DOT is Summit! (August 18th to August 24th)

What is up, my friends!

This week, we heard Gavin Wood speak publicly about the blockchain industry and Web3 on a couple of separate occasions. In particular, his keynote about Web3 citizenship at the Web3 Summit in Berlin mentioned Proof of Ink. Now, getting a tattoo–that is some it!

While getting a tattoo isn’t for everyone, digital citizenship is something that is certainly worth exploring as we push the boundaries of Web3 to the next stage. As the world's largest DAO, Polkadot could benefit from the ability to prove individuality in areas such as OpenGov (i.e.: governance).

In this week’s top story, we will cover the key details from Gavin’s keynote in Berlin, as well as his recent thoughts from a captivating Coindesk interview. As always, we will also tie in key developments from the Polkadot ecosystem over the past week.

With the future possibilities of digital citizenship coming to OpenGov, our featured story will focus on Polkadot Treasury spend requests. This week, there have been several notable spending proposals, making it a good opportunity to raise some awareness.

On the topic of spend requests, this newsletter you are reading is the 26th since the WagMedia reboot. This means we have reached our 6 month funding milestone. While we wait for continued funding to go through OpenGov, we will limit our operations.

Our weekly newsletter will be on hold, but we will continue with a limited Finders Program, and the Original Content Program will have another week to go. Vampsy is currently in the process of wrapping up our remaining data reports. In the meantime, feel free to review and contribute to our continued funding discussion.

Enjoy the updates and stories we have lined up this week. Thank you for your support, and we look forward to returning with fresh insights and great takes.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - DOT is Web3?

Written by yay.oi

Hallo anon! This week’s festivities centered around the German capital, with the third Web3 Summit returning after a five-year hiatus. Taking place in the historic Funkhaus, a former East German broadcasting center, the Web3 Summit is a little different from other blockchain conferences.

For starters, the summit operates with the policy of no sponsorships, no logos, and no maximalism. It is a participant driven event designed to foster collaboration across numerous blockchain protocols, with a focus on the decentralized technologies powering Web3.

So, what exactly is meant by Web3? Looking back to the inaugural Web3 Summit in 2018, Juan Benet offered his definition of Web3 as a movement that aims to make the internet more decentralized, verifiable, and secure. The goals include establishing trustless infrastructure, removing intermediaries, and giving users back ownership of their data, identity, security, and transactions.

That same year, Gavin Wood iconically demonstrated launching a Substrate based blockchain in minutes. This year, however, Gav had other things on his mind. Following up on his talk at Decoded, Individuality in a Purely Digital World, his talk was titled Web3 Citizenship.

By Gav’s definition, citizenship involves belonging to a collective on the basis of being a person. So, in order to prove one’s citizenship, one must first prove their individuality.

Proving individuality in the Web3 world, where privacy is paramount, is a complex task. Individuality is a distinctly human trait that transcends the digital realm. Individuality cannot be defined by mathematics, because it is subjective. Therefore, to verify individuality, there must be an element of discovery and consensus from other individuals.

Gav proposes a model of enlightened discovery that obeys Web3 principles. Enlightened discovery is a three-stage process of evidence collection, evaluation, and judgment. To conform with Web3 principles, there can be no reliance on trust. Furthermore, evidence must be a primary source and open for all to evaluate.

He calls this model of evaluation a Digital Identity Mechanism (DIM), and three different mechanisms will be rolled out on Polkadot over the coming year. Only the first, DIM1, was revealed at the Web3 Summit, and it involves a concept made famous in the early Kusama days, Proof-of-Ink, which controversially involves getting tattooed.

In the collection phase, a unique tattoo design assigned on-chain is chosen, and the final 3 minutes of tattooing are filmed. The video is submitted to the Polkadot Citizenship app for evaluation by the citizenry. Finally, its authenticity is judged by a vote.

While this mechanism is great for grabbing headlines, the requirement for permanent body modification is likely to inhibit widespread adoption. DIM2 and DIM3, are likely to be much less invasive, but other than some vague hints, Gav remained tight-lipped about their details.

He did, however, have plenty of opinions to share about the state of the crypto-sphere in his Coindesk interview with Bullish CEO Tom Farley.

