Mythical Spending! (March 31st to April 6th)

What is up, my friends!

The unveiling of Mythical Games moving to Polkadot was announced in 2023, and around a year later they made the top headlines again with a 1M DOT treasury proposal via OpenGov.

This week’s top story takes a deeper look at Mythical’s proposal, which draws attention because it includes an airdrop to Polkadot token holders. Additionally, we also take the opportunity to round up some of the other significant OpenGov treasury spending proposals.

Airdrops and the sum involved aside, Mythical Games is considered one of the top names in blockchain gaming, thus, in this week's edition we also feature a report on them.

Our report serves to provide some timely insights for voters, as well as raise awareness of how Polkadot is shaping up to onboard users to web3.

We have another jam packed weekly edition full of news and events from our ecosystem, which is summarized by our top finders. If you're interested in joining us, check out some great tips in last week’s newsletter.

Finally, we’ll also recap on some of the weekly Polkadot DeFi insights, which the self-proclaimed “The DeFi Guy” has been providing us via a special funding arrangement with WagMedia.

Now, let's move on to the top story.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - Hey Big Spender!

Written by yay.oi

Hey big spenders! Spend a little DOT on me. This week we’ve got some big news about big funding that’s been flowing out of the Polkadot treasury coffers.

First and foremost, we’ve got a massive spend proposal from Mythical games. Next up Polkadot is making it rain liquidity all over HydraDX. There’s an opportunity to make a 6 figure salary from the new Polkadot ambassador program. And finally, PINK is tapping an alternative funding route that many other experimental projects probably could have been taking. Let’s go!

Mythical Games, is a powerhouse Web3 gaming company that is in the progress of migrating their Mythos chain to Polkadot. This week they made a massive proposal to the Polkadot OpenGov Big Spender track for a whopping one million DOT.

But before you get your knickers in a twist, don’t worry, they plan to give it all back to the community. One million DOTwould be swapped for MYTH tokens and distributed to DOT holders, ecosystem partners, and participants in the Mythical ecosystem.

Here’s the big surprise, whales aren’t eligible as the proposed airdrop would be for holders between 10 and 5000 DOT. Now I’m sure Giotto would love to get himself an NFL Rivals NFT for free, but I guess the logic there is that he and other DOT whales could easily afford it!

Actually, some of the critics of this proposal argue that Giotto already has a large stake in this project via his $10 million investment in Scytale, who are significant investors in Mythical. This may affect voter sentiment since there is still a bit of bad blood from the DED airdrop debacle.

Another criticism is that the airdrop criteria will lead to too many airdrops going to inactive and secondary wallets. StakePlusCrypto suggests a list of simple criteria that would filter out surplus wallets.

ParaNodes suggests we stay focused on the bigger picture as the benefits outweigh the concerns. And CryptoCappex paints a nice picture of those benefits.

Mythical can deliver up to 4 million new users to Polkadot, bringing in a new era of blockchain games. This will lead to increased demand for blockspace and thus more DOT burned.

The Mythical airdrop is not so excessive that recipients would be inclined to dump their tokens for profit. Rather it will encourage experimentation with the Mythical gaming ecosystem and lead to the onboarding of new users.

Speaking of new users, HydraDX may soon see an influx with a whole lot more liquidity arriving on Omnipool shortly following this week’s passing of two OpenGov Big Spender proposals, each for one million DOT.

The first proposal #560 will add one million DOT of liquidity to the HydraDX Omnipool. The second proposal #561 adds one million DOT to liquidity mining incentives across multiple Omnipool assets.

This results in a significant liquidity boost, which facilitates better order execution, from lower slippage and the possibility of larger transaction sizes. In the longer term, boosted liquidity mining incentives will attract even more liquidity across all Omnipool assets.

The resulting capital inflow will show onlookers that the Polkadot DeFi space is thriving, resulting in increased interest, and hopefully sustains adoption both during and after incentivisation.

While deep liquidity is fuelling adoption in the DeFi space, a new program is being launched to supercharge adoption across the board. The referendum for the new Polkadot Ambassadors program passed this week.

Not only did it introduce a new governance system for ambassadors, it also provided a budget of more than $2.5 million per year to pay up to twenty-one head ambassadors $120,000pa. So now is your chance to rise up the ranks and increase your own big spending power too.

