Excitement & Chaos in the Road Ahead! (September 23rd - September 29th)

What is up, my friends!

By the time you read this, you may already be aware that WagMedia’s Bounty Top (i.e. Referendum 234) has passed! The community has spoken with a 86% to 14% in favor of the funding. We would like to thank each and everyone of you who voted, now let’s get back to creating!

TOP NEWS OF THE WEEK

Exciting times ahead as Rob Habermeier releases the latest update on the Polkadot Roadmap. Most of the items will be ready by the end of 2022, with a few items slipping into 2023. Additionally, some items will need to factor in the battle testing on Kusama before making their way onto Polkadot.

Asynchronous backing is the headline item. Given that mainstream crypto likes to discuss scalability with transactions per second (TPS), the largest upgrade is expected on Kusama by the end of 2022, and it will result in the network being able to aggregate up to an impressive 1,000,000 TPS.

As the drive for adoption unfolds, scalability will be a major factor as the likes of new parachains Aventus and OriginTrail are already servicing traditional enterprises and will bring in significant activity. Further growth is expected when decentralized social media users via Project Liberty onboard.

Parathreads, often referred to as the “pay-as-you-go” approach, has been targeted for the beginning of 2023. It’s important for the growth of the network, as it would lower the barrier to entry for teams looking to build and synergize quickly with existing parachains and their user bases.

Thus far, we have only seen parachains and solochains, which appears to be all or nothing when plugging into Polkadot and Kusama. The welcomed anticipation of parathreads comes with a new term called, Next Generation Scheduling. Although still in R&D, it’s the ability to boost block access and increase efficiency on the network.

Cross-chain communication is what makes Polkadot and Kusama stand out from many other blockchain networks, emphasizing the power of shared security. As such, XCMv3 has the community eagerly waiting since Dr. Gavin Wood did the keynote at Decoded, back in June. Here’s Csaint’s alpha shots, which provided a quick overview of XCMv3.

With all the recent bridge hacks, natives of our ecosystem would have been relieved that all is secure on our end. That said, we are not an island, so the important thing about XCMv3 is the support it offers when bridging to external networks.

Frame: Weights V2 builds on the notion of multidimensional weights. Although based on ideas from early Ethereum discussions, it is identified as a key step in making it easier to write parachains. Additionally, it will serve as the precursor to XCMv3, so is expected to be in place as soon as mid-October.

Most of us would have heard about Governance V2 from Dr. Gavin Wood’s other keynote from Decoded at the end of June. Again here’s Csaint’s alpha shots for a quick refresher.

The significant change with the Governance Overhaul is that the council’s role is dissolved and replaced with a design that brings more on-chain activity and increases the decentralization of the network. The next step is the introduction of the Polkadot fellowship, and here’s Gav’s calling to core developers and technical experts. [BREAKING NEWS] Governance V2 has merged into Kusama.

We briefly covered the Collectives Parachain, and Bridge Hub in a recent WagMedia Weekly edition here. The Polkadot Alliance is expected to be the first collective, which represents an on-chain body to address open collaboration and open source code. Although there are several teams that are working on bridges, the Bridge Hub appears to serve as a message routing service within each network.

Nomination Pools have been on Kusama since June, and it is being battle tested and evolved. Its addition to Polkadot could have a profound impact, as it lowers the minimum DOT required for staking without resorting to a third-party provider. Fast Unstake is also being worked on to allow for greater flexibility in movement if selected nomination pools are not earning rewards.

The Staking Dashboard has already been released, and it looks fantastic, as well as also supported by powerful light client technology. It is expected that the open beta will be wrapped up shortly, and from then on, we’ll hopefully see it flourish.

Disputes Slashing might be more aimed at the validator community. It will allow validators to create faulty disputes to help with handling situations when the entire stake for the block is slashed. It’s certainly of interest to the wider community as the approach looks to increase the economic security of the network.

Before moving on to the usual flurry of news and content, feel free to check out the content created by @DrCAO and @kryptoschain with their take on the Polkadot roadmap.

