Kolkadot! (June 30th to July 6th)

What is up, my friends!

It has been a memorable week with the continued downtrend in the markets, culminating in the reveal of a BTC sell-off by the German government and the long awaited distribution of BTC to Mt Gox creditors.

While the Bitcoin sell-off has stolen the headlines towards the end of week, there was a period when Polkadot was top trending on crypto Twitter. In this week’s top story we will cover Polkadot’s treasure spending on KOLs and the immediate fall out from it.

With treasury spending raising eyebrows, perhaps it's a good opportunity to reflect on how treasury funding has been used in WagMedia to reward content. Our featured update in this week’s edition will highlight the standout content from the numerous bounties available to creators.

Overall, WagMedia places high importance on transparency, and our Director, Vampsy, publishes a monthly report analyzing various data related to the WagMedia mission. Our latest report, Volume 3, which covers up till the 24th May, has just been issued.

Now onto the week’s stories and flurry of news updates.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - DOT is trending

Written by yay.oi

Friends, Romans, Key Opinion Leaders, gather round. It seems word of our spending has travelled so far and wide that even NEAR noticed. Fear not, the world’s biggest DAO has a plan. More spending? Possibly. More treasury proposals? Absolutely. Gov’na’s gonna gov’n! What a week it’s been.

It all started when newly appointed Head Ambassador Alice und Bob posted the Polkadot H1 Treasury Report. Spending is up considerably, particularly in the Outreach category, while Outreach spending in 2023 H2 was 1.3M DOT (7.7M USD), 2024 H1 spending was 4.9M DOT (36.7M USD).

Total spends for H1 2024 were a massive 11m DOT (87m USD)! According to the report, at this spending rate Polkadot has a two-year runway of funds remaining. Some have taken issue with the concept of runway here, arguing that the treasury is constantly replenished by inflation and thus could never go to zero.

That said, the Polkadot treasury currently has a war-chest of 38.2M DOT and 2024 H1 net earnings were -8.4M DOT. At this spending rate, the war-chest really would be depleted in approximately two years, leaving only ~2.9M of net revenue from inflation and fees per half year for treasury spending.

Opinions within the Polkadot ecosystem about the direction Treasury spending is taking are mixed. However, one vocal critic has decided to put it to a vote by initiating Referendum 936 to close Marketing Bounty 33.

News of the so-called end of the runway soon attracted media attention from the likes of Coindesk, Cointelegraph, and Bloomberg, as well as some KOLs. Suddenly it was both hands on deck for the Polkadot intern, as Polkadot began trending on Crypto Twitter (CT) multiple days in a row.

Despite only making up a fraction of total marketing spending, CT was particularly interested in the spends on KOLs. Some were surprised that after all that spending, they hadn’t seen a single tweet on Polkadot. Others remarked that with all the coverage received from Polkadot’s spending, maybe it’s finally paying off.

Along with the endless stream of memes from aspiring Polkadot KOLs, came our new sobriquet, KOLkadot. What better way to celebrate, than with a memecoin. KOL token fair-launched on Hydration last Sunday, and NovaWallet has just made it a whole lot easier to buy.

With the integration of Hydration Isolated Pool swaps on NovaWallet release 8.1, more than 1000 swap options are unlocked in-wallet. Hydration Isolated Pools are for the onboarding of young, low-cap tokens, so naturally that’s where you'll find our native memecoins such as KOL, PINK, STINK and WUD.

Speaking of WUD, the original Dr. Wood was back in the third episode of A Glass with Gav this week. While others spent the week discussing wasteful spending, Gavin gave his opinion on wasteful consensus mechanisms.

First on the chopping block was Bitcoin, and Gavin didn’t hold back. He said, "Proof of Work is proof of waste... it's the fossil fuel of consensus". While the second generation solution Proof of Work is an improvement, it lacks scalability.

This has led to scaling solutions such as L2s which are less secure. Though more recent developments such as ZK SNARK have potential, they are far too computationally expensive. Gavin suggests that while well-funded projects can absorb the additional costs of such solutions in the near-term, they are not viable for the future.

The future of Polkadot governance is beginning to look like Gavin foretold in A Glass with Gav’ Episode 2, with more fellowships and more sub-treasuries. This week saw the first proposal for a new fellowship.