While many agree that memecoins are not much more than a crypto-casino, it seems that Gav’s feelings extend to mainstream tokens too. He’s critical of the dumb money on consumer exchanges looking to flip tokens for short term gain without consideration for the long-term value that could be brought to the world.

On the flipside, in the development front, tribalistic flag-waving maximalists are also counterproductive to a vibrant ecosystem. Innovators are desirable people who are not constrained to a particular codebase or mindset.

It’s an attitude that Gav kept with him from the outset when creating Polkadot. He was never aiming for it to be a competitor to Ethereum, he’s always seen it as a complementary project with aligned values.

There’s no bad blood between him and fellow Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin either. While their interactions these days are generally limited to publications and public speaking engagements, they are well aware of what each other is up to.

Gav, of course, is spending the majority of his time on JAM, which won’t have the constraints of smart contract code. JAM will be able to handle code no different to what is deployed on a regular computer, while remaining permissionless, trustless, secure, and decentralized.

While many Layer 1 blockchains claim to be decentralized, the reality is that many are by name only. With the regulatory environment tightening by the day, those that operate insufficiently decentralized protocols, and flout local regulations, may be in for a rude awakening.

Meanwhile, this week in the sufficiently decentralized world of Polkadot, the Fellows released the Runtime 1.3.0 changelog, and it is a very special one indeed. This is likely to be remembered as the Polkadot Agile Coretime release.

Coretime, according to the community (https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/747), is the central defining characteristic of Polkadot 2.0. It will bring the end of parachain auctions and fixed term leases, with projects instead being able to purchase as much or little Polkadot core resources as they need. With all of the bugs ironed out during the Kusama migration, we’re looking forward to a smooth roll-out as soon as next month.

The new runtime also brings a new opportunity for a little chaos on Kusama, with the introduction of adjustable inflation parameters. Jonas Gehrlein previously presented his ideas for ideal inflation parameters, which we covered in DOT Way Forward! The decision ultimately lies with the Kusama community, which could lead to some heated governance battles. Could this be what lures our old friend HACNA out of hiding?

Hidden within the complexities of Gavin Wood’s proposal for Web3 Citizenship is a reminder of what spurred on the Web3 movement in the first place. Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about mass government surveillance in partnership with big tech companies emphasized an urgent need to decouple individuals from centralized systems and take back control of their digital identity.

While communications app Telegram advocates for privacy, the arrest of its founder Pavel Durov this weekend, which has some Web3 thinkers worried, is a reminder of the vulnerable position of centralized platforms. It’s as Gav said to Tom Farley, the reason Bitcoin survived where others didn’t is because it is actually decentralized, it is resilient, it is beyond the means of regulators to shut it down.

The value proposition of a Web3 protocol is its resilience, and true decentralization is one of the best ways to get there. Polkadot is leading the way in providing the resilient and truly decentralized infrastructure necessary for fulfilling the Web3 vision of a trustless internet where users can reclaim ownership of their identities.

As the third Web3 Summit comes to a close, we can look forward to a future where the ideas explored become a reality. Through collaboration and uniting behind the shared Web3 vision, we can work together to build the technology that redistributes the balance of power back to the user.

Featured Update - DOT Treasury Requests

Written by Sanchez

Dr. Gavin Wood said in an interview on the Kusamarian aired in November 2023, “The treasury is there for spending.” The conversation at that point in the interview was to address conservatism when it came to using treasury funds. In particular, Kusama was supposed to be the network where anything could be funded and built, no matter how ridiculous the idea seemed.

Now on to the present day, OpenGov has evolved even more with numerous tracks and refinements. Things on Polkadot have taken off, with a glut of treasury spend requests, and the chaos synonymous with Kusama has seemed to have made its way over.

The H1 treasury report, which was put together by the treasury funded OpenGov.watch, provides an extensive overview of the situation. Kolkadot was on everyone’s lips as the situation led to Polkadot becoming a top trending topic on CT. So, is the treasury being spent wisely?

Well, quite a number of teams have gone back to the treasury for a top-up due to market conditions, given that their funding was received and held in DOT. This makes it increasingly important for the option of receiving funds in stablecoins. Referendum 1104 should help, as it seeks to convert 5,261,001 DOT to USDT and USDC stablecoins over the course of a year.

