point in Shanghai on February 28th, where Gav unveiled a breathtaking development. For the first time, he demoed running unmodified regular software using the JAM CoreVM.

So, can JAM run DOOM? Yes, it can, and it can do it on-chain. Before you butt in and say “Cardano already did that”,allow me to interject. Cardano ran DOOM on Hydra, an off-chain L2 scaling solution. In Shanghai, Gavin ran DOOM directly on-chain, with JAM.

Blockchains aren’t supposed to be able to run unmodified regular software, but JAM can. In Gav’s demonstration, JAM was able to handle all of the game logic, and render every frame at 30fps. It can technically compute 900fps, but even if you could find a monitor that fast, there would be some rendering bottlenecks at the DA level.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. of A., ETHDenver wrapped on Monday. Courtesy of The Dots, the motto of the week was: Everything you’ll hear at ETHDenver is already built on Polkadot.

Whether or not this is true, there was certainly significant interest from attendees. Reports suggest that the Polkadot booth received substantially more traffic than a certain leading Ethereum L2. Who could blame them after seeing the lineup of ecosystem all-stars ready to give them a warm welcome?

Jay Chrawwna, of the Kus, took a mic down to ETHDenver to see what the Polkadot booth-chads are bullish about. There was a lot of buzz around native Polkadot smart contracts with Ethereum compatibility on the Asset Hub, which according to the latest roadmap should drop in Q2.

On the gaming front, everyone was talking about Mythical Games. NFL Rivals, with over 6.5M players, is currently the only Web3 game on the App Store with on-chain trading, contributing to Mythos being a top five chain in NFT sales volume in 2024.

When FIFA Rivals, the only FIFA licensed game set to incorporate tradeable NFTs while having a much broader global fanbase, drops this summer, those numbers may pale in comparison. Of course, sports games don’t appeal to everyone, but who wouldn’t be drawn to the charm of a Pudgy Penguin? With Pudgy Party launching this summer too, Mythical seems to have all bases covered.

Meanwhile, decentralized social-networking app BlueSky, created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, has been racking up some impressive numbers itself, with almost 30M users and 1B posts. A new partnership announced at ETHDenver will see the Polkadot ecosystem playing a role in further decentralizing its core infrastructure.

Frequency has joined forces with the AT Protocol, which powers BlueSky, to provide verifiable decentralized infrastructure for independent data storage and indexing of publicly accessible content. This will decouple social media content from the centralized Bluesky Social PBC servers, ensuring that it is outside the control of any single entity.

As this partnership is happening at the protocol level, it will also benefit any other social media projects building on the open AT Protocol, such as Flashes, the upcoming decentralized Instagram alternative. Frequency is now exploring future interoperability between its own DSNP protocol, AT Protocol, and other decentralized social networking protocols such as ActivityPub.

On the topic of interoperability, when the mic was turned on Jay, he said he was most bullish about Bifrost vTokens on Hyperbridge. While simultaneously making WAVES, Bifrost was the first to get its integration up and running, enabling bridging from its DApp for vDOT, DOT, vBNC, BNC, vGLMR, GLMR, vASTR, and ASTR to Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, and BNB.

Surprise, surprise, it’s not just vTokens! Bifrost also added the corresponding native tokens, a welcome addition to Hyperbridge token bridging, which previously only supported DOT. With integration on the Hyperbridge DApp arriving a week later, all eyes are now on Referendum 1439, which aims to stimulate the multi-chain liquidity of DOT and vDOT.

Erin Grasmick (Parity), on the other hand, is excited about the stimulation 10M DOT might bring to the development of Kusama as an innovative privacy-centric chain. If you saw her appearance on Space Monkeys last December, this probably comes as no surprise.

For Shawn Tabrizi, however, his affections lie in the present (Hub and Cloud) and future (JAM) directions of the Polkadot protocol. He told Jay that he is most bullish on the possibilities that CorePlay brings to JAM, which will enable Web3 applications to run without blockchains.

One of the key innovations he’s talking about here, which he talked about extensively at Sub0 Reset, is continuations. Instead of needing to wrap up a process in one block, CorePlay allows processes to continue, pause, and restart over the course of as many blocks as needed.

This is what allowed Gavin Wood to run DOOM on-chain, but the possibilities are endless, so it’s no surprise that it’s got Shawn a little excited. While the general public hasn’t caught on that Polkadot is building the universal global Web3 computer capable of running any software, it’s only a matter of time. Perhaps a simple explanation will help.

For those who are unable to help the cause through building or spreading the word, there’s plenty to keep you entertained until the grand launch of JAM. For the dramatically inclined, there’s the vaguely apologetic return of the prodigal Bitboy(who loves our parties btw). While the tinkerers may be entertained by unusual robotic DePIN interactions, the rest can simply dance the night away and settle the bill with their Polkadot wallets. There’s plenty to be excited about now, soon, and in the future.

Featured Update - Campaign for BNC!

Written by Dodow

Back in November 2024, we covered Polkadot’s premier Liquid Staking Protocol, Bifrost. We provided a comprehensive overview of its journey, including the future direction with the new Bifrost 2.0 tokenomics and the launch of a campaign to usher it in.

This was immediately followed up with a guide on how to participate in the first phase of its Liquid Wave Campaign. LST Camper was the first phase and centered around minting vTokens (i.e., liquid staking derivatives). The campaign managed to generate $2,433,735 in TVL, subject to severe market conditions.

We are now at the second phase of the campaign and have until 27th March to participate. This phase is called BNC Explorers and focuses on Bifrost’s primary token, BNC. The approach is somewhat similar to what we laid out in our featured guide. So, if you are new, you might want to look at the event registration section and make sure to use a referral for an invite bonus.