Last, but not least (well, kind of least, because it’s the smallest proposal), we get a proposal with an interesting twist. PINK made an OpenGov Medium Spender proposal to pay for a CEX listing, provision of liquidity to an AMM, and marketing for their game and token.

The thing is, they didn’t propose it on Polkadot, they proposed it on Kusama! Expect Chaos degens! What took them so long? Kusama is the chain for trying new things, it’s the chain where you’re not afraid to break stuff. Arguably the perfect playground for a gamefi memecoin to do its thing.

The problem is, PINK is only asking Kusama for funding, they’re not proposing to build anything on the Kusama network. Hopefully, by receiving the support of the Kusama community they will be incentivised to work on integrating future PINK projects with Kusama.

And that is all for our big spends this week, stay tuned because Sanchez is about to take a deeper dive into Mythical Games which you might find useful before casting your vote.

A Mythical Report

Written by Sanchez

The Mythical Platform is next-generation technology providing a full-service system for developers and publishers to build or integrate blockchain-based play-to-earn economies into their games.

Founded by John Linden in 2018 after a stellar career as a studio head at Activision (Call of Duty franchise), and president of Seismic Games before its sale (franchises include: World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, Marvel Strike Force, and Skylanders). Mythical has gone on to raise $297 Million in 8 funding rounds.

Their mission is to bridge the gap between blockchain and traditional gaming, turning gamers into game stakeholders by issuing tradable digital collections to gamers as they play.

Mythical went on to acquire DMarket in January 2023, a novel marketplace for trading Counter Strike 2 skins. This move effectively provides Mythical access to gamers who are already trading digital assets from Web2 games, with the potential prospect of onboarding them into Web3.

Next was the launch of its unique digital assets marketplace, Mythical Market 2.0, which utilizes DMarkets' anti-fraud protection system to provide a seamless trading environment for gamers. Additionally, gamers can purchase in-game assets with fiat or cryptocurrencies and trade the assets they own.

For gamers, Mythical makes them shareholders of these games as they own game specific digital assets which are tradeable and offer some form of rewards. When it comes to game developers, Mythical provides a seamless platform to create games with greater inclusivity for gamers.

In terms of games that have been released by Mythical, significant titles include NFL Rivals, an NFL-licensed game, Nitro Nation, and the Blankos Block Party, all available on Google Play Store and Apple's App Store.

The approach taken by Mythical completely abstracts away the complexities of blockchain gaming for users, removing the impediment of learning how a chain functions, gas for transaction fees, and how to set up a wallet.

As such, gamers can play on Mythical without realizing these are blockchain games. Custodial wallets are set up for new gamers, which can be connected to non-custodial wallets if the user owns one. The in-game assets collected are stored in these wallets.

When a user intends to transact, a non-custodial wallet is created, and assets are transferred from the temporary wallet to the non-custodial wallet.

Overall, the general idea of Mythical is to make blockchain gaming as fun and straightforward as possible without the bottlenecks for a first-time blockchain user.

In terms of blockchain, Mythos is Mythical’s chain and it is regarded as the number one gaming blockchain in Web3. Since its launch, over $399,000,000 in in-game assets have been traded on the Mythos chain, recording 492,987 buyers and 439,442 sellers, with the Mythos chain consistently in the top 5 chains in regards to NFT assets traded daily.

Mythical, in 2023, announced leaving Ethereum due to slow transactions and high gas fees, moving its diverse gaming ecosystem to Polkadot to create the most connected gaming ecosystem in Web3. As it stands, Mythical already has a parachain slot on Polkadot and will slowly move its player base from Ethereum to Polkadot.

The Mythical parachain will allow Mythos gaming partners and projects to build out, leveraging Polkadot's governance, security, scalability, and interoperability.

Over 4 million gamers coming to Polkadot? Wen?

In an interview with Jay on Space Monkeys, the CEO of Mythical, John Linden, hinted that Mythical will launch on Polkadot in the first half of the year, effectively bringing over its 4 million gamers to the Polkadot ecosystem.

Final details regarding spinning up the chain and the new tokenomics of the Myth token to accommodate staking on Mythical are being processed with some features required on Polkadot before the chain fully launches.

Keep your eyes peeled as we look forward to Mythical launching on Polkadot…soon!