The conversion is done through Hydration, with a scheduled 7200 DOT sold per day and stables from the sale transferred to the treasury account on Asset Hub. This isn’t the first instance of such practice, as stablecoin conversion has been used to fund the Fellowship. However, it is becoming increasingly crucial for those seeking funds to consider stablecoins moving forward.

While the treasury’s stablecoins are being managed on the Asset Hub System Chain, recent developments have taken shape. Check out our recent newsletter story that covers Asset Hub and System Chains. Since Asset Hub can serve as a default userspace for new Polkadot users, it's important to recognize the need for UIs, which Kheoswap provides.

At the time of writing, this importance seems to be shared by voters in Referendum 1102, which deals with retroactive funds of 14,092 DOT for Kheoswap development. Perhaps voters have also shown an appreciation that one DEX on Asset Hub isn’t enough to create a complete DeFi ecosystem.

Building dApps like Kheopswap is supported by developer tooling such as Polkadot API (PAPI). PAPI is a suite of typescript libraries, providing developers the building blocks for development of decentralized applications on Polkadot.

The team behind PAPI has just requested 6 months development funding for maintenance and further development, with INK support, amongst others planned. PAPI offers a better alternative to the Polkadot JS API, with smaller bundle sizes, lower memory consumption, and ease of building dApps that utilize light clients. They recently released version 1.0.0 of PAPI.

From providing building blocks for developers to building awareness among new users, few platforms offer more visibility than CoinGecko, especially since you’re likely to check their page or app every day. Following previous indirect collaborations with Polkadot, Coingecko has directly approached the Polkadot treasury with a new proposal for a Polkadot campaign.

Their new proposal, requesting $240,000 for 20 Youtube re-rolls and exclusive sponsored newsletters for 5 months has been described as expensive by some voters. This is despite a special discount of 43% off the usual price. Although it is still early days, the proposal is currently failing, with 81.1% of the votes against it.

Even if you are considered the darling of the ecosystem due to a previous funding success of $2.1M worth of DOT (290K DOT at the time), voters can still be deterred by your new proposals. This week Conor Daly has put forward a new proposal, and at $7.5M, it is by far the most expensive spend request in the history of OpenGov.

Conor's proposal aims to globally represent Polkadot over the year through races, partnerships, and tech integrations. It seeks to significantly expand the reach achieved from previous partnerships, particularly in gaming and other areas. However, despite the potential to enhance Polkadot’s visibility, the proposal is currently failing, with 100% of votes against it. Concerns about the high cost and the state of the Polkadot treasury have led to the opposition.

The above referendums are just a selection from the new spend proposals made this past week. Currently, the original notion of Kusama for chaos and Polkadot for conservative seems to be the opposite way round. Wisely or not, does it matter given what Dr. Gavin Wood had mentioned about spending?

Perhaps we could follow some sort of Polkadot playbook, such as the one Shawn produced for Polkadot Ambassadors? Looking back, OpenGov on Kusama did provide valuable data points that Dr. Gavin Wood had hoped for. It has demonstrated that conservatism eventually kicks in.

OpenGov has been even wilder on Polkadot, given the attention by whales like Giotto and experiments like Delegated Voices. That said, there has been some thought on potential ways to evolve things. Reflecting on the interview in November 2023, Dr. Gavin Wood also mentioned the idea of Collectives, which would see the specialization of the treasury into different classes of funding.

Furthermore, he expanded from his talk at Decoded on individuality to discuss Web3 Citizenship at his keynote at the recent Web3 Summit. Digital Identity Mechanism and Collectives could potentially be great approaches as the world’s largest DAO matures. In the meantime, perhaps we need to consider the importance of being less opinionated, which Dr. Gavin Wood also expressed at ETH Prague.

If you have enjoyed this featured story or any of the content being generated through WagMedia, then please support us and look out for our proposal for continued funding. Also, feel free to get involved with the discussion.