Speed Reading

Astar gaining momentum in Japan

Nitty Gritty

• Astar has now been listed on Bitbank, which is Japan’s biggest crypto exchange and signifies Astar’s intent to be one of the top chains in the country.
• Here’s the weekly update thread for Astar Network covering key news including Major Japanese exchange listing, 40M transaction milestone, and Sota to speak at the Nikkei Global Management Forum. And here’s the thread that covers all the key news from its ecosystem projects.
• GitArch’s application for its private beta has pretty much exploded with over 100 teams (including ETH, SOL, and BNB) in the mix.
• Dr. Gavin Wood puts out a calling to Core developers and protocol technical experts with his first draft of the Polkadot Fellowship Manifesto.
• Astar making big headlines in Japan, it broke a record for publishing an advert in a national paper, as well as received backing from top Japanese Corporations. NOTE: This story is from Hackernoon.
• Rob Habermeier publishes the latest Polkadot Roadmap in the “highly recommended” blog here. Asynchronous backing (which significantly increases TPS) has also gained the attention of the press, including the published story by Forkast here.
• A welcome change of name from “Fat Contract” to “Phat Contract” by Phala. Here’s the article with an explanation, including an announcement to stay tuned as more news on the Beta version, L-2 tokenomics, and UI upgrades are expected to follow.
• Crust has announced that they have now been included in the official Ethereum docs for decentralized storage solutions.
• OnFinality has announced a partnership with Crust Network, which enables Crust to benefit from the API and node services offered.
• Polkadex has now opened up for beta testing that will include improved features like cross-chain transfer and withdrawals.
• Gear Technology has integrated Automata's 1RPC service into its testnet, which brings together two Substrate based projects. Gear is still in development, and has yet to bid for a parachain, whilst Automata offers a suite of web3 middleware products across multiple blockchains.
• Phala Network has partnered with Zondax with the aim of developing Ledger support for Phala & Khala parachains.
• Check out Basilisk’s latest article, where the key items covered include a sneak peek of their liquidity mining functionality, NFT competition, and details of their joint AMA with Tinkernet with the upcoming liquidity bootstrap in the pipeline.
• Unique Network’s token (UNQ) has been listed on the Huobi Global exchange. The exchange is also doing a staking incentive of up to 50% APR.
• OriginTrail parachain has successfully passed its first security review, which was carried out by Security Research Labs. More checks will occur as new features are released.
• As announced by Bill Laboon, a beautiful XCM dashboard has been released on Subscan.
• Polkadot and Kusama are ahead of other blockchains in terms of development activity on Github according to industry analytic firm Santiment.

Content creation (Tier 1 & 2 Creator)

@MaximV graduates from the Dojo and makes a $POOP infographic!

• @pitcoin created a number of threads including a focus on Polkadot tech, Astar’s Japan breakthrough, and the new Subscan XCM dashboard.
• @kryptoschain puts out a video supporting WagMedia’s funding along with updates on Bitcountry and Phala from the Token2049 event and also updates on Bifrost and Zeitgeist. He also drops a video covering Polkadot's latest roadmap as well as updates on Moonbeam and Centrifuge.
• @DrCAO makes a video on Referendum 234 for WagMedia funding (includes news of Bifrost for xc-vKSM on Moonriver), and also a video on Polkadot’s new roadmap (includes article).
• @Csaint02 drops a fun tweet on Shiden
• @pnp does a thread on $POOP.
• @MaximV created a couple of threads, one with an infographic on $POOP, and a creative thread on the future of $POOP.

Messages From the Treasuries

• Moonbeam with a plethora of updates this week as their integration with AllianceBlock deepens enabling enhanced liquidity mining and staking infrastructure access. USDT is live on Moonbeam as xcUSDT, opening the door for native USDT reducing bridge hack risks. If you missed Moonbeam at SmarCon, you can check out Developer Relations Engineer, Kevin Neilson, demonstrate how to create interoperable smart contracts.
• A huge update to Moonbeam as the Orbiter’s Program has been adequately tested on Moonriver and ready to jump to Polkadot. This program is modeled after Polkadot and Kusama’s validator program and aims to decentralize Moonbeam’s colallators and provide a more even playing field for independent collators.
• Chainlink has included Moonbeam in their SCALE program to fuel greater dApp innovation on Moonbeam’s network. This initiative aims to boost Chainlink’s long term sustainability to give Moonbeam’s devs proven oracle services.
• Subsocial with some great updates this week as their Spacer’s NFT is nearing launch, and they have joined in the Equilibrium Beta launch of their new platform, be sure to check it out! Finally, their Kusama treasury proposal to fund further development of Sub.ID passed with flying colors.

