Decentralized Alignment? - Newsletter Edition 93

In this week’s edition:

1. Editorial: DeFing exchanges, Polkadot cohorts, and an approach to mindshare.

2. Top Story - DOT Cohorts!: insights into the latest Polkadot ecosystem cohorts.

3. Featured Wag Roundup: news from our Finders Program between March 27th and April 2nd, plus an update on yapping and a take on mindshare.

4. Extras: credits and anything else.

Editorial

What is up, my friends!

While the broader sentiment has shifted towards reciprocal tariffs, this past week was pretty much business as usual, with building and development ongoing. However, it was somewhat interrupted by a DeFi incident known as HyperJellied, which potentially challenges the values of Web3.

Initially seen as a sophisticated exploit to force a perpetual DeFi platform into bad debt, the situation could have worsened when two major centralized exchanges (CEXs) announced the opening of a futures market on the token in question. In response, an on-chain vote was promptly initiated to delist the illiquid token and artificially settle the position.

Like, Web3 offers freedom, though better safeguards could be in place. Yet the issues remain, in this instance about coordinating on-chain voting, controlled by centralized entities, to counteract the actions of CEXs. Does it align with decentralization values? Moreover, the situation is compounded by an outcome favoring a profitable result, which raises ethical concerns.

Meanwhile, away from the drama surrounding centralized alignment and opportunistic cohorts of sorts, our top story is considerably less controversial. This week, we’ll be covering the recently announced Polkadot ecosystem cohorts. Also, resilience through decentralization is taken seriously, as the metrics suggest. It’s about less trust, more truth.

If you noticed, last week we did a featured roundup, and we'll be repeating this approach to tie in the latest ecosystem news updates with Polkadot yapping and mindshare. That said, WagMedia’s X account is ineligible to participate in yapping, even though we currently share a similar smart engagement philosophy with Kaito. Either way, we keep wagging!

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - DOT Cohorts!

Written by yay.oi

What’s aping, fools? In a week of discerning fact from April 1st fiction, and Web3 origin stories retold in Ghibli form, the real news to come out of the Polkadot ecosystem was about a wave of new cohorts, in particular the Decentralized Voices (DV) delegates.

Kicking off in early 2024, the DV program was designed to empower some of the more dedicated and insightful governance voters, whose valuable opinions may be drowned out due to their lack of DOT. To some it was seen as a means of equalizing a state of chaos brought about by some unilateral decision-making by very large token holders (as reported in Wag is OpenGov).

This week saw the announcement of the fourth cohort of DV delegates, who will begin their term on April 14th. In the lead-up to the announcement, conversations about the future of the program provided a bit of foreshadowing for what was to come.

With the introduction of a new Governance Coordinator Karam Alhamad, the Web3 Foundation (W3F) now has adequate resources to further iterate the program. For cohort four, this led to the omission of ChaosDAO and Saxemberg, the two longest-serving delegations.

Bill Laboon explained in AAG 218, that while ChaosDAO and Saxemberg were valuable members, W3F is trying to get more people and different DAOs involved. Furthermore, with the additional resources now available to the W3F there are new opportunities to explore other options.

This could include more delegates, smaller allocations, semi-permanent DV positions, or even abolishing DV altogether. So, with the outcome of cohort four potentially shaping the future of the program, let’s take a look at our next batch of delegates.

Back for its second round, the Hungarian Polkadot DAO’s five-member core group of ecosystem developers and ambassadors votes primarily using an internal decision-making process. Its voting philosophy favors technical and venture-focused proposals that align with the Web3 vision.

KusDAO, a collective aimed at onboarding new people into ecosystem governance, is also returning after its Cohort 3 debut. Voting is conducted openly on Discord using the ChaosDAO governance bot, and membership is open to anyone who can pass its rigorous sybil-resistant verification process.

Another returnee is Polkaworld, which was last seen in the DV’s first cohort. Uniquely for DV it has stated in its manifesto that as its expertise lies in community, marketing, and media, it will abstain from voting in technical proposals. This voting philosophy may explain why Polkaworld previously recorded the lowest-ever DV participation rate of 23%.

