Ready, Steady, DOT! (July 28th to August 3rd)

What is up, my friends!

“Ready, steady, go” seems to sum up this past week. Things started with the fallout from the anticipated announcements at the BTC conference of a US Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, a direction politicians are advocating that the US is getting ready for. While Trump may have gotten the crowd going in Nashville, he might have stopped short of promising a reserve.

Thanks to one of our readers for some recent feedback, pointing out the Reuters poll and providing positive feedback on our newsletter. So, steady on, as Kamala is in with a decent chance–even Web3 prediction markets are noticing. Furthermore, some are reflecting on the situation as support mounts with VC backing, which includes Mark Cuban.

Finally, markets go red as the US government moves a good amount of Bitcoin around. Naturally, there was speculation from crypto Twitter that it had been dumped. However, nothing has been confirmed, be hey, on-chain analysis can be captivating.

On to the Polkadot ecosystem, and things can be summed up in a similar way. Chainalysis is ready to make another attempt at the Polkadot Treasury Reserves. Did you notice Basti demonstrating how fast and steady the performance of Async Backing is? And it’s all systems go as Mythical finally shows us a ton of transactions, Ajuna launches on Polkadot, and there is Head Ambassador drama resulting in the need to go!

“Ready or DOT,” we will provide further details on some of these mentioned Polkadot items and more in our top story of the week. Additionally, with Ajuna launching on Polkadot, we take the opportunity to feature a profile report on our ecosystem’s first gaming-specific rollup, which started out on Kusama.

Being ready to go could be crucial for our WagMedia creators, as we had recently announced a couple of extremely time-sensitive bounties. Less than 48 hrs were given to provide a TL;DR on Alice und Bob’s stream, “End The Grift,” for Bounty 34, and the same timeframe applied to Bounty 36, which relates to Acala’s JitoSOL LST.

With all that out of the way, get ready to go on to this week's stories and news updates.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - Ready or DOT, here we go!

Written by yay.oi

Bonjour les amis! While all eyes are on Paris and some of the coolest silver medalists ever seen, Polkadot has its eyes on gold (targeting Q3 2024). Meanwhile, an old friend is getting ready to make a new proposal, some interesting developments are steadily coming along and going to plan, and others are going down in flames. It’s never a dull moment in the Polkaverse.

So, about that old friend. You may remember in Wag’s Behind da Code? (May 12th to May 18th), we reported on one of the most contentious Polkadot OpenGov referenda ever. Chainalysis requested the equivalent of USD$10M for data, analytics, and compliance solutions to facilitate entry into the institutional market.

After not one, but two rejections from the Polkadot community, our old friend Chainalysis is getting ready to initiate their third referendum with a new and improvedproposal. The jury is out on whether these changes will appease the NAYsayers of OpenGov.

The most obvious change is financial, they have reduced their asking price to USDC$6.5M paid in three annual USD$2.16M installments. That said, since the release of the Polkadot H1 Treasury Report, there has been pressure to tighten the purse-strings, so even with a reduction, the price may be seen as too steep for the average voter.

The previous proposal included initial onboarding of the Relay Chain, with potential collaborative onboarding of EVM parachains at 36 months. The current proposal would initially onboard the Relay Chain, Hydration, Moonbeam, Asset Hub, and Astar, with support extending to the movement of DOT on other chains in Phase 2, and the collaborative onboarding of the rest of the parachain tokens in Phase 3.

This was enough for prominent doubter from the first referendum DefiGuy to take notice. However, the lines are still drawn between voters, and even before a referendum has been initiated, the public discourse is heating up.

On the AYE side, we have those like GuinnessStache who believe that expediting the process (with payment) will ensure that Polkadot is a first pick for mainstream enterprise adoption. In opposition, Dakota still insists that once there is enough enterprise demand, Chainalysis will be willing to integrate for free. Whichever way this upcoming referendum goes, someone’s going to be disappointed.