Oliver Tale-Yazdi submitted a Wish for Change to form a new System Collective: The Polkadot Tooling Collective (PoToC). PoToC will have the mission of maintaining developer tools for general and dApp building on Polkadot. While the collective is not seeking any treasury funding yet, they do plan to after proving their worth.

The Polkadot Core Fellowship, however, received approval for its new sub-treasury this week, and it could be a game-changer for Polkadot governance. Projects now have the option to apply directly to the Fellowship for funding. In doing so they will benefit from expert evaluation, and a much shorter voting period of only seven days.

It couldn’t have come at a better time, because another source of project funding has just come to an end. The Web3 Foundation’s Decentralized Futured program granted 20M USD to fourteen projects in the tech, marketing, and business development fields.

This wasn’t the first grant program from W3F, and hopefully isn’t the last. After all, this week CEO Fabian Gompf assured us that they have more than five years of funding runway without even selling any DOT.

Fabian also offered his own opinion on recent treasury spending patterns. He believes that treasury funds are there to be spent, and they should go to the more “out there” initiatives that aren’t already covered by W3F. However, he agrees (as does Parity CEO Björn Wagner) with the sentiment that some recent large spends may not achieve an adequate return on investment.

So, we find ourselves at somewhat of a crossroads, and involvement in governance is becoming more important than ever. There are three potential pathways and we could take any or all of them.

We have regular treasury proposals, such as the Heroic e-sports sponsorship (199k DOT), Conor Daly’s sponsorship (290k DOT), and the Sports Sponsorship Fund (968k DOT). In addition, we have bounties such as Marketing (2024 H1 781k DOT) and Events (2024 H1 250k DOT). Note that the top three sponsorship spends far outweigh six months of continuous Marketing from Bounty 33 despite not receiving as much attention this week.

Finally, we have the Fellowships, currently only the Core Fellowship has been allocated a sub-treasury (2M DOT). If we continue down the path that Gavin envisioned, expect more fellowships and more sub-treasuries.

Bounties and fellowships offer a way to more carefully distribute funds, but offer fewer opportunities for the community to scrutinize spending. Some may even argue that bounties and fellowships are a step in the direction of centralization.

The Polkadot H1 Treasury Report was a welcome reminder of the collective spending that the Polkadot community collectively approved. It’s a great opportunity to reflect on those decisions, and if necessary, make adjustments in the future – it’s up to the community to decide.

Featured Update - Wag Content

Written by Sanchez

The recent debacle with KOLs and the Polkadot treasury underscores the importance of infrastructures like WagMedia, which prioritize producing quality work. The Polkadot treasury's funding mechanism allows for full proposal payments before any work is completed.

This often results in incomplete or low-quality deliverables, typically uncriticized, since payments are made upfront. The incident revealed that thousands of dollars were paid to KOLs who merely promoted the DOT token without comprehending Polkadot's current state and potential.

WagMedia's second funding request led to the creation of the Bounty Hub, focusing on cultivating quality content for the Polkadot ecosystem. Specific topics for content creation are provided, and the produced content is evaluated and rewarded based on quality. Feedback is given to help creators improve their craft and, in turn, enhance the overall content for the Polkadot ecosystem.

This initiative has been successful, producing captivating content around the Bounty Hub. Between May 31st and June 13th, six bounties were created, covering topics like the Mythical X Pudgy Penguins partnership, Polkadot's Heroic sponsorship, the Wish for Change track for defining Polkadot 2.0, Polkadot x Adidas, Snowbridge, and the FollowtheDOT tooling for tracking Polkadot transactions.

The Mythical X Pudgy Penguins bounty has garnered significant attention. Emil Keitzman's post Mythical X Pudgy Penguins which was rewarded 25.8 DOT highlighted the partnership between the two entities and explained why Pudgy Penguins are building a game on Mythical and Polkadot.

Additionally, Gbaci's entry ‘Why Mythical Games Choose Polkadot over Ethereum’ delved deeper into the reasons behind Mythical's decision to transition to Polkadot. It also discussed how the collaboration with Pudgy Penguins could be the first of many projects utilizing Polkadot, possibly without even realizing it. This was rewarded with 25 DOT.

