Gray Matter! (April 14th to April 20th)

What is up, my friends!

Token 2049, in Dubai, was the defining setting for Chief Architect and Polkadot Founder Dr Gavin Wood to jam it up by unveiling the JAM Gray Paper. This momentous occasion also signifies 10 years since he released the Ethereum Yellow Paper.

Those who have read or attempted to read either of the papers would appreciate the great effort that goes into them. In what can be considered a watershed moment, the writings formally introduces a novel approach which is meant to lay the foundations to evolve the path ahead.

Having read a fair number of white papers, lite papers, economic papers, etc. It is fair to say the Gray Paper, unlike some others, is not dependent on AI. ChatGPT is unlikely the way to go about interpreting an academically sound paper, which is aimed at certain developers or researchers within the blockchain space.

The Gray Paper is immense with tons of insights, definitions, references, concepts, formulas; and it shapes up how we arrive at the JAM chain protocol. It’s important to recognise that there is still quite a bit of work to be done.

That said, I would encourage folks to respect the work created by our ecosystem founder. Some time will be needed to fully comprehend it, and I believe this sentiment is shared by Jay in a recent episode of The Kusarmian, as he mentions “we’ll help you unpack the JAM Gray Paper in the coming weeks”.

Unsurprisingly, this week's top story will attempt to provide coverage of the Gray Paper. While our newsletter writers are still digesting what can be considered a complex piece of work, we aim to offer an initial interpretation of what it represents, including the aftermath and anticipated future outlook.

There was also other important news this week, which in most other weeks could be considered the top story. Therefore, we shall provide a featured story to cover those “timely core” significant updates, which might have been somewhat overlooked.

Now, let's get into those important matters!

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - JAMazing Gray!

Written by yay.oi

Ahoy there Dot fam. I hope you’ve been staying hydrated. Token 2049 Dubai attendees this week may have had more hydration than they could handle. Some say they were utterly drenched in liquidity. But even as the gray skies parted, our founder and chief architect Gavin Wood kept the gray vibes rolling.

It’s been a very special week for Polkadot at Token 2049 Dubai, culminating with the main event which was due to start on Thursday April 18th. With the Polkadot Yacht Party on the 16th and Polkadot Pulse on the 17th it was no surprise to see the Polkadot faithful starting to roll in early.

Filippo Franchini tweeted his arrival in Dubai on the 15th, and was met with a seemingly bizarre reply: be careful heavy rain is forecasted tomorrow…

It certainly rained a lot! About 250mm of rain, twice the UAE’s annual average, fell in just one day. Streets, runways, and even hotel lobbies were flooded. Flights were delayed and cancelled. With the metro shutdown and taxis not running, stories emerged of stranded people sleeping on a shopping mall floor.

The Polkadot yacht party was rescheduled to Wednesday 17th, and Polkadot Pulse continued as normal, unfortunately without our favorite bovine memelord in attendance. It was still hard to get a taxi, and many resorted to walking through water and hiring e-scooters to get around.

News reports began likening Token 2049 to the Fyre Festival, though fortunately this event did have croissants. Despite the outdoor chaos earlier in the week, the events were professionally run and well attended.

With the gray skies cleared, our man of the moment Gavin Wood made it to Dubai in time for his speech on Thursday 18th. Titled The Big JAM, we didn’t know what to expect. Polkadot devotees have already had time to (or at least attempt to) digest the RFC and Gavin’s sub0 keynote and the subsequent WagMedia newsletter coverage.

Perhaps the clues have been there all along, it was considerably symbolic that upon the unveiling, Gav’s long gray mane is no more, replaced with a fresh new buzz-cut. As ten years after writing the Yellow Paper, the technical specification of Ethereum, Gavin Wood presented the Gray Paper, a technical specification of JAM and a fresh new start for Polkadot.

Clocking 58 pages and quite intimidating for a non-developer, the paper starts by identifying the driving factors of blockchain and Web3 development. It then goes on to identify the components of Polkadot that are lacking. Parachains are difficult and expensive to build (less accessibility), and highly isolated from each other (less coherency).

As the paper goes on we can see how JAM addresses these problems, while also bringing resilience, generality, and performance. However, this section is not an easy read as it contains a lot of high-level terminology and algorithms that may bog down the uninitiated.