News from the Finders Program Part 1

Written by yay.oi

• The Runtime 1.3.0 changelog has been published by the Polkadot Fellows which will see Agile Coretime enabled on Polkadot, adjustable inflation parameters on Kusama, and the removal of all but the first 21 elected HAs from the Ambassador Program.
• Polkadot USDC, USDT, and Snowbridge Ethereum bridged foreign assets are coming to Kusama with the release of Runtime 1.3.1 sometime around October.
• Sneaking in before Coretime, Zeitgeist wins Polkadot parachain Auction 78 with a self-funded bid of 500 DOT.
• Snowbridge Foreign Assets on Asset Hub are now supported directly in the Talisman wallet.
• Subwallet has integrated Velocity Lab’s cross-chain app Turtle, powered by Snowbridge.
• In an integration facilitated by Velocity Labs, Alchemy Pay now supports DOT for its on/off ramp, and USDC and USDC for its on-ramp service.
• Ross Bulat and Joel Kenny announce the public alpha of Polkadot Developer Console, a new development tool that builds upon the foundation of Polkadot JS Apps.
• Decentralized social app chain Frequency has reached a new milestone, with over a million users.
• Glue’s gaming L2 is set to get a boost from Acurast’s decentralized compute power.
• Hot on the tails of their recently updated roadmap, Invarch has a new website and slogan: The Future is DAO.
• Check out the Polkadot Playbook, written by Shawn Tabrizi, for simple and accurate answers to 25 of the most frequently asked questions.
• Airlyft has launched the PolkAchievers Season 1 Campaign, featuring campaigns from 14 of the Polkadot ecosystem's most exciting projects. Complete them all for a chance to win $10 USDT on Polkadot Asset Hub.
• Complete social engagement task for a chance to share in a prize pool of USD$1500 with Aventus Network Questing Season 1 on Airlyft.
• Tanssi’s Let’s Forking Dance incentivized testnet campaign comes to an end on August 28th, with over 150K participants and 2.7M transactions. Final rankings will be published on August 29th, with rewards claimable via an NFT keypass and redeemable in early 2025.
• On August 19th, Day 1 of the Web3 Summit, Bhargav Bhatt (Web3 Foundation) introduced “Random Sampling”, the efficient technique for on-chain light-clients to follow the finality of PoS blockchains utilized in Snowbridge.
• Tommi Enenkel (OpenGov.Watch) took a deep dive into the increased sophistication of DAO governance systems, and whether we will soon see network constitutions on Day 1 of the Web3 Summit, August 19th.
• Angela Dalton (Signum Growth) and Nicholas Douzinas (Ajuna Network) took a look at how easily blockchain technology can integrate into the buying, selling, and trading of digital assets already happening in gaming economies on August 20th at the Web3 Summit.
• Christian Killer (Acurast) explained how Web3 projects are helping us break free from the reliance of centralized cloud computing, on August 20th, Day 2 of the Web3 Summit.
• At the Web3 Summit on August 20th, Giorgio Zinetti (Cardano), Friederike Ernst (Gnosis), Susannah Evans (IBC Protocol), Seun Lanlege (Polytope Labs), and Shawn Tabrizi (Polkadot Fellow) discussed the unification of blockchains with seamless innovations.
• On August 20th, Day 2 of Web3 Summit, Seun Lanlege (Polytope Labs) explored the new applications possible when blockchains are treated as verifiable co-processors.
• On 21st of August, Tim Hodgson (Archisinal) and Thiago Rudiger (Tanssi) got together for a chat about RWA use cases and trends.
• Gavin Wood founder and chief architect of Polkadot presented his keynote titled Web3 Citizenship on August 21st, Day 3 of the Web3 Summit.
• Alex Bird (Parity) presented at at Layer 1 Blockchains: Still a #1 Investment?, a night for builders and investors to catch up on the latest developments in Layer 1 blockchains, featuring Polkadot, Algorand, Cosmos, and more on August 22nd in Berlin.
• Polkaworld hosted Alan Vey (Aventus) for a chat about what enterprises are seeking from blockchain integrations on August 22nd.
• At Coinfest Asia on August 23rd, Jay Chrawwna (The Kusamarian) hosted a panel featuring Ingo Ruebe (KILT), Ursula O'Kuinghttons (Scytale Digital), Jerry (Tsang Hing Hoi) (Bifrost), and Gede Putu Rahman Desyanta (Mandala Chain) where they discussed how strategic interoperable alliances can foster innovation and growth.

