Presidot! - Newsletter Edition 83

In this week’s edition:

1. Editorial: Presidential vibes, Polkadot’s presence in the US, and Recap DOT memecoins.
2. Top Story - Connecting US with DOT: How is Polkadot positioned in the US now that we are under Trump’s premiership.
3. Featured Report - WUD is DOT memes?: With the surprise launches of TRUMP and MELANIA memecoins, we take a chance to look at the memecoins on Polkadot.
4. Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between January 16th and January 22nd.
5. Extras: Credits and anything else.

Editorial

What is up, my friends!

Heading into last weekend, excitement filled the air as many of the industry’s key players from the US gathered for the Crypto Ball. The event was billed as a celebration of the imminent inauguration of pro-crypto President Trump, as well as a forum to discuss the future of the industry in the United States.

While Trump himself was not in attendance, he certainly did not fail to stir excitement, surprising many with the launch of his official memecoin. Some of us overseas woke up feeling sidelined as its soaring popularity quickly pushed its market cap past many respected protocols.

The debate over what went down continues with mixed opinions, likely fueled further by the launch of a second memecoin shortly after. One point that most are in agreement on is that with Gensler out of the door, positive sentiment is building stateside. This week’s top story will explore the Polkadot initiatives that may help capitalize on the opportunity emerging in the US.

With memecoins in the spotlight, it's a good opportunity to recap where our predominantly tech-focused ecosystem stands on the matter in our featured report. As some think DOT is DED, so WUD promoting PINKness Mak Polkadut Gud Agan?

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - Connecting US with DOT

Written by yay.oi

What’s pumpin’, TRUMPers? Presidential memecoins and first lady fan-coins suddenly became hot property last weekend. Now, the focus in the cryptoverse has rapidly shifted to the inauguration of Donald Trump, the self-professed crypto-president. Many are wondering what the future holds for cryptocurrencies in the US.

Perhaps to no one’s surprise, Gary Gensler resigned as SEC Chair on Monday. This paves the way for a new era of potentially relaxed crypto regulation, which will be initially led by pro-crypto SEC Acting Chair Mark Uyeda.

On the campaign trail, President Trump asserted his ambition for the US to become the ‘crypto capital of the planet’, but only time will tell how this vision unfolds. In this shifting landscape, the question now is whether Polkadot has positioned itself effectively to capitalize on these changes. With its record spending on outreach in 2024, let’s hope so.

One of the Polkadot treasury’s biggest spends in 2024 was the 968K DOTsponsorship of InterMiami (IMCF). The team has kicked off 2025 by debuting a striking new black-and-white Polkadot training kit.

IMCF benefits from the global appeal of Lionel Messi, but also enjoys the added advantage of Chase Stadium’s proximity to the Trump Mar-a-Lago resort. In 2025, why shouldn’t Polkadot seize the opportunity to extend an invitation to a member of the Trump family to the IMCF VIP Hospitality Suite?

While soccer has global reach, professional football (NFL) is by far the most popular televised sport in the US. Polkadot also has a connection to the reigning Super Bowl champions, the Kansas City Chiefs. NFL Rivals, built by Mythical and secured by Polkadot, is the official mobile game of the Kansas City Chiefs, who may have a shot at winning a third consecutive Super Bowl this year.

That said, with Mythical favoring a blockchain abstraction approach, you’d be hard-pressed to see a mention of Mythos Chain, let alone Polkadot, at an NFL Rivals fan zone activation. Critics might consider this a missed opportunity for brand exposure.

Hopefully, the enactment of the Polkadot Branding Guideline in Wish for Change Referendum 1350 will influence future design choices. Mythical may have gotten the memo, because this week’s announcement of the Football Rivals mini-game for Telegram prominently featured the Mythos and Polkadot logos.

There was no need to worry about the prominence of the Polkadot logo on Conor Daly’s Indy500 2024 car. With a peak of 6.46 million viewers, Conor’s sponsored car gave the Polkadot brand significant visibility in the US. Paired with his excellent ambassadorship through media appearances and ecosystem events, some might say Polkadot got a lot for its $1.9M USD.

However, without enough convincing metrics or evidence of the sponsorship impact on Polkadot business development, the DAO has thus far refused to give Conor another shot for the 2025 season. This week, after two prior rejections, a third proposal of $3.5M landed on the OpenGov Big Spender track.