After all, the Gray Paper can be considered a technical specification. Its purpose is to define JAM, provide guidelines on how to build it, and in the future act as a reference document for how JAM works.

That said, it is important for all members of the Polkadot community to gain an understanding of what JAM is and its potential, because the community is who decides if JAM is implemented at all.

In a nutshell, JAM is proposed to replace the Polkadot Relay Chain. Fillipo Franchini likens it to a CPU swap. The current parachains will be able to continue as normal on the JAM chain but its scope would be much larger and much more powerful.

JAM will transform the Relay chain into a distributed supercomputer, which is flexible about what can be deployed or processed on it. It will bring the permissionlessness of a smart contract chain, paired with the secure co-processing abilities and scalability of the Polkadot network.

For a simpler rundown of JAM and the Gray Paper, check out the JAM chain wikias well as a clear summary of the paper by one of our own wag creators, Emil.

So what’s next? Firstly, the Polkadot community needs to give their consent for the implementation of JAM. This will be done by Referendum #682 on OpenGov. The referendum is submitted as a remark call, meaning that it does not make any on-chain changes. If approved, the Polkadot Fellows will begin the process of rolling out JAM as specified in the Gray Paper.

Like Polkadot 1.0 and Ethereum, JAM will have client implementations using multiple software languages. A diverse range of client implementations builds resilience against attacks and bugs. It also leads to more decentralization by spreading the implementation across multiple teams.

Polkadot is targeting a minimum of 3 independent implementations. We also see the introduction of the Polkadot Virtual Machine and the utilization of lightweight RISC-V architecture, which offers simplicity, security, and exceptional performance.

To kickstart the diverse implementation of JAM, the Web3 foundation has announced the JAM Implementers Prize. A pool of 10 million DOT will be distributed to teams that can implement JAM clients from the ground up in different programming languages.

JAM Chain would be a massive change to the Polkadot network, and these things take time to develop. Make sure your voice is heard, as we the Polkadot community, have the power to make these things happen with allocating additional funds to development. Don’t forget to vote!

Timely Core Updates

Written by Sanchez

Saludos, amigos. Coretime is live on Kusama.

After the passing of the Referenda 375, Coretime sales are set to go live on Kusama on Thursday, the 25th of April. This ends the parachain auctions, which were how projects looking to build on Kusama got a slot.

The parachain auctions, although effective for the initial phases of Polkadot and Kusama, presented some inadequacies as we advanced. These included the wide disproportion of tokens teams needed, opportunity costs with locking tokens for long periods, and delayed launches from the result of the timing of slot availability.

Agile Coretime enables efficient and effective utilization of Polkadot’s blockspace resources, by offering developers flexible and less expensive access to it. Teams can buy bulk Coretime for the consistent use and upkeep of their parachains, purchase instantaneous Coretime, or even rent or borrow Coretime when needed in a pay-as-you-go system.

Acai Liang, explains the approach taken by the yet to be launched Magnet chain when it comes to buying and utilizing Coretime. It illustrates the Magnet chain only requesting and purchasing instantaneous Coretime when a transaction occurs, effectively saving system resources.

This is possible because Coretime is dedicated to specific tasks rather than specific parachains, thus, allowing for easy task adjustment. It removes a major bottleneck of building on Polkadot, making access to blockspace cheap and seamless.

Coretime will be purchased with KSM and DOT. The revenue from selling Coretime will be burnt, as discussed in the now-passed 74th referendum from the Polkadot Fellowship, adding another layer of utility to the DOT token.

With Coretime now live on Kusama, Coretime marketplaces like Lastic and Region X have also been launched. These marketplaces will provide easy access to Coretime from the respective Coretime chain on Kusama and Polkadot. The Coretime chain serves as a ledger that accounts for all of Coretime's sales, purchases, activity, renewals, and more.

The Lastic Coretime marketplace was launched on the 18th of April and provides a seamless and intuitive UI for Coretime purchases and sales. Its intention is to simplify the process of purchasing Coretime, allowing coders and non-coders alike to purchase Coretime on Polkadot and Kusama.

Furthermore, Lastic will also provide automated renewal services for parachains looking to renew Coretime. Currently Coretime sales on Lastic for Kusama starts at 5 KSM and gradually decreases or increases based on demand.

