Forkless Chaos! - Newsletter Edition 88

In this week’s edition:

1. Editorial: Bye bye vibes, covering the chaos of this past week, and looking back at the chaos on Kusama.
2. Top Story - Rocky Rolls of Chaos!: ahead of ETHDenver, the week seems to be full of drama and chaos.
3. Featured Report - Rollback the Chaos!: we recap some of the chaos on Kusama.
4. Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between February 20th and February 26th.
5. Extras: Credits and anything else.

Editorial

What is up, my friends!

Pretty sure by now most of us know what hack happened, or can at least lazarus a guess on what went down. While we can commend the united actions of the crypto industry to make folks hole, the ~1.4B is no small gap. There also seems to be no intention of a rollback.

Some may have felt the markets reacted in the following week after the drama unfolded over the weekend, but a number of other factors are said to be at play. One thing is for sure, things might not be so safeanymore.

Meanwhile, over in the Polkadot ecosystem there was a different sign of chaos, more aimed at making it cypherpunk again. With some of the ecosystem faithful heading on to ETHDenver, a new funraising focused academy, and a bird-rising movement, we’ll provide you more insights on these in this week’s top story.

For our featured report, we’re going to look back through the Wag archives at our chaotic canary. As for the new WagMedia look, what do you think? Our teammate Skullz has not only been working his magic on our awesome newsletter cover art, but in the background, he’s been cooking up this visual change.

Fancy a change from reading to creating? Join us!

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - Rocky Rolls of Chaos!

Written by yay.oi

What’s tradin’, CEXies? Never fear, your funds are safu. This week, a staggering $1.4 billion ETH went missing from Bybit, one of the world’s largest centralized exchanges. Not only is this the biggest crypto hack to date, but it may well be the largest financial breach ever.

Given the sheer volume of losses, some have called for a rollback of the Ethereum blockchain, which would require coordination across multiple stakeholders. After all, there’s a precedent for it. That idea, however, has been firmly rejected by core developer Tim Beiko.

While it’s true that Ethereum developers intervened to reverse the $50M exploit of The DAO in 2016, the decision caused a permanent rift in the community. Those unresolvable differences resulted in the forking of the blockchain into Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

The Ethereum Classic camp was steadfast in upholding the principles of blockchain immutability and code is law. Over time, perhaps influenced by the unexpected contentiousness of The DAO solution, both sides seem to have reached a similar consensus that immutability is foundational to the integrity of the blockchain.

Though, when we’re talking about consensus on Ethereum, it doesn’t quite work like Polkadot’s on-chain consensus, which is backed by token-holders and delegations. As explained by Goku, changes on Ethereum are, for the most part, decided through the rough consensus of a tight-knit group of core developers.

To make Ethereum protocol changes, a fork is required, meaning that two instances of the blockchain operate until every node upgrades its software. If enough nodes refuse an upgrade, a permanent split can occur, like what happened with Ethereum Classic.

The Polkadot protocol, however, is designed for forkless upgrades. Its runtime is stored on-chain with upgrades deployed by governance. This can offer improved response time and flexibility for addressing security threats. An example of this can be seen in the ongoing proposals to regain control of the Parallel Finance parachain from its attacker.

While this week has been marred by black-hat activities, the white-hatted hordes have descended on Colorado for ETHDenver, host of the world’s largest Ethereum hackathon. As a presenting sponsor, Polkadot is well represented and is also running a hackathon of its own.

Hosted at the Blockspace Mansion by WebZero, the team behind the epic Sub0 Reset in Bangkok, Lost Tribes is a week-long Polkadot hackerhouse with bounties of +$15K. The Blockspace Mansion also hosts numerous side events, such as Wednesday’s Camp Out with Polkadot, featuring presentations from Shawn Tabrizi, Moonbeam, Robonomics, and Evrloot.

Back at the ETHDenver base camp on Wednesday, Parity’s Erin Grasmick and Rémy Le Berre spoke on how to address the Web3 skills gap created by outdated traditional computer-science education. Thursday featured keynotes from Parity’s Chrissy Hill on diversity and inclusivity in tech, and Shawn Tabrizi, who showcased the Polkadot multi-core Web3 Cloud.

Erin returns for a keynote on Friday about L1 scaling solutions. This will be followed by a Polkadot panel on community building in a post-memecoin world, featuring Lucy Coulden, Birdo, and Mythical’s Cameron Thacker.

On Saturday, the Blockspace Mansion wraps up with the Lost Tribes Demo Day, where hackers will present their projects to the judges. Meanwhile, Polkadot and {bash} will host the official ETHDenver closing party at Reelworks, with every attendee onboarded with a Polkadot wallet through the treasury-funded Billfold POS integration.