Regarding the sponsorship of the e-Sports team Heroic by Polkadot, creators were asked to discuss potential synergies from the partnership. Pitcoin clearly outlined the Heroic team, their fanbase, and how the partnership could onboard these fans and got a reward of 10.5 DOT for content created. Mikewill, rewarded with 7 DOT, described the potential for increased ecosystem activity and exposure.

FollowtheDOT is a DOT tracking tool developed by Kukabi This tool offers a simple representation of DOT inflows and outflows for any wallet. One of the creations for the FollowtheDOT bounty was CMosh’s guide, ‘Tracking DOT Transfers Using FollowtheDOT Tool.’ This guide detailed the tool's usage and highlighted its key features, earning CMosh a reward of 6.5 DOT.

Another bounty centered around describing the Wish for Change track and the definition of Polkadot 2.0 saw a top submission from Pitcoin, which earned 11.2 DOT in rewards. Pitcoin showed the evolution of governance on Polkadot, making a case for the proposal to define Polkadot 2.0.

On the Polkadot X Adidas bounty, creators were tasked with putting forth a case for Polkadot in response to a creator for Adidas seeking what chain to launch their product on. Top responses put forward include those from Gbaci, Turing Machine, AmedKarimm and Mikewill. The last bounty for Snowbridge X space saw a lone contribution from CMosh, earning a reward of 8 DOT.

Outside of the Bounty Hub, creators can share their work in the general content channel. Here, content can be nominated for rewards by other creators and reviewed by directors at the end of the month. One notable piece, "The Gavilator," is a cinematic and comedic take on "Gladiator" featuring prominent figures in the Polkadot ecosystem by Turing Machine. Another significant creation was Pablo's simpler explanation of the Plaza proposal aimed at normies.

LAOS and Polimec are projects with active treasuries on WagMedia. They have their own channels and can incentivize the creation of content on topics they want to highlight. The LAOS bounty for the presale of LAOS tokens ended on July 8th and is pending rewards.

The Polimec bounty, which ended on June 24th, focused on creating content around the Polimec funding process and the PLMC token. Gigs and CMosh were rewarded 120 PLMC tokens each for their contributions to this bounty.

All this content and more are accessible on the WagMedia website. The quality of the content reflects the creator's attention and adherence to consistent advice for improvement. This contributes to a richer ecosystem, providing users with clear explanations rather than mindless promotions.

If you are a content creator looking to enhance your skills, feel free to join WagMedia. You can choose where to contribute and get started. New creators or those new to the Polkadot ecosystem are encouraged to begin with the Finders program, which helps them understand the ecosystem better before creating content.

Who knows? If you do well in the Finders program, perhaps you might get to write in future editions of our WagMedia newsletter as well as being featured on X.

General News

Written by yay.oi

The Astar community has voted in favor of burning 350M ASTR tokens, which were originally reserved for crowdloan rewards.
Cross-chain transactions with Ethereum are now viewable on the Polkadot Subscan, and it looks like Snowbridge is working well. Someone transferred more than USD $2M (695 ETH)!
Zondax announces the release of the new Polkadot Ledger app. Now available on Ledger, Talisman, SubWallet, NovaWallet, and soon Polkadot.js.
Apillon entered the final Remainder Round, but did not meet its funding target on Polimec. Participants will be refunded, and evaluators will have their PLMC tokens slashed.
SRLabs have completed a comprehensive audit of the Hyperbridge protocol, which was partially funded by the Polkadot Assurance League. Several issues were identified, with many already remediated by Hyperbridge.
With a health ranking of 98, the highest score ever achieved by any pre-launch stage network, Certik ranks Peaq #1 for fundamentals in its first audit. So, it should come as no surprise that the Peaqosystem has yet another entrant, RWA-Based DePIN for Luxury, Art, and Culture SPIN.FASHION.
With 250 applications, and 14 projects funded, the Web3 Foundation's Decentralized Futures program has come to a close.
Distractive launches the Ecosystem Resource Center, which provides marketing tools and resources for projects in the Polkadot ecosystem.
Gavin Wood and Mark Cachia finished off that hefty pour of Kavalan Podium while discussing mass market adoption and the history of blockchains in A Glass With Gav: Episode 3.

