#LessTrustMoreTruth is DOT Way - Newsletter Edition 82

#LessTrustMoreTruth is DOT Way - Newsletter Edition 82

In this week’s edition:

1. Editorial: #lesstrustmoretruth, reflecting the progress with DOT ways, and progress with Wag journalism.

2. Top Story - DOT is the Progress?: 3 years on from the first batch of parachain slots.

3. Featured Report - Uncovering the Evrloot Adventure: Part 1: our first investigative reporting.

4. Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between January 9th and January 15th.

5. Extras: Credits and anything else.

Editorial

What is up, my friends!

“Less trust, more truth” is a mantra our Chief Architect has emphasized on numerous occasions, often when citing the dangers posed by centralized entities. Yet, shouldn’t those building in the Web3 industry be held to a higher standard? This past week, there were two instances that likely left many questioning this.

While Web3 natives have been through a depeg or two with stablecoins, apparently it is now usual to market a 4yr bond as one and to change the documentation without much notice. Meanwhile, with all the AI mania touched upon last week, surely you trust the founders of a crypto-AI focused DAO to know how to launch it fairly.

Despite the explanations and changes, it can still leave the community with a bitter aftertaste. Distribution to KOLs is something the Polkadot DAO knows a thing or two about, and whether it’s DeFi or memecoins, transparency through governance remains fundamental. OpenGov is DOT way, where it is about #lesstrustmoretruth.

Also this week, we wish Moonbeam a happy birthday, serving as a reminder of when parachains went live on Polkadot. In this week’s top story, we’ll reflect on the ecosystem’s progress; naturally, there’s been quite a bit of development among the first batch of parachain slots winners.

Speaking of firsts, we have a special feature in this week’s edition that we hinted at when we paused our newsletter for the festive break. We’ve long strived to further develop our newsletter with investigative journalism pieces, and at long last, we’ll be releasing the first part of our undercover story that follows the launch of Evrloot’s dark fantasy MMO.

The timing of our special feature couldn’t be better, as WagMedia alumni Pnin releases his treasury-funded blockchain gaming documentary. Join us to start your creator journey, and perhaps one day, you could create something just as awesome.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - DOT is the Progress?

Written by Sanchez & Dodow

January marks the anniversary of the first batch of parachains going live on Polkadot in 2022. It was a hard-fought battle, with ~99,113,469 DOT contributed amongst the winners, worth at the time, significantly more than the ~$730,466,271 USD today.

While the order of the winning projects was Acala, Moonbeam, Astar, Parallel, and CLV (formerly Clover), the achievement likely offered little beyond bragging rights. Fast-forward to 2025, and let's look at the progress made since then.

Moonbeam celebrated its third anniversary since its launch on January 10, 2025, with impressive numbers highlighting many positive developments. Their journey has not been without challenges, which we previously covered in our featured report on their journey.

Having made it through the adversity, Moonbean now stands as a valuable cornerstone of the Polkadot ecosystem, with their MRL (Moonbeam Routed Liquidity) enabling much-needed liquidity. Furthermore, Moonbeam's direction with sustainability and its commitment to Latin America have taken shape.

Their latest proposal aims to direct over 80% of the inflation earmarked for the Parachain Bond Reserve towards their treasury to support ecosystem growth. Meanwhile, the recent partnership with Flamengo Esports for Web3 gaming, helps strengthen their presence in the local geography.

Similar to Moonbean, Astar also addresses general smart contract functionality, but in addition to EVM, they also support WASM. Despite their expansion to Ethereum, they remain popular within the ecosystem and have made solid progress.

In particular, their innovation with dApp staking serves as an unstoppable grant for those looking to build, which include projects like DeStore, Neurolanche, and Neemo Finance. More recently, Astar has pushed further decentralization with its tokenholders, leveraging Polkadot’s Governance V1 approach.

Given the roots of the team, Astar has focused its efforts on the Asian markets. This has seen its CEO, Sota Watanabe (now Director of Sony Block Solutions Labs) play a key role in launching Sony’s Soneium. Currently, a treasury proposal is in the works to drive the utilization of ASTR there. Only time will tell if the combination of innovation on Polkadot, paired with development on Soneium, will propel a multichain vision to bring Web3 to billions.