Crowdloan Updates

Oak Network win the Polkadot Auction, whilst Quartz win the Kusama Auction

• Imbue Network set to airdrop tokens to crowdloan participants. Furthermore, the date set is October 3rd, and because of the delay, they will double the amount as an apology to their eagerly waiting supporters.
• DAO IPCI, a climate change-focused protocol has entered the Kusama auction with a self-funded bid.
• Snow Network’s parachain is now onboarded. Details of the airdrop for its crowdloan rewards have also been announced for October 17th. Additionally, a staking vault is also under development.
• Quartz network has won the 54 parachain slot on Kusama with a self-funded bid.
• Oak Network has won the 28th Polkadot parachain slot with the 150k DOT cap hit in less than 24 hours.

What's in Your Wallet?

• Shiden and Astar are now supported by the Enkrypt multi-chain wallet.
• Nodle is now supported by Ledger hardware wallets.
• CLV wallet users can now fiat on-ramp with their partnership with Binance connect.
• Talisman released a detailed guide on erc-20 assets with its wallet.
• Subwallet supports cross-chain transfer of $NEER and $BIT between Karura and Pioneer.
• For those having problems with Turing staking, check out the demo by Anton on the Nova Wallet video session from last week. He also provides a summary of the latest updates, as well as covering plans to support governance.

AMA and IRL Events Round-up

• Check out the roundtable from September 25th with RMRK and Darwinia.
• Here’s the crowdcast recording from Blockchain Berlin on September 14th. Ecosystem presentations from Crust and Phala and other guests were also featured.
• Catch up on all the Darwinia’s AMA here.
• Did you manage to tune into Tinkernet's very first episode of TinkerTalks featuring Basilisk on September 29th, here’s a link with a recording.
• Various Polkadot ecosystem teams were at Token2049 in Singapore. Where booths opened up on September 28th.
• Talisman ran some community trivia quizzes on their discord on September 29th and t October 1s, where winners receive Silver Commendations.
• Here’s a nice Podcast about Peaq and the Economy of Things. Furthermore, here’s the Youtube recording of the gaia-X Podcast which involves Peaq.
• Spanish speakers may want to set a reminder for a talk on XCM and interoperability hosted by Polkadot Espanol on October 4th

Darwinia frequently hosts AMAs, you can now listen to them on Anchor Podcasts

Translating DotSama

Some excellent translations and non-English original creations, which you may find fitting to share with family, friends, and neighbors around the world.

• You can find most of the Non-Anglo Content generated through WagMedia here.
• In the German lounge, @Daredevil does a $POOP thread.
• Over at the Spanish lounge, @Nachito drops his next video installment of Dotcast covering Polkassembly, Astar, and Phala.
• @kyrptoschain creates a few videos on the Polkadot Romania channel about Bitcountry, RMRK, and Polkadot Roadmap.
• Back in the Portuguese lounge @johnrhodel translates an article on Bifrost’s roadmap. @pitcoin translates Astar articles on USDT, Web3 in Japan, and the Yoshitaka Amano announcement. @pitcon also translates the Polkadot Roadmap article and his own Astar Build2Earn article. @Grabriel_VDS translates the article covering details of the upcoming Sub0 Polkadot developer conference.
• @paulll does a couple of translations in the Italian lounge on Zeitgeist and Bifrost.
• Newbie @Mehdi_Invest in the French lounge creates a video on Oak’s crowdloan, and a video on Zeitgeist.

Content Dojo (Tier 3 Creator)

Have you got what it takes to earn some $POOP?

• @paulll creates a thread covering the tokenomics of Amplitude, it also includes another one of his infographics.
• @brhnk61 continues to provide his regular infographic recaps on parachain auctions. Recaps on September 24th (Parathread 2233 join Quartz), 26th (Quartz win), and 29th (DAO IPC & Parathread 2223 participate) cover Kusama. Recaps on September 24th (Oak in pole position) and 29th (Oak win) cover Polkadot.
• @goku writes a Polkadot for Dummies using the European Union as an analogy.
• @MaximV drops the TFA recap, which covers the Moonbeam ecosystem.
• @Dustin Lee posts a link to his recent video on getting started with the Evolution Land Contributor.
• @Paulkadotter writes the regular Polkadotter Weekly news covering highlights from both Kusama & Polkadot networks.
• @goku has a go at writing about $POOP.
• @pnin, @Csaint02, @JB, and @Dodow get through another week of news and content. With Bounty top-up, Exosama on Opensea, and USDT launching on Polkadot, it’s an “Aye to Polkadoption”!
• @blinkin does a $POOP thread and it also plopped on subsocial.
• @Alice und Bob with a “burner” thread on explaining Subsocial?

NFTs and the Metaverse: The Heartbeat of Dotsama

A number of NFTs and Metaverses were announced, revealed, and showcased this past week. Can you make out what they are from the image?