While the hacker vibes must come to an end in Denver, they live on in our hearts and also on our recently hydrated canary chain. Although, there has been a growing push to drop the canary moniker.

We first reported on Shawn Tabrizi’s idea of making Kusama chaotic againin Recap Dotcember. His plan to take Kusama back to its cypherpunk roots involves a renewed focus on anonymity, activism, and the DIY ethos.

A Kusama Wish for Change proposal from Bill Laboon seeks to give this vision financial backing of 10M DOT, provided by the Web3 Foundation. This is the amount originally promised to Kusama from the Polkadot token genesis pool to incentivize network participation.

These funds could be distributed in a variety of ways, such as directly to the Kusama treasury, project grants, subsidies, hackathons, and so on. With the focus on Kusama as a privacy-centric chain, considerable funds would be put towards ZK projects.

Another initiative launched by the Web3 Foundation this week is the Polkadot x ERA Global Program. The first cohort includes Kylix, Apillon, Staex, and Zeitgeist. In contrast to other Web3 development-focused accelerators, this program aims to give projects the assistance needed to break into the US market.

For earlier stage projects, the Polimec x Scytale Academy is now taking applications. The ten-week program offers education, mentorship, and access to VCs. It also provides access to Polimec, a decentralized protocol that fundraises for projects building on Polkadot. The program aims to help these projects prepare to present their concepts to potential investors.

As the Polkadot ecosystem keeps pushing forward, the uncertainty in the broader market suggests we might be in for some tough times ahead. The Dots claims that hard times are what spawned Polkadot, but Gavin Wood isn’t so sure. One thing he’s certain of, though, is that Polkadot will be needed when the real hard times hit.

Polkadot has been around for long enough that some dare to call it a dinocoin, evoking images of an obsolete relic, gathering dust in a boomer dad’s long-forgotten Ledger. However, Moon-Bearer’s comparison to SpaceX paints a more visionary picture.

The ultimate mission of SpaceX is to secure humanity’s future by colonizing Mars. Meanwhile, the Web3 vision, embodied by Polkadot, aims to reclaim humanity’s freedom from overreaching centralized entities.

Through every cycle, crash, and hack, Polkadot has endured, never losing sight of its long-term ambition. Resilience runs deep, and events such as this week’s Bybit hack are just one of many bumps in the road.

Featured Report - Rollback the Chaos!

Written by Dodow

On 21st February, Bill Laboon, on behalf of the Web3 Foundation, tabled a referendum on the Wish For Change track to usher in a new vision for Kusama. Referendum 498 seeks approval from the community to secure 10M DOT from the W3F treasury to effectively transition Kusama from merely being a Canary Network.

The use case as a standalone Canary Network has served Polkadot well as a testing ground with real economics. With Polkadot Cloud and Hub shaping up, and the future of JAM on the horizon, it might be time to raise the bird like a phoenix from the ashes.

While the proposal (at the time of writing) and its vision are yet to be determined, we can take this opportunity to reflect on Kusama’s accomplishments. With help from the WagMedia archives, let’s look back at some of the highlights.

Kusama has always had the cypherpunk vibe, bonding wild and experimental thinkers together. Anyone recall the Kusamaverse? In fact, under some sleeves, there’s even a hidden society of sorts. As a star OG wagger, Pitcoin explains, Kappa Sigma Mu were long among the first to embrace the responsibility that comes with Proof of Ink.

Pitcoin also explains the distinction between test network and experimental network. He points out that, as Gav expressed, do we seriously want two Polkadots? Sure, the codebase is the same, but when you compare them side by side, you start to sense a different proposition.

Tracking down another OG wagger, Cris Pap also expresses a similar sentiment and goes on X to explain how DOT needs KSM (note: this was appreciated through the early Polka Häus treasury partnership). Back then, we expected chaos as well as love.

As with the original Polkadot concept, Kusama centres around the relay chain, which primary purpose is to secure the network. It was expected that the chaos would breed with parachains (i.e. rollups). The anticipation was high, and even ChaosDAO Daoist Crane was analysing it, which likely contributed to his growth into now providing us with Polkadot data dumps weekly.

The launch of Parachain Auctions on Kusama came at a good time during the last bull cycle. We covered the success of Moonbeam’s canary, Moonriver, in a featured report last year. During those early days, Movrines were quite vocal on X, such as outlining Solidity contracts on Kusama. Meanwhile, within WagMedia, we got pitnominal videos and saintly written guides that featured MOVR.