Moving on to application-specific functionality, Acala's grand vision of becoming the DeFi hub of Polkadot underpinned its achievement as the first parachain slot winner on Polkadot. Its aUSD stablecoin was designed to power the Polkadot economy and unify the ecosystem, gathering significant support with a massive $250 million ecosystem fund for adoption.

It's now a thought of what could have been, with the aUSD exploit the grand vision has yet to materialize. Meanwhile, other DeFi protocols have established themselves on Polkadot. For instance, Bifrost, Polkadot’s current leading liquid staking protocol, has recently integrated a fee switch. Furthermore, Hydration, Polkadot’s leading DeFi protocol in terms of TVL, capped out vDOT in just 15 hours on its money market.

Building the liquidity layer of Web3 is the Acala 2.0 vision. So far, this leverages a commitment to advancing their EVM+, and with the Universal Asset Hub, the aim is to unify the liquidity of LSTs from different ecosystems, with LDOT and JitoSOL already integrated.

Acala remains respected as builders on Polkadot. Chopsticks, developed by CTO Bryan Chen, is one example of their work. Additionally, he recently shared a presentation that provides a glimpse of where they want to go, including coverage of JAM.

Not all the projects from the first batch are still aligned with Polkadot. After a successful start with the concept of a Super App, comprising a money market, farming, derivatives, and impressive TVL, Parallel seems to have given up. This sentiment has been further compounded with a recent governance attack, where external entities took over their parachain.

Then there’s CLV, which pursued a multichain approach by raising considerable awareness through its CLV wallet integrations. We last heard in November 2023 that they intended to keep their parachain. However, there hasn’t seemed to be much progress, and their latest announcement suggests yet more pivots.

Fair to say that three years can be considered quite an age in Web3, and in order to survive, builders will adjust to establish product-market fit. Since the first batch of parachains, 81 auctions have taken place in total. Furthermore, the Polkadot protocol has undergone a fair few changes too.

Most compelling is that parachain auctions are no more, as we are now in the Coretime era, which has been ushered in under the Polkadot 2.0 roadmap. Just this past week, Subsocial switched over to another new core, and intends to continue doing so under this access-to-blockspace-on-demand approach. Elastic Scaling is also expected in Q1, which will enable projects to use multiple cores as needed.

Imagine how builders back then would have fared with trustless bridging offered by Hyperbridge, which continues to integrate into the ecosystem with recent partnerships with Bifrost, Kylix, and Mandala. More recently, they have partnered with JOINN Finance to provide access to regulatory-compliant, multichain tokenized real-world assets.

It’s as flexible as ever to build and consume Polkadot blockspace, potentially even easier with the launch of the Parachain Runtime Builder by MVP Workshop, where no coding is required. All of this supports the new trends and narratives established in Web3. In particular, Polkadot builders have been pushing boundaries with AI and DePIN.

In our recent newsletter we covered a bit about Phala's work on Spore.fun, creating safe sandboxes using TEEs to ensure AI agents can securely operate, adapt, and be self-sufficient. Now it’s OrignTrail’s turn to further advance AI with its DKG to support the ElizaOS DKG Plugin and the Top Hat AI agent launchpad. Additionally, we noticed the Web3 Foundation awarding a Decentralized Futures grant to Clarys.AI, an AI assistant trained on Polkadot OpenGov data.

Peaq interest in DePIN was highlighted back in November, and it’s been nonstop with the growth of its ecosystem. Just this week, Charge app integrated into the Silencio marketplace, Teneo celebrate 2M community nodes, and XMAQUINA announced enhancements with its DAO.

Accessibility has been consistently improving, with Nova enhancing support with Ledger, cross-chain transfers, on/off-ramping, and even visibility for our favourite memes. Talisman and SubWallet have also continued integrating ecosystem projects. Meanwhile, visibility is even better now that ecosystem projects, such as Bifrost, have integrated with Token Terminal. And did you notice Subscan’s improved view of Acala?