Recap The DeFi Guy’s Chronicles

Written by Dodow

DeFi can often be considered complex and full of risks, but what if there was a guy that can help simplify it? Wouldn’t it be awesome if this guy can raise awareness of the overlooked and underappreciated DeFi scene on Polkadot.

Well, we are in luck because WagMedia has partnered up with The DeFi Guy, so you can now catch up with his weekly chronicles to enhance your understanding. Remember, this is not financial advice, the content is educational and intended to help you DYOR.

If you have not heard of The DeFi Guy before, then make sure to follow the correct X handle, where you’d occasionally be treated to some interesting alpha. Those of us already entrenched in the Polkadot ecosystem would have likely heard his hot takes on AAG, or some of his candid insights on various ecosystem socials.

On a personal level, I have received direct help from this crypto bro via a support ticket that I raised quite some time ago. You can certainly tell he lives and breathes DeFi, good or bad with his time spent moderating the Acala discord.

Being a writer that occasionally participates in farming juicy yield, I can really appreciate what The Defi Guy offers. To date, via the partnership with WagMedia, the following articles have stood out.

You often hear in DeFi circles the term MEV (Maximal Extractible Value), but do you know what it means? It’s like navigating a dark forest, and here’s a solid explanation that centers around Polkadot.

So you want to get paid on Polkadot? Then check out this dogfooding article, which provides three strategies catering different levels. In order of difficulty, the article provides tips on lending stablecoins, playing with liquid staking derivatives, and managing concentrated liquidity, all using popular Polkadot DeFi protocols.

And there’s certainly quite a few options when it comes to Liquid Staking DOT, I have yet to find a comprehensive comparison until now.

With the forthcoming liquidity boost on HydraDX, growth of LSDs on Bifrost, increasing DeFi volume on Acala, Moonbeam, Astar, and more, then The DeFi Guy can offer valuable assistance to newbies and degens alike.

General News

Written by Turing Machine

• Xode has won Kusama Auction #136 with a self funded bid to bring web3 game development and businesses to Polkadot.
• Crust network has taken a snapshot for its PINK Airdrop, eligible wallet addresses have to complete a simple Proof of Human task on Galxe.
• The live-streaming and real-time communication DePIN project dTelecom has joined the Peaqosystem, migrating from the Arbitrum testnet to use the Peaq layer-1 as its backbone, utilizing the Peaq SDK.
• OpenGov.Watch redacted the OpenGov report for March on Grillapp. A detailed analysis on the last month proposals and how Decentralized Voices are coming into power.
• Mandala Chain published a local native piece about their ID chain and how the project will bring millions of users to Polkadot.
• Integritee Network publishes its March monthly wrap-up, highlights include testnet on Paseo, a new HRMP channel with Basilisk, the availability of a KSM/TEER trading pair, and much more!
• The team behind PINK renounced the asset ownership, all token roles have been set to a dead proxy, the token now cannot be minted, frozen or altered.
• Aiming to decentralize their network Tanssi has launched staking capabilities on the Dancebox testnet, with valueless DANCE token.
• Pendulum publishes their Q1 roundup, which includes news of Spacewalk on Amplitude, PEN listing on StellaSwap, Governance updates, and more.
• Litentry won the 66th Parachain Auction on Polkadot, self-funding a bid of 180,088 DOT for a slot until February 13th, 2026.
• Some progress has been made with Ledger's universal app by Zondax, which is expected to be ready in early Q2 2024. In addition to the migration details being updated on the FAQ section of Ledger’s website, there has been close collaboration with the Polkadot Fellowship which sees RFC 78 being approved.
• Razor’s price oracle is now available on Moonbeam, offering trustless, decentralized and permissionless real-world price feeds for dApps.

NFT News

Written by Sanchez

• Holders of the Burrow of Chaos, a collection of 500 crazy rabbits on Kusama, will receive an allocation of tokens from the Kanary memecoin on Polkadot.
• Following the approval of their proposal, DOTA will be tokenized on Asset Hub and airdropped to holders. This move will enable potential CEX and DEX listings with the increased total supply of DOTA, establishing a treasury for further developments.
• Moonbeam Network announced PINK as the theme of the Lunar Gaming Festival, with Pink points and a prize pool of over $2000 for participating.
• The Pink Villa from Everloot has been successfully auctioned for 550k Pink tokens, of which 400k Pink have been burnt. The Pink Villa is a Rmrk NFT with equipables.
• Tilescapes, a minimalist generative art NFT collection from Thomas_Art, launched on Kodadot on April 4th with a minting price of 0.5 DOT.
• Unique Network released its report for March featuring the launch of the Forever Has Fallen game, the listing of UNQ/DOT on HydraDX and more.
• Pinkonomic has announced the launch of Basedrop on the Base Network, similar to the Pinkdrop on Polkadot.
• Snake Soldiers have announced the chance for players to change their memecoin badges from DED to others. This can be changed by notifying team members on the Snake Soldiers Discord server.