Hopefully Coretime doesn’t disappoint and is ready to roll out this month. With Async Backing already steadily rolling out across the parachains, a tweet from Bastian Köcher this week had everyone asking, What is Basti doing? It definitely gotHydration’s Ben McMahon excited.

With the assistance of Async Backing and a latency tweak, Basti demonstrated a way to build parachain blocks in less than 500ms. What this means is that twelve parachain blocks could be combined into one Proof of Validity (PoV) as long as they stay within the block size limit. So, in the case of Hydration, for example, users should notice less waiting time for their transaction to be shipped.

A long wait came to an end this week and resulted in an enormous spike in transactions. In a five-hour window, Mythical conducted its state migration from Ethereum to Polkadot resulting in 3.3M transactions. While that sounds like something that would put a bit of strain on the network, Polkadot is always ready to go.

This wasn’t even the largest spike in transactions we can expect from Mythical. Mythos parachain builder Gautham Dhameja is pumped about testing the limits with the throughput boost that Elastic Scaling will bring.

Meanwhile, Alice und Bob was pumped about winning his second Head Ambassador referendum after a preimage misconfiguration caused the failed execution of his first one. While he was trying to avoid a Battle Royale type situation for him to take the place of another ambassador, it looks like he needn’t have worried, because one Head Ambassador is already on the chopping block.

Michiko Watanabe, specialist in enterprise software implementation for Salesforce in Japan, and organizer of Polkadot Meetups in Shibuya, Tokyo, was amongst the first group of successful Head Ambassador candidates. Described by Crane as completely unknown and a bit of a wild card, it turns out that she certainly lived up to her reputation.

After some doubts were raised about her persona, and numerous failed attempts to contact her, Leemo put out a public tweet requesting a response. While she didn’t say anything, her message was loud and clear: she left all Head Ambassador group chats and deleted her social media accounts.

With all the information he needed, Leemo initiated OpenGov Referendum 1041 to have Michiko removed from the Polkadot Ambassador Program. Unfortunately, if you cannot pass a basic proof of humanity test, you have to go.

So how about you Dot fam? Are you ready to get out there and vote? Chainalysis will be a big one, and if you’re leaning either way, you’d better make your voice heard. If you don’t vote, there’s no point crying afterwards when things don’t go your way (although there's no rule to say Chainalysis won't try again if they fail). Too busy? Delegate your DOT to someone who shares your point of view, it’s really not hard.

Despite market volatility, things are steadily coming along in the Polkadot ecosystem. With the imminent switch to Coretime on Polkadot, there will be fewer barriers to entry for new projects, which will foster a more innovative and competitive ecosystem.

This week Basti demonstrated what’s possible with Async Backing, and Mythical proved that the network is as resilient as ever. Things are looking very exciting for H2 2024. With Elastic Scaling expected to drop in Q4, it will be the final piece of the Polkadot 2.0 puzzle, and then it will be all systems go!

Featured Report - Ready for Awesome Ajuna!

Written by Sanchez

Implementing gaming on the blockchain has introduced new dimensions, offering asset ownership, enhanced collaborations, and possibilities beyond traditional games. The play-to-earn mechanism in games was the icing on the cake, providing gamers with a unique opportunity to have fun while earning rewards for their time and dedication.

While blockchain gaming has a lot of potential, especially for onboarding users, its quality has somewhat stalled. Many developers focus primarily on implementing play-to-earn models, often neglecting game quality and storytelling. It has resulted in a prevalence of 2D games with poor graphics, which offer earnings but lack overall gameplay experience.

This often leads to challenges in retaining users once rewards diminish, as the games lack the quality to maintain long-term interest. From a technological perspective, the inability to create blockchain games with great graphics and complex systems stems from the latency problems and the non-integration of blockchains with popular game engines like Unity and Unreal.

Recognizing the significant potential of gaming to attract new players and developers, Web3 ecosystems, including Polkadot, are allocating budgets to enhance gaming on their platforms. Polkadot Play is a recent initiative aimed at enhancing the gaming ecosystem. These efforts can strengthen the gaming community and connect them to chains that can offer robust platforms for developers and players.