While gaming and NFTs on Polkadot continue to strengthen with Mythical Games, the efforts of other ecosystem projects have also been drawing attention. For instance, Kodadot is set to showcase digital art at NFT Paris and is inviting artists who would like their artwork showcased. Additionally, Evrloot has partnered with kGeN for a Green January campaign to double the number of active players.

We anticipate more attention and excitement in 2025, some of the developments being funded through the world’s largest DAO. Soon, we’ll be able to get a decent coffee with Polkadot Pay, which we might need in order to absorb the mindblowing developments of JAM. Make sure to follow our weekly newsletter to stay updated.

Featured Report - Uncovering the Evrloot Adventure: Part 1

Written by yay.oi

What’s rollin’, players! I’ve narrowly escaped a rather dicey situation, courtesy of dungeon master Dodow. While many were celebrating the birth of the Lord above, I was sent down into the underworld on a deep-cover mission, successfully infiltrating a clandestine looting community that has been operating under our noses this whole time.

Word is that they originated in one of the darkest corners of Web3, but have since embraced the light… of the silvery moon. While their allegiance may tend towards the dark side, they do reward very handsomely. So listen carefully, and I’ll explain how you too can claim your share of the spoils.

Entry is through the Evrloot portal, but before that, make sure you forge a connection with their community. Trust me, you’ll need all the help you can get. An EVM wallet will get you past the gates easily, and come in handy later, but they are accommodating to no-coiners too.

Once you’re in, it’s time to choose your clan. My attempt to form my own WagMedia faction was swiftly curtailed by handler Dodow, who reminded me that a sudden influx of our budding ecosystem agents would likely arouse suspicions and blow my cover.

Clans with the most active players can receive a boost of up to 25% for Marks drops (more about those soon), so choose wisely. Renowned groups such as WUD Lumburjaks, despite their size, have been lagging, possibly due to other distractions. You’ll find yourself better cared for under the guidance of more experienced looters, such as the River Rangers.

While the true purpose of Marks remains a dark secret, my sources have advised me to accumulate as many as possible. Rumors of a great Marks Generation Event in the second quarter of the year have begun to spread.

Despite the passing of the first windowto accumulateMarks, there’s no better time than the present to start gathering resources and preparing your fighters for the battles that lie ahead. Once you’ve entered the Evrloot portal, head on over to Trakan and try to gather a crew to help you along your way.

Baelor, stationed just outside the Trakan city gates, is willing to loan up to three Warborn fighters at a time. Unless they earn citizenship, they’re denied access to Trakan, but there are plenty of opportunities to gather resources and build their fighting strength beyond the city walls

When choosing a new Warborn, pay attention to their special attributes. Some will have boosts or reductions to XP (for leveling up quicker), Gilts (to buy weapon and armor packs), or reputation points (for increased chances of acquiring rare weapons and armor).

Baelor is not exactly renowned for his generosity, so it’ll be up to you to equip your Warborn to be battle-ready. For that, you’ll need Gilts, and the best and safest way to get those is to send your Warborn on mission contracts.

A mission can range from 45 minutes to 12 hours, with rewards including Gilts, reputation points, potions, and tinctures. However, the greatest and rarest reward of all is a set of forged citizenship papers. These can be used to upgrade a Warborn into a Citizen NFT for free, gaining it immortality, access to Trakan city, and the complete Web3 enabled experience of Evrloot.

Gilts and XP are also gained by sending Warborns on expeditions to the Sand Tower. The tower is perilous, infested with skeletal warriors and other ghastly creatures. You’ll want to equip some potions and tinctures before you get started.

Each victorious battle has the potential to yield a valuable loot-bag. However, failure will lead to the loss of all of your collected loot and one of only three precious lives. As soon as your health begins to dwindle, make sure you seek out Gnellen, who’ll guide you safely out of the dungeon.

Upon your safe return, you’ll be rewarded with your loot and a substantial XP boost which may elevate your Warborn to the next level. Levelling up grants you upgrade points that can be allocated amongst four vital stats.