In AAG, Bill explained that voting is not a big part of Chinese culture. The selection of Polkaworld was, in some ways, W3F’s attempt to encourage more governance participation from the Chinese community.

While we’ve had a preview of the first three delegates' performance, cohort four sees the introduction of three new DAOs. The first, Trustless Core is made up of seven representatives from the LATAM community. Through their internal voting system, they plan to prioritize technical developments and avoid outreach spending.

Permanence DAO, is an eleven-member, multi-disciplinary collective of incorporated and individual entities active in the Polkadot ecosystem. It will make use of the diverse backgrounds and perspectives of its members to reach a balanced consensus on a per-case basis, and vote using their OpenGov TG Bot.

Also using OpenGov TG Bot, will be the JAM Implementers DAO (JID), which currently has a membership of fifteen implementation teams. This diverse array of developers includes senior members of the Polkadot Fellowship and parachain founders.

Although it does not have a specific voting philosophy, JID expects decisions to align with the JAM vision. Community members expressed concerns about the perceived ambiguity of this approach and questioned whether the JID was established specifically for the DV application.

According to Bill, in-depth conversations with JID during the application process helped allay these concerns. Furthermore, the inclusion of a technical collective such as JID reinforces the W3F’s commitment to diverse representation.

As a relatively new initiative, despite 12 months in OpenGov seeming like a lifetime, the DV program is still finding its feet. The relatively short four-month terms, and the supervision of W3F, allows for some experimentation. Ultimately, with its selections the W3F is seeking to expand governance participation by including groups that have not always been as involved.

Moving on to the private sector, this week the first cohort of the Scytale x Polimec Academy was announced. The four successful projects will receive education, mentorship, up to $250K of funding, and a potential Polimec fundraise.

Two entrants are joining from the RWA sector. First is JOINN Finance, which is building a retail-friendly platform for tokenized RWAs, including tokenized U.S. treasury bonds and a USDC spending account powered by Mastercard. Next is Colb Finance, which offers Swiss-grade wealth management strategies, pre-IPO investment opportunities, and fund-linked tokens from major providers.

The other two entrants are platforms for incentivized data-sharing. Cognidex is building a decentralized data marketplace that incentivizes users to sell their data from platforms such as LinkedIn. Roam, which is building on Peaq, is a DePIN that rewards users for providing cellular network performance data.

Offering incentives of a different kind, the Polkadot Social Media Editorial Board (PSEB) invites the community to become more involved in public relations. Formed in March 2024, the initiative aimed to further decentralize Polkadot by assigning trusted members of the community to manage its social media accounts.

This week, PSEB welcomed its third cohort, with faces both familiar and new. Polkadot OG Irvine and WagMedia director Goku joined for the third time, while Emil Kietzmann, also from the WagMedia fam, is back for his second round.

The five-member board was rounded off with two new entrants. Firstly, we have VizDotVal, whose trademark night-mode style infographics have been gaining visibility among the Polkadot community.

Bringing another touch of darkness is Parity developer and self-proclaimed Kusama aficionado Erin Grasmick. Could these new additions be ushering in a hint of cypherpunk vibes to Polkadot’s social media? Time will tell, but Erin’s technical expertise will no doubt prove to be a valuable asset to the PSEB.

The PSEB is overseen by Evan Thomas, who received funding from a Decentralized Futures grant to realize his novel social media management concept. With treasury approval, as per the previous cohort, board members will each receive $15K USDT for their six-month appointment.

While the Polkadot DAO has been granted the power to allocate PSEB member funding, the member selection process currently lacks transparency. Evan’s original manifesto included on-chain board member elections, which in the interests of decentralization, hopefully hasn’t been overlooked.

While a shift from Parity towards community-managed social media is a move towards greater decentralization, can the same be said about the Decentralized Voices program? The selection process is conducted by a large organization and is not completely transparent.

That said, with the current low level of organic governance participation, the removal of the DV program could potentially leave the Polkadot DAO vulnerable to the imbalanced influence of single large DOT holders. Work to navigate the delicate balance between informed and diverse decision-making and skin-in-the-game is still ongoing.