Co-founded by Phil, a former Parity Technologies team member, you can watch his interview with Jay for Space Monkeys, where he dives into the evolution of Kusama, Polkadot, Coretime, and Lastic.

Also, launching soon is Region X, who are a decentralized secondary market for Coretime offering affordable user purchases on Polkadot and Kusama, as well as providing tools to track Coretime utilization.

Region X enables the trading of regions, which are parts of a bulk Coretime sale that could fulfill specific unique properties for purchasers. It effectively allows users with smaller interests to purchase the Coretime required, thereby offering a more extensive retail focus.

Additionally, Region X recently collaborated with Polytope and will use their Interoperable State Machine Protocol (ISMP) to read the state of the Coretime chain. This enables the ability to easily match parachains with regions, catering for specific required properties from the regions available on sale.

While slot auctions are a thing of the past on Kusama, they're still active on Polkadot and this week Ajuna Network and KILT both won the 67th Polkadot parachain slot. Yeah, both teams won because slot auctions allow projects to bid for six-month leases of up to two years.

It’s not the first instance of more than one winner, as this has happened on Kusama on a couple of occasions. A more detailed breakdown of the result on Polkadot is as follows: KILT Network won the bid for the lease for the first six months with 100 DOT, and Ajuna won the 3 other leases of 6 months with 20,000 DOT.

This means KILT will utilize slot 67 from July 3 to September 23, 2024, with Ajuna using the slot from the 23 of September until the 26th of May, 2026.

As we approach the end of parachain auctions for slots on Polkadot and Kusama, Agile Coretime offers an essential first step in the progression towards Polkadot 2.0. Agile Coretime provides seamless and cheap access to blockspace, allowing teams to manage their resources efficiently. It is expected to launch on Polkadot sometime after it is stable and functioning on Kusama.

Next up is Asynchronous backing, which decreases blocktimes on Polkadot to 6 secs, increasing throughput by 2x. Stay tuned to future editions of our awesome newsletter to keep updated on innovations coming across Polkadot and Kusama.

General News

Written by Turing Machine

• Talisman launched Talisman Quests Open Beta, where you can complete tasks and earn XP to receive airdrops and more.
• Nodle was the first team to migrate their testnet from Rococo to Paseo.
• Polimec announced the first wave of projects to raise funds on its platform, which includes Apillion and Mandala Chain.
• STINK announced a 2% airdrop allocation for STINK holders on HydraDX.
• NovaWallet has added support for STINK and DOTA tokens on HydraDX.
• Did you notice the joint winners for Polkadot Auction #67, following is how it breaks down. KILT won lease period 17 (until September 23, 2024) with a self-funded bid of 100 DOT, while Ajuna won lease periods 18-24 (until May 8, 2026) with a self-funded bid of 20,000 DOT.
• OriginTrail’s parachain NeuroWeb AI token (NEURO), has been listed on MEXC.
• RegionX parachain will target secondary coretime markets on Kusama and Polkadot leveraging Polytope Labs’ ISMP to trustlessly read the state of Coretime chain.
• The Lastic marketplace has been launched on Kusama, it’s the first to support Coretime buying, selling, automation and renewals.
• Dr. Gavin Wood published the JAM specification, containing the description and formal specification of the JAM protocol.
• Polkadot treasury funded initiative, Decentralised Identity Provider (DIP), developed by Kilt is now live. DIP is an enabler for the adoption of Decentralised ID, as it allows any parachains (and in the future other chains) to offer identity services. For instance, Mandala chain mentioned a partnership with Kilt for .ID in a recent Space Monkeys episode.
• Tanssi network has launched its incentivized Testnet campaign Let's Forkin' Dance! Starting on 30th April, there will be on-chain and off-chain challenges to earn rewards.
• The Web3 Foundation has announced a 10m DOT prize pool, to foster diversity in the development of the JAM protocol, and to encourage the creation of multiple client implementations.
• STINK memecoin has burned admin rights on Asset-Hub.
• Polkadot parachains partly halted during the 1.2.0 runtime upgrade at block 20438530, from approximately 11:40 - 12:40 UTC on 21st April 2024.