The Power stat boosts primary weapon attack strength, while Balance boosts the secondary weapon and chances of critical attacks. Speed increases the chances of attacking first, and Fortitude increases maximum HP.

In addition, level-up milestones can grant free armor and weapon packs, which normally cost 100 and 200 Gilts respectively. The potential value of their contents increases with Reputation Level. For example, more than 40% of drops at the ultimate Exalted level are Rare, Epic, or Legendary.

Enhanced equipment increases a Warborn’s stats, resulting in higher survivability in dungeons, and thus more opportunity to farm loot. More importantly, for the collectors out there, equipment rarity levels are also inherited by newly minted Behemoth or Sandshaper Citizen NFT during the upgrade process.

Crafting rare equipment in Trakan would usually require a lot of luck and hours of farming. Consequently, these items are treasured and rarely relinquished, driving increased demand on the Evrloot marketplace.

With the intel I’ve shared thus far, I trust that you’ve begun formulating a formidable strategy for this interlude that precedes the next season of Marks accumulation. By taking a balanced approach of farming mission contracts and Sand Tower expeditions you can either focus on building an elite trio of Warborns ready for the epic battles that lie ahead, or simply hoarding Gilts while biding your time as you wait to see what new challenges lie ahead.

Many won’t be lucky enough to acquire a set of forged citizenship papers from a mission contract, however Trakan is accessible to those willing to pay. If curiosity gets the best of you, take a look at the Evrloot marketplace in case an affordable Citizen NFT catches your eye.

That said, change is in the air, and fresh prospects arise by the day. My little birds tell me that this is just the start of something much bigger. Strap on those lootin’ boots, and be prepared to seize the day. Windows of opportunity are often short-lived.

As my daily descents into the underworld continue, you can expect my return shortly with deeper insights. There are plenty more secrets to uncover, and I intend to reveal them all.

Wag Roundup (January 9th to January 15th)

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

DOT Ecosystem News

Written by yay.oi

• MVP Workshop has launched the Parachain Runtime Builder (PRB), a streamlined platform for launching a Substrate-based solo-chain or parachain with no coding required.

• Clarys.AI, an AI assistant trained on Polkadot OpenGov data, is the latest recipient of a Web3 Foundation Decentralized Futures grant. At its present MVP stage, Clarys.AI has the ability to conduct accountability assessments, and compare and categorize proposals, with future plans to expand into a feature-rich multi-agent ecosystem.

• Origin Trail announces the launch of the ElizaOS DKG Plugin. This plugin empowers AI agents with enhanced data reliability, data ownership, ethical compliance, and the potential for collaborative intelligence with other agents by storing their memories as transparent, verifiable, and shareable knowledge graphs.

• Origin Trail has also partnered with the Top Hat AI agent launchpad to offer DKG capabilities to agents deployed with HAT V2, which is rolling out in the coming weeks.

• XMAQUINA unveils four strategic contributors: Generative Ventures, Fundamental Labs, Moonrock Capital, and Peaq, which have backed the DAO to date. Their financial contributions have been allocated to technical infrastructure deployment, implementing governance, and establishing a decentralized legal framework.

• Peaq’sHead of Ecosystem, Martin El-Khouri, is the latest addition to the XMAQUINA DAO Advisory team.

• The Charge app is now integrated into the Silencio marketplace. Sign up via the Silencio app for a 100 Charge coin bonus.

• To celebrate its 2M Community Node milestone, Teneo has distributed a prize pool of 200k Teneo Points to ten lucky raffle winners.

• Tanssi’s Let’s Forking Dance Season 2 campaign launches on January 21st for early access, and January 23rd for the general public. This time, participants can share in a pool of 10M Tanssi tokens by completing tasks in Tanssiland, a gamified online world.

• Nova Wallet announces Generic Ledger support for the management of Polimec PLMC tokens.

• Cross-chain transfers of DOT between the Polkadot Bridge Hub and Relaychain are now enabled on Nova Wallet.

• The Harbour Magic Ramp, for seamless on and off-ramping between Polkadot and EU bank accounts, has now been added to the Nova Wallet DApp catalog.

• Talisman and SubWallet now support the Crust Mainnet and Parachain for the management of CRU tokens.