DEFI News

Written by Gigs

• Moonwell will introduce a new multi-chain governance model, as well as new multi-chain fungibility of its WELL token.
• Beamswap receives increased PINK allocation for LP rewards.
• Kucoin Exchange now fully enables Polkadot Asset Hub to allow for USDT withdrawals.
• Polkadex to keep things going by signing up to swap for an unused Parachain slot.
• Polkaswap v1.32.0 launches on the mainnet with new improvements and UI/UX updates.
• PINK cross-chain swaps come to Beamswap as it partners with swing.xyz.
• Check out Bifrost’s March report, highlights include awesome growth statistics, protocol updates (to support things like Astar dApp staking v3), the new Loop Stake feature, BNC lending on Interlay, and much more.
• StellaSwap announces the public release of the StellaSwap Development Kit (SDK).

Governance News

Written by Turing Machine

• Referendum 487 to set up a new Polkadot Ambassadors Program, has passed. There will be 4 tiers of ambassadors which include: Head Ambassador (HA), Senior Ambassador (SA), Ambassador, and Candidate Ambassador (CA).
• The Polkassembly team announced the formation of a Delegation, as such, they will now be actively voting on topics that they have some expertise in. They also welcome receiving further delegated power from the community.
• Polkadex’s governance is now live on Nova Wallet, users can now participate through the mobile wallet app.
• To increase transparency, Decentralized Voice Jimmy Tudeski, has published an exhaustive list of all his latest votes in OpenGov.
• The Mythos Foundation proposed with Referendum #643 a 1 million DOT token swap for 20 million MYTH to be airdropped to the Polkadot Community.
• The Astar Network starts an off-chain proposal in its forum, to open an HRMP bi-directional channel with Pendulum.
• LAOS Network opened a poll on X asking their community the name to be assigned to its Testnet.
• HydraDX treasury proposals get the green light, the team is set to receive 2 million DOT to be used for a liquidity mining program, and to add liquidity into the Omnipool.
• HydraDX opened referenda #131 to transfer PINK tokens from Asset-Hub to the treasury multisig account.
• StellaSwap started its monthly referendum to let its users choose which pool to be boosted by their Farm Boost Programme.
• HydraDX opened council motion #163, which if approved will call on its community to vote to rectify misdirected USDT funds for the Polkadot-API Dev Team.
• Referendum #44 on Moonbeam Network propose to add DED as an XC-20 token.

Events News

Written by Turing Machine

• Zeitgeist’s Nikhil Saboo, will be presenting at Token2049 in Dubai on April 18th-19th.
• Project leaders from Mythical Games, Polytope Labs, Harbour Industrial Capital took part at the Hong Kong Web3 Festival on April 6th/7th.
• Fja from Tanssi Network joined the Polimec’s Early Birds Episode 5, on April 5th.
• On April 5th Crust Network hosted their Monthly Community Call.
• Bill Laboon will hold a workshop on April 24th: “Intro to Polkadot”, Part of the W3Transfer Educate Series.
• On April 3rd “tee time” with Integritee took place, Waldemar and Sergei talked about the project’s latest news and updates.
• The Polkadot AMA on April 4th focused on Web3 Governance, with OpenSquare Network and Filippo Franchini from Web3 Foundation.
• Arron Goolsbey, COO of Mythical Games, explored the future of Web3 and gaming at the Hong Kong Web3 Festival on April 4th.
• Polkadot founder and Chief Architect Gavin Wood will attend Token 2049 in Dubai to present Polkadot's future: The Big Jam.
• At Ethereum Zurich on April 6th Christian Kille from Acurast discussed how mobile phones can be disruptive for cloud computing.
• InvArch Network founder Dakota Barnett will be a speaker at Token 2049 in Dubai on April 17th.

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.