Numerous Kusama parachains managed to make an impact. For instance, Paul from Polkadotters was eager to spread the word, posting on WagMedia about Manta’s ground breaking trusted setup that helped launch MantaPay’s privacy transfers on its canary, Calamari. DrCAO also gave it some 爱 (love) with a multilingual thread and video.

Those in the trenches will know a thing or two about GMs, just as our very own WagMedia director, Goku, did when he covered the unusual and now-defunct GM Parachain. Pretty sure Cris Pap also contributed to its crowdloan to receive some FRENS. Overall, Kusama parachains that haven’t sunset have either remained for battle testing or, in some cases, migrated to Polkadot–this includes Kilt, Zeitgeist, and Subsocial.

Given the speed of Kusama as opposed to Polkadot, we also got our first taste of the liquid crowdloan use case. We covered slot auction liquidity protocol, in our featured report on Bifrost, but did you know that another existing WagMedia director, Ikhaled, created a helpful guide on how to redeem your KSM?

In turn, glimmering creator Maxim gave us some ideas on how to DeFi on Kusama with the returned KSM from crowdloans. Unlike the current vibrant DeFi ecosystem, early DeFi on Kusama required thinking, which led to the creation of smart infographics, openly shared by former Mangata parachain team member Jeeper.

Not that there wasn’t anything to do, far from it. For instance another Star story Taler and former WagMedia director, JB, described the huckleberry adventures on Moonriver. Additionally, DrCAO compared the APRs for KSM on prominent liquid staking protocols at the time, which included Karura, Lido, and Parallel Heiko.

Those who noticed the reference to saintly from earlier might know it refers to none other than the Legendary Wagger Csaint. He coined the expression “NFTs and the Metaverse: The Heartbeat of Dotsama” in this very publication (i.e., The WagMedia Newsletter) back in its 4th edition.

The reason was simple: NFTs in the ecosystem took off on Kusama itself and not on parachains that was originally intended. Taking off with the NFT content in WagMedia was another Legendary Wagger, Pnin, who has since gone on to report for The Kusamarian. He became the go-to NFT guy, teaching those of us who wished to deepen our understanding.

Pnin guided us through the ecosystem's primary marketplace, Singular, where hidden gems can be found. He explained why the RMRK protocol, which originated on Kusama, matters to artists and highlighted the importance of understanding collectors.

Furthermore, he collaborated with another existing WagMedia director, Vampsy, on analysing royalties and game theory. Speaking of Vampsy, his analysis of the historic Kusama NFT collection Kusama Kingdom is just as good as his Polkadot analysis.

Cycling back to RMRK, one of today’s top-tier creators, Gbaci, made his first content submission within WagMedia about it. Another Wag creator, Prophet, who is also part of the NFT Guild, covered RMRK extensively. Looking back, NFT’s on Kusama was certainly a wild era, living up to its chaotic billing, a sentiment conveyed long ago by creator The FVK.

Today most of us have heard about the wild spending of the world’s largest DAO. Naturally, OpenGov, previously known as Gov 2.0, started on Kusama. The treasury spending on Kusama could also be considered wild. Nonetheless, there was much-needed development along the way, such as tracks, which was superbly illustrated in an infographic by professional graphics creator Zooeys.

This brings us full circle. As described in the follow-up blog from the Web3 Foundation, Kusama is now at an inflection point. Polkadot’s “chaotic canary” seemingly is no longer so chaotic. Therefore, the OpenGov proposal is set to introduce a new vision, rather than a rigid roadmap, to evolve Kusama into a network where cutting-edge experimentation actually happens.

Goku wrote a compelling post on X outlining the movement to Make Kusama Cypherpunk Again. It builds on what Shawn Tabrizi kicked off in the Polkadot forum, which includes a dark renaissance with potential development around privacy and ZK primitives. What lies ahead could be truly exciting, and we look forward to content about the chaos fitting of Kusama!

Wag Roundup (February 20th to February 26th)

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

DOT Ecosystem News

Written by yay.oi

• On February 25th, Grayscale filed an application with the SEC to list a spot DOT ETF on the Nasdaq exchange.

• Applications are open until March 5th for the fourth cohort of Web3 Foundation Decentralized Voices delegates. As with the third cohort, six delegations will receive voting power of 5M DOT on Polkadot and 30K KSM for a four-month term starting in early April.

• Polkadot co-founder Rob Habermeier has released the v1.0 preview of NOMT, an upcoming scaling solution for blockchain nodes that enhances throughput and interoperability, yet runs on inexpensive consumer-grade hardware.

• The Polimec x Scytale Academy kicks off on April 7th and is now taking applications. Successful applicants will receive training and mentoring to help their project achieve investment readiness. Projects will be eligible for funding of up to $250K from Scytale and potential additional funding from a Polimec fundraise.