• With its parachain lease ending in December, the Subsocial chain has successfully migrated from core 51 to 54 and will continue operating with Coretime renewals every four weeks.

• The Composable parachain has been reinstated after halting more than six months ago. Cross-chain transfers with Polkadot are re-enabled on the Picasso IBC hub. Users are advised to withdraw assets, including lsDOT, from the Pablo DEX, which will remain operational until February 15th.

• With a launch on the horizon, a sneak peek of the Xcavate tokenomics has dropped. Expect an issuance of 100M XCAV tokens, with a generous 48% allocated to the on-chain treasury. It might be time to consider getting more involved in the project, as 12% has been allocated for the community.

• Thanks to an integration with Token Terminal, detailed Bifrost metrics are now available on the Polkadot Ecosystem dashboard.

• Check out the latest Subscan feature update for Acala,which includes asset view improvements and enhanced staking tools.

• The Acala Meme and DApp Contest kicks off on February 3rd and will run for 6 months. Prizes will be awarded each month to Acala EVM+ DApp builders and meme creators from a pool totalling 6M ACA.

• Hyperbridge has partnered with JOINN Finance, an upcoming platform that will offer regulatory compliant access to multi-chain tokenized real-world-assets, along with a USDC spending account powered by Mastercard.

• To celebrate its $2B trading volume milestone, Stellaswap has launched a Galxe campaign with 50 prizes of 10 USDT.

• How time flies! Moonbeam is already three years old. To celebrate, it is offering free mints of a commemorative third birthday NFT on Rarible.

• Registration is now open for the Flamengo eSports x Moonbeam Club, which offers exclusive access to digital collectibles, metaverse games, raffles, and live events.

• Thanks to the listing of WUD on CoinGecko, the price of Gavun Wud’s eponymous token is now visible on Nova Wallet.

• KodaDot is showcasing digital art at NFT Paris this year and has put out an open call for artists. All artworks minted on KodaDot by February 5th are eligible.

• If you’re interested in attending NFT Paris, KodaDot and Polkadot have teamed up to offer a free ticket, valued at $400, to one lucky winner.

• LAOS, the network for affordable bridgeless NFT minting on any EVM chain, is now natively supported on SubWallet.

• Evrloot has teamed up with KGeN for Green January, a campaign that aims to double the number of active players. Collect KGeN points from expeditions and tasks for a chance to share in a prize pool of 1 x Epic Ring, 2 x Rare Rings, and 25 x Forged Citizenship Papers (free character NFT upgrades).

• Polkadot OpenGov Big Spender Referendum 1377 proposes to initiate a bounty with initial funding of 250K DOT. This bounty will support Rust developers to carry out tasks requested by OpenGov and reputable organizations such as the Fellowship.

• Due to an oversight, the Polkadot Meetups Bounty curator list was not renewed on time, and all curators were removed. Referendum 1382 proposes to reinstate the original curators.

• Hydration OpenGov Referendum 5 proposes to extend the current round of Polkadot Hydration incentives by one month, to allow time for liquidity rebalancing and the launch of some new stablepools.

DOT Ecosystem Events

Written by yay.oi

• Aventus Head of Marketing Ellie Hyman hosted MVP Workshop Head of Tokenomics Ivor Jugo on January 9th for a recap of the first month of the new Aventus Network treasury management strategy.
• Polkaworld hosted Chrissy Hill (Parity) on January 10th for a deep dive into recent Polkadot developments and the vision for 2025.
• ChessonChain hosted an open mic space on January 15th for a roundup of the Chess JAM Tournament and the distribution of rewards.
• Peaq hosted decentralized AI Agent DePIN iGam3 on January 15th to discuss the launch of Jenny Agent, the first DePIN AI agent on Peaq.
• On January 15th, Angie Dalton hosted the DOTPlay Game Souk at the Sway Bar in London. Game builders joined in-person and online to discuss and brainstorm the hottest blockchain gaming topics for 2025. A Polkadot panel followed, featuring members of Nitro Nation, Dubit, Kylix, and Xcavate.

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.