Developments such as voting with nomination pool staked tokens, made even easier with the latest Nova Wallet update, have recently unlocked 21.7M DOT for smaller holders voting. However, the intimidation factor of the 42M DOT voting power that DV yields, may still contribute to voter apathy.

Efforts to rebalance Polkadot governance will continue. For example, with the introduction of Proof of Personhood we may even see one-person one-vote governance opportunities. In the meantime, get out there and vote with whatever DOT you have. Join a DAO, and vote some more. Big or small, every voice matters in shaping our collective Web3 future.

Featured Roundup - Wag Roundup (March 27th to April 2nd)

Written by Dodow

Mindshare?

As announced on X, a snapshot of the Polkadot Yapper leaderboard for the first month of awards has been taken, and those in the top 50 will be notified in due course. Polkadot’s foray into the world of yaps likely took CT by surprise, yet it remains just as much a welcomed initiative.

With tweets on Polkadot surging, so did the new voices. However, this was met with some justified backlash over copy-pasta and generic AI content from farmers. Subsequently, Kaito made updates, and it’s no surprise to see many of the existing ecosystem agents topping the leaderboard.

That said, you cannot really fault the genuine mindshare of those who have nothing but love for the ecosystem. In fact, there has been recent drama with individuals being called out by certified yappers from the Kaito community. If you're after a not-so-hot take on the issues, check out this x article written by a top yapper.

In order to preserve yaps from losing value, those who are newer to Polkadot should dig deeper into their research and strengthen their writing foundations. This is exactly what WagMedia’s News Finder Program is all about, and it’s also the approach taken to the next level with top Wag creators like Emil.

With that in mind, here’s a selection of this week’s news found by the community, curated by the community, and backed by OpenGov.

DOT Ecosystem News

• Here’s a guide to those new to DeFi, which was published on the Polkadot community blog.

• Powered by Neuroweb, Polkabot now utilizes the Eliza agent framework.

• There’s a new Galxe campaign that might entice you to experience decentralized social media through MeWe, which is powered by the Frequency rollup.

• NovaWallet has now listed Polimec in its dApp catalog, allowing you to get involved in the latest pre-TGE funding opportunities while on the move.

• Polkadot native stablecoins on Polimec are now supported via SubWallet.

• Velocity Labs has supported the integration of Meld on-ramp, which is now available on SubWallet.

• You can now access USDC and USDT on Polkadot through UpHold’s support for Polkadot Asset Hub stablecoins.

• Congratulations to Hungarian Polkadot DAO, JAM Implementers DAO, KusDAO, PermanenceDAO, Polkaworld, and Trustless Core on being selected as the next delegates in Cohort 4 of the Delegated Voices program.

• Xcavate’s Polimec fundraise is set to be approved on April 3rd, as it had surpassed the minimum funding threshold.

• Give a warm welcome to Cohort 3 of the Polkadot Social Media Editorial Board! Joining two of our favourite Waggers, Goku and Emil, are Viz Dot, Erin, and Irvin.

• Polkadot Deployment Portal (PDP) and Pop havepartnered up. Expect easy parachain/rollup builds through templates and the use of the Pop CLI.

• The first four projects that have made it through the application process for the inaugural Polimec x Scytale Academy are CognideX, Colb Finance, Joinn Finance, and Roam Network.

• Wen lending and borrowing on Kylix Finance? Well, milestone 3 has been signed off by the Web3 Foundation, and milestone 4 is nearly complete.

• Finally, OpenGov voting with staked DOT through Polkadot nomination pools is now available. You can do it via NovaWallet v9.7.

• The migration of staking and governance from the relay chain to the asset hub has started on Kusama and is expected to be completed by June 30th.

• Integritee now supports privacy transactions of WBTC through their Incognitee dApp.

• XMAQUINA’s DEUS token Genesis Auction Wave 1.5 is set for April 25th.

• EasyAcala is the latest winner of Acala’s Meme and dApp contest. The decentralized identity dApp, which rewards users for daily interactions, has won 2.25M ACA tokens.

• Perhaps more people will get around to decoding JAM with Qinwen’s Chinese translation of the Gray Paper.

• Silencio has amplified a momentous milestone of one million users, with over 34.8B noise-level data points collected.