• The Web3 Foundation has launched the Polkadot x ERA Global Program, an accelerator program that aims to help projects break into the US market. Kylix, Apillon, Staex, and Zeitgeist have been selected to join the first cohort.

• Thanks to the hard work of Paper Moon, Polkadot Developer Docs have now been condensed into a single page optimized for LLM training.

• Blockdeep Labs has released Epico, a tool that allows direct interaction between MetaMask and Polkadot SDK chains without the need for EVM.

• The Pop Web3 development platform has released its 2025 roadmap, targeting a mainnet launch with PVM support in Q2. Pop aims to enhance interoperability on Polkadot through smart contracts that can connect and utilize services across the entire rollup ecosystem.

• Payments on the privacy-focused XHYPE travel and gift-card marketplaces can now be made with Asset Hub DOT and USDT through SubWallet, thanks to the efforts of the IberLab BD Team.

• No DOT? No worries! Custom gas tokens are now supported for Asset Hub transactions on SubWallet.

• Get chattin’! Come and connect with the community in the new official Polkadot Telegram group.

• The EvrlootAuction House is live, bringing order book features and price discovery to the in-game marketplace. To celebrate, every trader in week one will receive a rare Trader’s Necklace, with the top three traders sharing a prize pool of USDC $1000.

• The N3mus x Moonbeamweekly gaming tournament has entered Week 6, featuring The Great Escape and PINK’s Pinkdrop, with a prize pool of $1750 USDC.

• Expect even deeper insights from the Gavun Wud AI agent, now thanks to an integration with the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph. AI Gav now has access to the Polkadot Wiki, sentiment analysis, and real-time asset prices.

• You can now support the Gavun Wud project and potentially earn some special NFT rewards, by minting your vDOT from its referral link.

• Arkain’s generative art collection, Nebula, dropped on KodaDot on February 24th and sold out in two days.

• Kusama has arrived on Hydration! It is now possible to bridge and swap KSM in the Omnipool.

• You can now bridge vTokens, BNC, and DOT from Bifrost to Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, and BNB via the Hyperbridge integration.

• Gaining even more visibility this week, StellaSwap V4 pools are now listed on Defined.fi.

• With the passing of Polkadot Referendum 1427, runtime v1.4.0 is now live, enabling the bridging of Polkadot-native assets to Ethereum and unwrapped ETH to Polkadot, along with permissionless lanes to connect parachains and Ethereum smart contracts..

• Bill Laboon has initiated a Kusama Wish for Change proposal to fulfil Gavin Wood’s promise to grant 10M DOT from the token genesis pool to incentivize network participation. It is proposed that the funds could be used to transition Kusama from a canary network into an experiment-centric peer network with a focus on ZK technology.

• Following in the footsteps of Moonriver, MoonbeamReferendum 101 proposes to burn 100% of transaction fees.

DOT Ecosystem Events

Written by yay.oi

• The Polkadot Blockchain Academy is showcasing their blockchain education programs in the Polkadot booth at ETHDenver this week until March 2nd.
• Polkadot hosted Richard and Pakman (Xcavate) on February 20th to discuss how their decentralized modular protocol is leading the way for the tokenization of real estate.
• Xcavate, Polkadot Blockchain Academy, and Kylix Finance hosted a meetup titled Polkadot – The Endless Possibilities of Web3 at the University of East London on February 25th. The event featured presentations introducing Polkadot and PoKe, the gaming ecosystem, DeFi, and RWA, as well as a panel of recent PBA-X graduates.
• ChessOnChain hosted a panel about Polkadot Web3 gaming on February 25th featuring Teke (ChessOnChain), Luka (Peer3.to), Esther (Unique Network), Marin (Pink Racing), and Kasper (Mythical).
• On February 26th, Polkadot and WebZero presented Camp Out with Polkadot at the ETHDenver Blockspace Mansion, featuring speakers Vitaly Butalov (Robonomics), QEDK (Avail), Kevin Neilson (Moonbeam), Lucas Moskau (Evrloot), and Shawn Tabrizi (Polkadot Fellow).
• Celebrations continued well into the night on February 26th as the Nova Wallet House Party took over the ETHDenver Blockspace Mansion.
• On the evening of Friday, February 28th, at the Blockspace Mansion, WebZero hosts Enter the Paraverse with Polkadot, featuring talks from StellaSwap, Hyperbridge, Acurast & Bifrost.
• The Web3 Summit returns in 2025 from July 16th to 18th at the Funkhaus Berlin. Ticket sales and speaker applications are open now.

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.