• Efinity announces Fuel Tanks progress, the ability to subsidize fees.
• Evrloot released an early documentation website.
• YoudleDAO traits are broken down, and the website released, to be owned by the DAO. Rainbow Youdle tickets were listed for 10 KSM each, but they each got sold immediately!
• Cosmize announces an airdrop to holders of 3 Astar NFTs collections ahead of their Metaverse NFT sale.
• Governance Referendum 227 NFTs and Referendum 228 NFTs have dropped.
• MoonPets NFT are on Moonbeam.
• DPS’ TMAP emission rate is increasing.
• Kusama Apes is"not waiting for singular" and launching a collection on raresama.
• PhalaWorld Monk art is further teased.
• New limited pyramid for sale at Archiverse.
• Public Pressure announces a partnership with fashion brand Diesel to promote emerging artists. They aim to pioneer the advancement of music and NFTs using Web3.
• Learn more about Kodadot's road to EVM. Materia Prima launches their physical board game Kickstarter.
• A summary of the Polkadot ecosystem from Bitcountry.
• MoonFit does a Giveaway
• Unique Network announces a partnership with OG Protocol. The latter makes NFTs reactive to real-world data via oracles. Combined with the capability of nested NFT, refungible (RFT) tokens, can create powerful NFT propositions. Check out the following blog for more details.
• Evrloot Fishing Board is announced. Sale starts Sunday and is limited to 178 fishing boards with 30 epics.
• Claim a commemorative Astar NFT for the Listing of Astar in Japan. All you need is your Evm address.
• Cosmize have announced their smart contracts have passed Audits by Fairyproof.
• New Singular Updates include nested royalties and open nesting.
• Bit.Countryshares some updates. Here is an easy visual step by step guide on how to mint your own NFT on Singular
• Exosama reveal has started.
• The renowned Japanese artist, Yoshitaka Amano has brought his artistry to the Astar network with his first NFT collection, Candy Girl. Astar network partners with TWIN PLANET to make it easier for artists, musicians, etc to onboard into NFTs.

Content creation (Tier 1 & 2 Creator)

• @Cris_Pap covers Moonsama and Parachains, as well as Public Pressure.
• @DrCAO creates a video on USDT introduced to Polkadot and YoudleDAO NFTs and a second video on Kusama NFTs Exosama and YoudleDAO.
• @MaxTheo creates a video on Exosama and a twitter thread.
• @TheFVK discusses how bear market proof NFTs are on Polkadot.
• @pnp shares about Open Emoji Battler in a twitter thread. @MaximV. TFA-DAO shares thoughts on the potential of Exosama and its ecosystem.
• @kryptoschain makes a video on Bitcountry, Moonsama, and Oak winning an auction in just 1 day, as well as Sora launching the first crypto debit card on Polkadot !
• @w3n blinkin makes a thread on Poop.
• @Dustin Lee makes a video on how to get started with the Evolution Land Contributor Event.

DeFI

Stablecoins dominate the headlines!

• Equilibrium has a 101 series underway to educate audiences, first up they cover their EDQ stablecoin.
• Taiga has updated this yield image.
• You can now findSolarflare farms on YieldBay List.
• Sora announced a new synthetic asset called XST, pretty much just XOR mintable via gov and used to pay everyone.
• On Sirius Finance, the stablecoins bridged through Celer have been renamed to ceStablecoins to differentiate them from Polkadot native stables.
• Acala’s Stage 1 of resuming aUSD operations has been passed and executed. Now LP tokens can be withdrawn. On the 28th Stage 2 community referendum also passed, resuming some key functions on the platform.
• Avault will go multi-chain.
• Two leading DEXes StellaSwap and QuickSwap enter into a milestone partnership to work together for a joint audit on code4rena.
• Native USDT is now live on Moonbeam, $xcUSDT can be transferred and used on the network using XCM via Statemint.
• Parallel Finance has introduced a new "One-Click" feature. Basically, you can click once to earn an attractive DOT DeFi yield. It significantly simplifies using their DeFi products.
• Equilibrium Closed Beta is live.
• CirclePay bringing native $USDC to the Polkadot Ecosystem in 2022 according to their roadmap shared at ConvergeSF22.
• The first Polkadot USDT native metapool is on Sirius Finance.
• Automated peer-to-peer payments can now be made on Moonbeam Network using the Cask Protocol.
• Axelar will make their cross-chain bridging infrastructure available for users of Beamswap.
• You can now off-ramp from GLMR to fiat and on-ramp on Glmr in 40 countries using Stellaswap. This is possible due to Stella's partnership with Transak.
• A new dApp which allows to borrow and lend crypto using fixed interest rates on Moonbeam, called Qoda. Currently in Moonbase alpha test net.
• xcUSDT-GLMR farm pool coming to Beamswap. Deposits open but rewards begin on the 1st of October.