With each proposal, the value proposition has increased, and Conor is now offering sponsorship of eight marque events, up from six. The first race is scheduled for March 2nd in St. Petersburg, Florida which, in case you haven’t been listening to Phunky recently, is home to ARK Invest headquarters. This potentially offers a valuable opportunity to connect with the likes of Cathie Wood.

Phunky is adamant that the Conor deal is not only the perfect opportunity to capture the mindshare of the US general public at this critical time, but also a chance to make inroads with US enterprises through numerous networking opportunities with influential stakeholders. He warns that if we don’t retain Conor now, this may be the last the Polkadot ecosystem sees of him.

Unlike GuinnessStache, a proud American and former advocate for the Polkadot, left the ecosystem and turned his sights towards SUI last year, complaining that not enough inroads had been made into the US, especially in enterprise. He was one of the few vocal supporters of the Chainalysis integration, which was rejected numerous times, and he will likely never let us live it down.

Even so, the recently approved Token Terminal project holds some promise for increased enterprise exposure. They will standardize Polkadot and its parachains’ unique metrics in a way that matches with financial and business KPIs. Additionally they will also be expanding their reach by distributing the datasets through the Google Web3 Marketplace.

It hasn’t just been treasury funded sponsorships and integrations that have addressed enterprise outreach. The Web3 Foundation has also taken proactive steps with its Decentralized Futures grant program. This has seen New York-based ecosystem development firm Transistor tasked with driving Polkadot adoption and growth in the US.

As they are virtually inactive on X, let’s hope they’ve got a lot more going on behind the scenes. So far, all we’ve heard of their work is a supporting role in the Polkadot Music Events Initiative, which aims to onboard events cashless POS system provider Billfold.

While it’s understandable that results will not be instantaneous, time is of the essence at this critical juncture, and a little communication goes a long way into building momentum and mindshare. Take Project Liberty, for example–they have been talking up their bid to buy Tiktok’s US operations since May of last year.

There are a lot of hurdles to get through before any bid might be accepted. However, in the meantime, Frank McCourt and his new partner, Shark Tank’s Kevin “Mr Wonderful” O’Leary, have been doing the rounds of US national media. They’ve been explaining the virtues of their American-made tech stack and how it will return control of data back to its users.

To those in the know, that tech stack is the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol, powered by Frequency and secured by Polkadot. Whether or not the TikTok bid can get off the ground, there is value in McCourt and O’Leary promoting the Polkadot-aligned Web3 vision of a trustless internet where user identity is sovereign.

Very few protocols have the resilience of Polkadot, which can truly support the Web3 vision. Even this week, we saw established protocols still struggling with decentralization, and scalability, but we’re always available to lend a helping hand. Some might say Polkadot’s struggle is with recognition of its strengths. For example, how is Kusama still not listed as the fastest blockchain?

The question is whether recognition is something that can be paid for. Will a Polkadot-branded car winning the Indy 500 lead the right people in the US to recognize that Polkadot is the fastest, most decentralized, most resilient network, worthy of their enterprise-grade project?

Conversely, does it matter? Is institutional and enterprise growth in the US necessary for Polkadot to fulfil its Web3 vision? For the time being, the DAO consensus seems to favor moderate spending, and grassroots efforts such as the Spammening (which is not too long away).

Paired with the launch of the consumer-friendly Polkadot App in the US (launching soon), we may soon have a chance to gauge what kind of impact Polkadot can make without additional big sponsorship spends. That said, the Polkadot DAO currently appears to be without any kind of cohesive spending strategy for 2025.

As a reminder, the Polkadot treasury is not a savings account, and unspent funds are periodically burned. While we can continue spending on development of our excellent wallets, we can’t forget to make the effort to entice people to use them. Perhaps a bit of spending can help with that.

Featured Report - WUD is DOT memes?

Written by Dodow

When the incoming leader of the Land of the Free launches a memecoin days before inauguration, crypto naturally gets put into the spotlight. While most of the industry is still recovering from the fallout, whether applauding it or appalled by it, the inherent attention tied to memes is certainly playing out.

Meanwhile, the attention for those building on Polkadot tends to be more on fundamental Web3 ideals, centered around decentralization and the call for Less Trust, More Truth. That said, embracing a little meme culture now and again can help galvanize the ecosystem.