• Take back control of your smart home with the early-bird offer for Robonomics’s Risc-V Home Server, which connects to the Web3 cloud.

• Chainflip’s latest upgrade enables cross-chain swaps with Polkadot Asset Hub, where a $3M USDC liquidity pool has been committed.

• One-click swaps through Hydration, Polkadot Asset Hub, and Relay Chain can now be done using SubWallet.

• Another Web3 storage option is available, thanks to Apillon’s partnership with CESS Network.

• Kilt reveals a defining milestone of 500K on-chain decentralized identifiers (DID).

• Humanoid framework on the way, as Robonomics publishes a paper on the economic autonomy of robots.

• KodaDot is issuing a call to action for artists interested in minting and displaying their work at ETH Bratislava on May 22nd and 23rd.

• On March 30th, the Monofrag generative art collection by Kukuti sold out within 6 hours on KodaDot.

• Mythical’s native token reached an all-time high in daily transaction volume of 83.9M MYTH.

• Check out the card-battling game DATA2073 on Moonbeam, as N3mus is running a tournament until April 7th with a prize pool of $500 worth of GLMR.

• N3mus has enabled the flapping, as Gavun Wud’s Flappy Wud is now live.

• Evrloot Marks your calendar for April 17th to kick start Season 2 of their campaign.

• April starts with a bunch of Gavun Wud incentives involving trading WUD and Flapping.

• Xcavate provides details on how minting real estate NFTs fits into their protocol.

• Lending and borrowing on tBTC are now live on Hydration’s money market.

• Hydration has activated OTC trade orders involving native ETH assets through Snowbridge. Users have the opportunity to receive Moonbeam-routed Wormhole WETH by filling orders with native ETH and wstETH, both at a fixed 1% discount.

• Artemis goes live with Hydration analytics.

• Subscan now provides more detailed LP breakdowns on Acala.

• Hydration joins Bifrost’s reward share program and will soon enable vToken minting on its platform, as well as benefit from referrals.

• Kusama cores could become a bit more expensive as Referendum 512 aims to adjust coretime sales parameters.

• Polkadot Referendum 1510 is set to help ease onboarding of new users with existential deposits of just $0.01c for Snowbridge-wrapped USDC and UST on Asset Hub.

• With the proposed increase of validators from 600 to 700, Kusama Referendum 511 is set to adjust the number of usable cores to 140.

• All appears well, as Moonwell has tabled a governance proposal on Moonbeam to extend liquidity incentives by 9 months.

DOT Ecosystem Events

• Check out the spaces hosted by Peaq on April 1st, focusing on DAO creation within the machine economy.
• Silencio breaks the silence in their AMA on March 27th.
• Pauline Vorms discusses the Polkadot Blockchain Academy with DOT Latam on March 27th.
• Hydration reveals more about Hollar and gigaDOT in an AMA on March 28th.
• On March 28th, Ben (Hydration) and Leemo (NovaWallet) provided us with some updates during a video session.
• Polkaworld hosted TVVIN on March 28th to cover their upcoming tokenized precious metal platform.
• Members of Mythical, Unique, DotPlay, Papillon, Gavun Wud, ChessOnChain, and KodaDot joined a spaces to discuss Polkadot Gaming, hosted by Coin Reference on March 28th.
• The on-chain synergy between DeFi, DEX, and governments was the topic of a session on April 2nd, with representation from Kylix Finance, Stellaswap, and Mandala Chain.
• Find out more about Truth Network, the prediction market built on Aventus, from the live event on April 2nd.
• Polkadot Nigeria hosted Dot Shield on April 1st to talk about its automated verification and moderation solution for Telegram groups.
• On April 1st, Polkaworld brought together a round table featuring Max (Harbour Capital), Richard (Xcavate), Tyrone (Bifrost), Gianluigi and Pakman (Kylix Finance) to discuss the JAM Tour, DV, and OpenGov.
• TVVIN and Xcavate covered RWAs on Polkadot during theirApril 1st session.
• On March 29th in Vietnam, Bifrost and OpenGuild hosted DeFi 101, an introductory session for Web3 newcomers.

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.