For those already registered, use the link: https://wave.bifrost.io/bnc to get started. As with the previous campaign, the objective is to accumulate WAVE points, which when announced at the end of the campaign, can be redeemed for bbBNC. There are three main ways of earning WAVE points and a further two, subject to bonus conditions.

Go check out the full update.

Wag Roundup (February 27th to March 3rd)

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

DOT Ecosystem News

Written by yay.oi

• Doom doesn’t always correlate with gloom. On the Shanghai leg of the JAM Tour on February 28th, Gavin Wood demoed DOOM, proving that regular unmodified software can be run on JAM.

• Polkadot parachain Frequency has joined forces with the AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky, the decentralized social network created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. The partnership will leverage Frequency’s verifiable decentralized infrastructure for independent data storage and indexing of AT Protocol’s publicly accessible content.

• Vbrick, a leading end-to-end enterprise video solution provider, in collaboration with Blockdeep Labs, has announced plans to launch Verified Authentic, a video content ownership verification framework, on Polkadot. The first operational phase is expected to launch in Summer 2025.

• The Hyperbridge Initial Relayer Offering token sale of BRIDGE has come to a close, raising $2.8M. Combined with the pre-seed round, this brings total funding to $5.65M.

• Polimec has announced the One Token Model (OTM), coming with the relaunch of its decentralized funding platform. Previously, PLMC tokens were required to join a funding round, but now, for a small fee, users will be able to use their USDT, USDC, DOT, or ETH to access and bond PLMC from the on-chain treasury.

• Introducing the Community Hub, a more inclusive and accessible development of Polimec’s ambassador program. The top 20 participants can share in a monthly prize pool of 1000 USDT.

• The Acurast decentralized compute network of mobile devices continues to grow, now surpassing the 40K milestone.

• BNC Explorers, the second phase of the Bifrost Liquid Wave campaign, has kicked off and will run until March 27th. You can now earn WAVE points by minting vBNC, referring friends, and participating in governance.

• If passed, Polkadot OpenGov Referendum 1468 will upgrade the Snowbridge Gateway contract on Ethereum, enabling the bridging of native unwrapped ETH to Polkadot and native assets such as DOT, to Ethereum.

• OpenGov Referendum 1466 is seeking USDT 50K for the development of a website to showcase and enhance the visibility of the Polkadot Cloud.

• Hydration Referendum 35, if passed, will begin OTC swaps of 4.125 WBTC and 3.698 iBTC of protocol-owned liquidity into stablecoins. A subsequent referendum will propose OTC swaps into LINK, LDO, and SKY, which will be transferred over Snowbridge to create new Omnipool markets.

• Subwallet now supports OpenGov voting for directly nominated and nomination pool-staked DOT.

• Heroic has launched AimDots, a Polkadot-themed map for Counter-Strike 2 on Steam. Complete the map in under one minute to achieve GODLIKE status.

• Gavun Wud has partnered with Airlyft for the Into the WUDs campaign. Climb the leaderboard and earn XP to increase your chances of winning a share of the 2B WUD raffle.

• Wuddies now have somewhere else to unite over a cold one or two. Check out the brand-new Gavun Wud Discord server and join discussions about WUD, Polkadot, and the world of Web3.

• ChessOnChain has launched the Chess JAM Polkadot Leaderboard Bounty Campaign, with the top 1000 players sharing in a prize pool of $5,000.

DOT Ecosystem Events

Written by yay.oi

• Chrissy Hill (Parity) presented her keynote on the future of diversity, equity, and inclusion in tech at ETHDenver on February 27th.
• On February 27th at ETHDenver, Shawn Tabrizi’s keynote explored Polkadot’s native rollup solution, and how it is evolving into the Web3 cloud.
• Polkaworld hosted Seun (Hyperbridge) and Tyrone (Bifrost) on February 27th to discuss their multi-chain DOT liquidity incentives treasury proposal.
• Erin Grasmick’s (Parity) keynote at ETHDenver, on February 28th, explained the scalability of Polkadot.
• At ETHDenver, on February 28th, Jay Chrawnna hosted a panel titled Beyond Exit Liquidity: Community in Post-Memecoin Crypto featuring Lucy Coulden (Ambassador Fellowship), Birdo (Parity), and Cameron Thacker (Mythical).
• Supported by the Events Bounty, the Polkadot booth at Crypto Expo Europe in Romania on March 2nd and 3rd featured TheWhiteRabbit, Georgi (Iberlabs), and a ton of Gavun Wud merch.
• With only one more date to go, Gavin Wood’s JAM tour stopped in Hangzhou on March 3rd, where a full-house got another dose of JAM-infused DOOM.
• Got questions? The Polkadot Meetups bounty has answers. Join the team for their X Space at 17:00 CET on Tuesday, March 4th to find out more about spreading the word in your local community.
• In Episode 11 of the Origin Trail On Trac podcast, airing on March 6th, Branimir Rakic, Charles Ivie (AWS), and Ben Clinch (Ortecha) will discuss how semantic tech and graphs will transform the future of AI.
• On the 14th of March,Zena Crypto returns to Genoa, Italy, featuring presentations by Filippo Franchini (Web3 Foundation) and Luca Poggi (Iceberg Nodes), followed by complementary aperitivos thanks to lead sponsor Polkadot.

Extras

• Awesome cover art created by SKULLZ.
• For all you budding creators out there, don't hesitate any longer – join us now! There are plenty of rewards awaiting your creativity.