NFT & DEFI News

Written by Sanchez

With the end of the June reward season, Gavunwud has recorded 1 Million flaps with 25000 Flappywud games played. 1 billion WUD will be distributed among the top 10 on the scoreboard.
The free mint for the third character, Aria, on the Age of Chronos is live. All four characters are free to mint and are required to play the game.
Dot Play has been awarded a Decentralized futures grant. Dot play, which consists of seasoned gaming veterans, will develop a gaming portal to help onboard game developers, provide advisory and technical support and provide ecosystem tooling and partnerships to foster game development on Polkadot.
The Great Escape enters into the beta phase of their launch and users can claim a free character to play and claim their account on-chain after the full launch.
The minting of the Rift NFT collection by Kenny Vaden is live. The collection consists of 128 NFTs.
The Kolkadot memecoin has been fair launched with the team minting 86,586,711 KOL tokens, synonymous to the Polkadot treasury spend in H1 of 2024. There are no team allocations and admin rights have been burnt.
Nova wallet has included the ability to swap memecoins and other tokens in the isolated pools (XYK Pools) on Hydration using the Swap feature on the Nova wallet dashboard.
Enjoy triple farming rewards using Bifrost’s vDOT on Hydration. Provide liquidity, farm and earn HDX, vDOT and BNC tokens.
Composable Network, has halted after the expiry of their parachain lease. The team is taking steps to remedy the situation and bring the Composable parachain back online.
Pendulum has launched the testing of it’s Forex AMM. Utilizing Airlyft, the tests end 10th July and testers will be rewarded with PEN tokens.
Bifrost has released a report on the abnormal movements of BNC from the treasury which saw 6 million BNC tokens transferred from the treasury to a private address. While most have been recovered and the treasury made whole, the team has reported that the protocol integrity is intact and user funds are safe and were never at harm as the incident was due to the exploitation of private keys.

Governance & Events News

Written by Sanchez & yay.oi

Read the report of the Polkadot treasury spending for the first half of 2024, with a spend of $86.5m with the largest chunk of $37m spent on outreaches compared to the lesser $2.1m spent on research. The treasury could potentially have a runway of 2 years at the current spend rate.
Oliver Tale-Yazdi submitted a Wish for Change to form the Polkadot Tooling collective responsible for maintaining developer tools for general and dApps building on Polkadot.
Abdulbee has won a seat as a Polkadot Head Ambassadorwith 99.1% voters in support.
Referendum 832 seeking to fund the Fellowship sub-treasury with 2 million DOT has passed. The fellowship can now propose funding proposals and approve more technical proposals pitched directly to the fellowship.
Max Rebol has been voted in as a Polkadot Head Ambassador with 60.5% approval votes.
Referendum 936 is seeking to close marketing bounty 33, which is responsible for large spends in hiring KOLs and other marketing spends.
Polkadex has called on validators of the network to upgrade v6.2.0, to ensure the compatability of the chain with the Polkadot Ledger app.
Bifrost has placed a proposal on Hydration to add vASTR to the Omnipool. After discussions, the initial liquidity of $100,000 in ASTR will be seeded by the Astar Foundation.
AlphaInvestoor hosted Mandala Chain on Tuesday July 2nd to discuss their plans to onboard the next 100M users to Polkadot.
On Tuesday July 2nd, Peaq hosted Nevermined and Olas, both new arrivals to the Peaqosystem, to discuss their developments with autonomous AI commerce.
Also on July 2nd, Energy Web X Community Hour hosted Gabriel Bonugli, Gustavo Massena, and John Bartolome from Polkadot Brasil to discuss the Web3 Community, Ambassador program and more.
In London on Wednesday July 3rd, there was a real world event exploring Real World Assets in the Polkadot ecosystem. It featured presentations from David Bakk (Polimec), Richard Houldsworth (Xcavate), Shalydon Brown (Proof of Law), Tom Humber (Archisinal), and Sean Murphy (Impactscope).
At the Polkadot Coffee Break on Thursday 4th of July, Fillipo Franchini hosted Santi Balaguer to hear all about the new Polkadot Ledger apps.
On Friday July 5th, Polkadot hosted WebZero'sSacha Lansky, XyloDrone, and Roman Kemper to discuss all of the events they've got planned around Polkadot Decoded.

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.