Content creation (Tier 1 & 2 Creator)

• @PNP writes a thread on What can you do with $ASTR?
• @Yuli Kay puts together a short video about RainDOT campaign.
• @paulll writes thread on Bifrost adding vKSM to Moonriver.
• @DrCAO provides valuable educational videos and complementary articles covering a number of things. This week has a video on Acala’s community referendum Stage 1 and Stage 2.

Governance

Quite a bit to vote on this past week!

• Exciting week for governance as Referendum 232 has passed, but notably, it was open for only 3 hours as this was expedited by the technical committee to fix a critical Statmine bug noticed by Parity.
• Referendum 233 is currently passing with >90% support at the time of writing. This referendum aims to swap Picasso’s parachain lease via the relay chain, as their previous effort didn’t work due to technical reasons.
• By the time this is read, we will know whether or not Referendum 234 will pass to top up Bounty 12, WagMedia’s proposal system to fund grass-roots community based content in Polkadot and Kusama. It is passing with 84% support at the time of writing.
• Referendum 235 was put in place of Referendum 231 which was rejected by the community due to a bug found in the runtime upgrade proposal. 235 passed and Kusama keeps on chugging!
• Moonwell Artemis releases a discussion post about an ecosystem incentives grant on the Moonbeam Network. Learn more here. Moonbeam’s focus on community based funding has encouraged others to engage in governance as Qoda Protocol, a lending and borrowing DeFi platform, has posted their proposal requesting up to 500K USD over 6 months.
• Acala has been busy this week with implementing their staged resumption of operations. Be sure to check their governance forums to stay up to date and vote! At the time of writing, oracles, borrowing and liquidations have yet to be resumed. This is to begin during Stage 3
• Updates to Manta’s chaotic chain, Calamari, are currently being voted on. These updates are detailed in this post on Calamari’s governance forums, but highlights include a tokenomics upgrade and upgrades to collators to enable delegated proof of stake!

Rumours & Alpha

Do Your Own Research! These finds are unconfirmed alpha in Dotsama:

• Looks like Astar has USDT on its chain!
• As a follow-up to the recent news about building a Moonsama Parachain, Donnie has hinted they are now considering setting up an L2 EVM chain within two weeks as an interim option.
• Bitcountry Pioneer has opened XCM channels with Karura, and liquidity bootstrapping of $NEER on Karura is planned along with listing on DEXs.
• Kucollection has a metaverse coming?

Beginner’s Guide

New to Polkadot? Or maybe you have some friends who keep coins on a CEX but haven't become a part of a community yet? Share this with them to get them started! It will be updated weekly with new content and is open for changes. Feel free to leave a comment and I'll add content that's needed.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Dotsama

Another mind-blowing week! Our WagMedia discord is the primary source for most of the content in this newsletter – thanks a ton fam! These are just the highlights, for more in-depth news join the discord and get incentivized to learn more about the ecosystem and provide news, alpha, and content to us all. As always, I’m open to feedback and I hope you find this helpful. Looking forward to yet another week of exponential growth in the DotSama ecosystem.

What is WagMedia?

WagMedia Discord.

Jay Chrawnna’s The Kusamarian channel provides us all with extremely entertaining updates on everything DotSama. Here is the playback listing of the past week:

1. Exosamas, $Poop, & Youdles on Kusama and Polkadot News - SER, Have ya' Heard?
2. Polkadot & Frens Penthaus Party ROCKET ROUND of 20 Questions in NYC! - Space Monkeys Podcast 070.
3. $POOP, Exosama, Moonsama, Pondsama, Gromlins & MORE! - PNinja on the Road.
4. ASTAR Network WASM Smart Contracts via XVM - Csaint's Alpha Shots.
5. Learn How to Mint and Send GMs and GNs to your $FRENS on chain with GmOrDie on Kusama!

Looking for more to read, why not check out the other works by the Wag Weekly Squad: Pnin, Csaint, Jb_blah, and Dodow.

Tips appreciated

KSM

GL85fwNiFfUqkCcmtrq7eD5DphB1QWJrxkgMme5qdSuFfap

Metamask

0x66b9f30B38Cb6d61374D15D8A9D220561E715995

Keep your eyes peeled for future announcements on Sub Bounties!