To appreciate where we are, it’s worth reflecting back on when the memecoin movement on Polkadot took off last March. It came at a time when the airdrop meta and frenzy of memes dominated the narrative. Since no memecoin had established itself on Polkadot, one could argue that the steaks were firing up.

The fire was lit with PINK, which has a remarkable origin. It started out as a publicity stunt that shocked and outraged OpenGov by requesting a hefty sum to promote pinkness instead of the tech. Funding didn’t materialize, yet the group behind it still managed to set an example that others imitated, including partnerships for the airdrop, an addictive game, an NFT collection, and more.

Fair to say, PINK is widely recognized as being the first memecoin to be established on Polkadot, at one point reaching a respectable market cap of 8 figures. Although things have cooled down, PINK continues to feature new games, more tournaments, and a multichain experience to extend its reach.

In terms of reach and following, it seemed that DED, sometimes referred to as DOT is DED, had the most promise. Spearheaded by a ferocious leader, it received numerous OpenGov approvals, which funded marketing, a game, partnerships, and even a Swiss foundation.

For now, the backlash from the change in tokenomics has knocked the wind out of its sails, as trading volume is negligible and activity on their socials seems to have stalled. Is DED dead? Or will it wake up when its leader returns?

Even with funding, positive returns are not certain, as conditions can still be tough. Several notable projects have managed to make an impression, but have struggled to maintain a firm foothold in the ecosystem.

Stink managed to offend; however, we don’t get much of the whiff these days. Kanary did manage to infiltrate the Snake Soldiers camp, but ultimately moved to newer pastures. Meanwhile, Beefy grazed the green and, after a gallant effort, decided to sunset to leave room for our favourite cult fownder & cheef arkitukt.

So, it was back in August when we covered Wud is Going On, which unravels the story of humor and fun that saw Gavun Wud bring joy back into our ecosystem. Sometimes, you just need to stop trading and believe in something, and for now, the community certainly believes in a memecoin whose mission is to Mak Polkadut Gud Agan.

Since our coverage, the WUD news keeps flowing as Gavun Wud constantly features in our newsletter and news roundups. Some of the highlights of the progress include campaigning for gud, enhancing the fun, receiving industry recognition, and joining the agency.

The power of meme culture is not to be underestimated. Even in a highly tech-focused ecosystem, it can unite believers, as exemplified by WUD being handed over to and owned by its community.

What happened before and will likely continue to after the inauguration has the potential to transform no-coiners into shitcoiners, marking a possible step closer to mass adoption. Yet, the launch of another memecoin the next day has drawn criticism as pure grift. This serves as an important reminder that memecoins are often a zero-sum lottery.

Wag Roundup (January 16th to January 22nd)