NFT News

Written by Sanchez

• Beefy, a memecoin soon to be launched on Polkadot, announced a POAP NFT collection, claimable only by attendees of the Polkadot on Yatch event.
• SFY Labs has refunded all users who purchased an Age of Chronos Incubator on Astar EVM. After moving to the Moonbeam Network, the new strategy for launch will involve free mints with previous buyers of the Age of Chronos Incubator whitelisted for the mint.
• DOTA, the first inscription protocol on Polkadot, is now tradeable on AscendEX. This follows the tokenization of DOTA on Asset Hub and subsequent listing on HydraDX.
• LAOS Network has joined the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA). The Blockchain Game Alliance is raising awareness and promoting the utilization of blockchain within the gaming industry.
• Unique Network has announced an NFT competition on Zealy, with a reward pool of $500 in DOT to 25 lucky participants. This is to support Conor Daly and his Polkadot car at the Indy 500 races.
• Aurora, a generative art collection from Cartist, launched on Kodadot on the 16th of April with a minting fee of 0.5 DOT.
• The Great Escape (TGE) has announced a technological collaboration with Tanssi, forming a TGE app chain on Tanssi. This will provide the necessary infrastructure, improve scalability, and cater to TGE's expected expansion.
• JAM, an inscription memecoin project on Polkadot, is being discontinued. After failing to hit their minting targets, they will distribute their treasury to 3 user wallets (7.33 DOT each) that minted JAM the most.
• Pablo Andriolireleases a new generative art collection tagged Electronik on Kodadot. The collection is currently minting at 0.5 DOT a piece.
• Ajuna Network has integrated Airlyft to improve its community engagement and user experiences. Ajuna will utilize Airlyft for its community events and programs.
• The Kanary memecoin on Polkadot has partnered with GONE, a memecoin on Polygon, which will see KNRY tokens airdropped to holders of the GONE memecoin.
• LAOShas integrated with the Talisman wallet. As a first step, users can support the LAOS parachain auction by crowdloaning DOT through the Talisman wallet.

DEFI News

Written by Turing Machine

• Bifrost opened their Grants Program. Yield optimisation features, LST backed stablecoin, and yield trading are just some of the tracks listed.
• Centrifuge announced a $15 million funding round raise to drive Institutional adoption of DeFi.
• DED token is now available to swap on StellaSwap DEX on Moonbeam Network.
• Acala published a breakdown of their next Sinai Upgrade, which includes support for OpenGov, Cross-chain security (Sentinel), Async Backing, and JAM.
• Acala embraces CeFi with the partnership announcement with Binance. You can now lock up ACA for rewards on Binance Simple Earn.
• StellaSwap launched DED farm incentives on xcDED/xcDOT pool, with dual rewards in STELLA and DED.
• SubWallet enables browser extension and web dashboard swapping of 9 assets on HydraDX, with its latest update.
• Polkadex makes onboarding to their Orderbook easier by introducing Polkapool, an AMM mechanism which enables Auto-Swap transfers of potentially easier accessible assets such as DOT.
• Stellaswap introduces a CEX on-ramp feature with the integration of Cede.store. It enables easy asset transfer from several exchanges including Binance, Coinbase, Kucoin, Okx, and more.

Governance News

Written by Turing Machine

• The HydraDX council is calling on its community to vote on a Referenda #135 to open HRMP channels with KILT and add the token to the Omnipool.
• Helix DAO is seeking funds from the Darwinia Network treasury, for the implementation and maintenance of xToken BAAS (Bridge as a Service) over one year. The purpose is to enhance user experience and interoperability between Ethereum and Crab Network.
• Referendum #682 calls upon the Polkadot community to signal their willingness for the Technical Fellowship to supervise and ratify the rollout of the JAM protocol, as specified in the Gray Paper.
• Referendum #680 proposes to initialize Snowbridge, the Polkadot<>Ethereum bridge, on both Bridge-Hub and Asset-Hub.
• Chainalysis requests 1M DOT to provide data, analytics, and compliance solutions that foster entry into the institutional market.

Events News

Written by Turing Machine

• On Monday April 22nd 2024 Polkadot hosted Talisman Co-Founder Agyle to talk about Talisman Quests, a new Web3 portal for earning XP to receive airdrops and other perks.
• Kingdom Ventures Inaugural Royal Roundtable took place on April 22nd 2024, to share the origin story and future vision of the Kingdom.

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 aemonk.