News from the Finders Program Part 2

Written by Sanchez

• MusicMoon has partnered with Unique Network to offer musicians a platform to create their music as NFT assets.
• Gavun Wud has released Flappywud v1.3, and it features a dynamic airdrop of 1 billion WUD for players. Flap, earn points, and collect WUD. Players earning between 10-100 points will receive 250 WUD per point, while those earning more will receive 1,000 WUD per point. Additionally, large WUD holders can benefit from available multipliers.
• Ajuna Network launched their latest BBB tournament with prizes of a high SP Bajubèrge NFT & 20K+ BAJU pot for the winner. The tournament required players to forge a legendary with the lowest soulpoint over 84 hours.
• Following discussions, the AstarDegens proposals one and two, aimed at improving the DAO's efficiency and financial health, are now up for voting. The voting period ends on September 3rd.
• Evrloot reopened expeditions for 48 hours, with added features such as higher difficulty and more. The top 5 adventurers received a cash price, with the most daring adventurer receiving a unique background.
• After adding vASTR to the Hydration Omnipool, Bifrost have now provided BNC incentives in a new farm for users providing vASTR liquidity on Hydration.
• Stellaswap has introduced a position tracker that alerts users when their liquidity positions fall out or back in range. The tracker sends notifications via Telegram.
• Polkadex have successfully removed the sudo keys to their parachain, becoming a fully decentralized parachain.
• Moonwell has been listed on Token Terminal. Users can now easily observe key metrics, chain level and contract level data on their dashboard on Token Terminal.
• Beamex lifetime perps trading volume has surpassed $120 million.
• Leemo has initiated a referendum to close 12 bounties which were never funded, rejected, inactive or now under the scope of another bounty or the Fellowship.
• Referendum 1104, initiated by Joe Petrowski, proposes converting 5.25 million DOT from the Polkadot treasury into USDT and USDC stablecoins to diversify the treasury. If approved, the process will utilize Hydration, converting 7,200 DOT to stablecoins daily, which will then be transferred back to the Polkadot treasury.
• Kheopswap, a DEX on Asset Hub, is requesting 14,092 DOT as retroactive funding for the development of their dapp, which launched in April 2024.
• The team developing the Polkadot API (PAPI), a suite of libraries for easy dapp deployment on Polkadot, is requesting $540,000 for its maintenance and further development over the next six months.
• The referendum to register the Polkadot Coretime Chain is live. This is necessary before the eventual migration of Polkadot to Agile Coretime.
• Josiah Koztur has put forth a proposal for Polkadot to acquire a booth at the Australian Crypto Convention, 2024. The proposal requests $116,160 for Diamond sponsorship for the event with the aim to increase the representation of Polkadot in Australia.
• Referendum 35, which has passed, introduces the Teerdays pallet—a governance and revenue distribution mechanism on Integritee. Stakers of TEER tokens will earn Teerdays proportional to the amount of TEER staked and the duration of staking. Revenue from Incognitee, once launched, will be distributed to holders based on the Teerdays held.
• Ecosystem agent, Giraffe, spotted some irregular movements of PICA tokens across the Picasso Network. Some of the tokens earmarked for bridging to Cosmos have been sent to exchanges with no apparent explanations from the team.
• Asynchronous Backing is now live on the Darwinia Network, reducing the network’s block time to 6 seconds.
• Talisman has proposed joining the Bifrost Reward Share program with a 50% commission. Currently, they have integrated liquid staking for GLMR and MANTA recommendations on their dashboard, with plans to add ETH and DOT in the future.
• A Polkadot Campaign has been proposed by Coingecko, with a 43% reduction from the usual rates. With a request of $240,000, the campaign will feature 20 YouTube sponsored pre-rolls/mid-rolls and exclusive sponsored newsletter, posted daily for 5 months.
• ChaoDAO has published a final result of Referendum 821. With a dramatic underspend, the DAO has returned 3,454.61 of the 4,504 DOT requested from the treasury.
• With what is regarded as the highest spend request since the inception of OpenGov on Polkadot, Conor Daly hasrequested $7.5 million for the global representation of Polkadot, all through 2025. The deal includes sponsorship of Conor in the full NASCAR Xfinity Season, and Indy 500 amongst other perks.

That is all for this week. If you enjoyed the newsletter, please share it. You can subscribe on Substack to receive an email when next week's edition is ready. And if you're participating in creator staking on Subsocial, you can interact to increase your rewards — perhaps a good two-for-one deal by providing feedback or comments.

Awesome cover art created by Dodow.