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

DOT Ecosystem News

Written by yay.oi

• Polkadot has teamed up with Ledger to give away 50 Ledger Flexes, valued at $250 each. Follow, retweet and bookmark for your chance to win.
• This week, a team from Parity released create-polkadot-dapp, a tool that promises to help you build your Polkadot DApp in less than 5 minutes.
• Parity engineer Byte has dropped a new dashboard for the Polkadot and Kusama parachains, which displays real-time metrics such as TPS and KB/s.
• The Web3 Foundation is hiring. In Europe a position is vacant for a Growth Operations Manager, while on the US East Coast applications are open for an Investor Relations Manager.
• With its evolution almost complete, Polimec is now accepting new fundraising applications.
• Austrian exchange BitPanda has become the latest CEX to list Peaq’s native token.
• Silencio, the first DePIN to launch on the Peaq mainnet, has scheduled its SLC token genesis event for January 24th 2025.
• With token generation just days away, Silencio announces the listing of SLC on Kucoin, with the SLC/USDT pair open for trade at 14:00 UTC January 24th.
• Reservations to become a DeNet Datakeeper are now open. A deposit of $100 reserves you a spot to purchase a Datakeeper Node in the future and earn for providing storage space to the DeNet decentralized storage protocol which is being built on Peaq.
• Charge referrals just got a whole lot more profitable. With the latest update to the Charge app, in addition to the 50-coin referral reward, you will now receive 6% of your referral’s earnings.
• Xcavate is running a competition for the RealxDeal, a game that it has developed on the Paseo testnet. Try to top the leaderboard by 13:59 GMT on Saturday 25th January, for a chance to win up to 3500 XCAV tokens.
• Check out the Snowbridge DApp. The UI just got a frosty new makeover.
• Nova Wallet v9.2 brings an improved user experience to the DApp Browser, with DApps category filtering, multi-tabs, and a DApp minimize/maximize function.
• The Polkalottery has now expanded to Acala. Participants can buy tickets using the SORA, Polkadot, and Acala networks for 0.1 DOT and gain the chance to share in a prize pool of 200 DOT.
• Given that Stellaswap’s V3 DEX contract does not allow for the adjustment of LP parameters in accordance with planned veSTELLA incentives, the team has decided to upgrade the entire DEX to Integral V4. While this will result in a delay to the launch of veSTELLA by a few weeks, it will bring a suite of new modular features to the DEX and a reduction of gas costs.
• Development of Polkadex 2.0 kicked off thanks to a strategic joint venture with a leading tech firm. In the coming days, the Polkadex platform will temporarily migrate from polkadex.trade to polkadex.ee while upgrades are being implemented.
• Minting of vASTR on Bifrost has continued its notable gains in January, this time surpassing the 80M milestone.
• Lolmcschizz has initiated a discussion on Kusama OpenGov proposing that 33,333 KSM from the treasury be added to the Hydration Omnipool. This move aims to address the longstanding issue of KSM liquidity throughout the Polkadot ecosystem, which has forced many to resort to centralized solutions.
• With the passing of Hydration Referendum 205, the vDOT and DOT supply caps will be raised for the money market, along with some adjustments to the DOT lending parameters.
• Hydration Referendum 204 has passed, meaning Hydration Council multi-sig signers will now make an OTC purchase of USDC 150k of SOL and USDC 100k of SUI. After these assets have been launched on the Omnipool, they will be topped up with additional OTC purchases.
• Talisman is requesting 598k USDT from the Polkadot treasury for the development of a mobile version of its wallet for iOS and Android.
• In Polkadot OpenGov Big Spender Referendum 1391, Nova Wallet is seeking a retroactive payment of 1.04M USDT for the previous 9 months of deliverables.
• After two rejections, Conor Daly has returned to Polkadot OpenGov seeking $3.5M for the sponsorship of his 2025 Motorsports season, adding two more races at no extra cost.
• Pendulum has initiated a proposal on Moonbeam governance to register the Stellar-bridged xcEUR.s Euro stablecoin. Discussions are underway to launch it in a stablepool with USDC on Stellaswap.
• LAOS governance is now live on Subsquare. If you fancy a bit of token burning, check out Referendum 3, which proposes to burn unclaimed Crowdloan funds.
• After hitting its 3500 new player target within just days, the Evrloot x KGeN Green January campaign has wrapped up. The top 5 players on the leaderboard will be the first ever to receive Companion Egg NFTs. Players ranked 6-25 will earn a set of Forged Citizenship Papers, while ranks 26-99 will have a chance to win one of ten remaining papers in a Discord raffle.
• Euphoria, a generative art collection by Arkain, dropped on KodaDot on January 22nd.
• Mythical has announced the launch of the Telegram mini-app Football Rivals, built by Koni Stack. As it is powered by the Mythos chain, gameplay is compatible with existing NFL Rivals assets.

DOT Ecosystem Events

Written by yay.oi

• Alan Vey and Ellie Hyman held a livestream on January 16th to discuss what we can expect from Aventus in 2025.
• On January 17th, Polkaworld hosted a panel discussion about AI agents on Polkadot featuring Alexis (Gavun Wud), Leo (Neurolanche), and Branimir (Origin Trail).
• Ashutosh (KGeN) hosted Luuu (Evrloot) on January 17th to discuss their Green January onboarding campaign.
• In Episode 10 of the OnTrac Podcast on January 21st, Origin Trail founders Ziga Drev, Branimir Rakic, and Tomaz Levak gave a progress report on DKG V8 and updates to their roadmap for 2025.
• On January 22nd, PBA hosted alumni Tony Riemer, Juan Girini, and Carlos Montoya, founding members of Ideal Labs, who are hoping to build the Ideal Network (IDN), a native randomness solution for Polkadot.
• Silencio held an AMA on January 22nd to discuss their TGE, upcoming raffles, and plans for the future.

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.