The Polkadot ecosystem’s first gaming-specific appchain is Ajuna Network, which was implemented through its canary chain, Bajun, on Kusama. It is an excellent choice for game developers and studios, offering a decentralized gaming platform that integrates Unreal and Unity game engines and allows for the incorporation of blockchain-based assets into games.

Furthermore, the Ajuna team also developed the Polkadot Unity SDK, which combines Substrate's functionalities with Unity game development. This provides a foundation for quality blockchain games, benefitting the Polkadot ecosystem and those that choose to adopt it.

Ajuna’s focus on gaming extends to tackling latency and privacy issues, which are common challenges in blockchain gaming. They offer a Layer 2 solution using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to manage in-game logic, achieving speeds of 250-300 milliseconds. Additionally, Ajuna Network was the first to activate Asynchronous Backing on both its Kusama and Polkadot parachains.

Another challenge that Ajuna can assist game developers and indie studios with is fundraising, through a novel approach. Developers can create a season of Awesome Ajuna Avatars to raise funds for game development, collecting a portion of the proceeds from the mints. The avatars are then integrated into the game being developed, allowing teams to raise funds while studios retain creative control.

While Ajuna can now be considered a compelling choice for gaming and game developers, this is built on a history of persistent trials. Established in June 2021, Ajuna reflects the vision of founder Cédric Decoster, who has consistently aimed to create quality blockchain games. His journey started with the Bitcoin-based lottery system CoinMillions, followed by the Hearthstone simulator SabberStone, and eventually forking the DASH blockchain to create the gaming blockchain Mogwaicoin.

Check out this awesome thread by The Web Knight, which covers more history behind Mogwaicoin. It also references Battle Mogs and highlights how some of this work influenced subsequent developments on Polkadot.

Confronted with long block times, Cedric learned about Substrate, which eventually led to the formation of Ajuna. This marked the beginning of a new gaming blockchain that simplifies the development of high-quality blockchain games. Co-founders André Schneider and Nicholas Douzinas joined him on this mission.

Ajuna began with Bajun Network, a parachain on the Kusama Network, serving as a testing ground for games before their launch on Ajuna Network. The goal was to rigorously test and refine games on Bajun, ensuring their systems and functionalities were perfected before they moved to Ajuna Network on Polkadot.

In 2022, the Ajuna team secured parachains for both Bajun on Kusama and Ajuna on Polkadot. Bajun won the 37th Kusama crowdloan, offering participants early bird bonuses. These included a 10% increase in token rewards for contributions of at least 5 KSM, a 5% increase for contributions of at least 1 KSM, and a 10% referral bonus split between the referrer and the referred.

Participants of the crowdloan also received two free mints of Ajuna Avatars for every KSM contributed, which ended up with a total of 33,26 KSM in contributions, worth over $ 544,479. In turn, those who supported the Bajun crowdloan would go on to receive a 20% bonus on their participation in the Ajuna crowdloan. Ajuna Network won the 31st Polkadot parachain auction with 86,913 DOT contributed to the crowdloan.

So far, three games have been released on the Bajun Network. The first, released in March of 2023, was the first season of the Awesome Ajuna Avatars (AAA). It involved players minting common avatars and then sacrificing them to forge rare and legendary avatars, incorporating elements of chance and strategy. The excitement around the game grew as every player strived to possess legendaries since only a limited number could be forged.

Players could forge these legendary avatars or purchase them from the marketplace. The season was a success, ending with over a thousand players and 318,000 avatars minted, boosting enthusiasm for the next season.

The second season introduced new complexities and strategies, requiring players to breed pets, level them up, forge weapons, and equip these weapons for their pets. This season attracted 1,500 players and resulted in over 1.7 million mints, showing significant growth from the first season.

The third game, Big Ballz of Bajun (BBB), is live on the Bajun Network. Developed with Unity, BBB shares similarities with AAA, requiring players to forge avatars until they become legendary. As Ajuna's first mobile gaming test, BBB is also available on desktop, paving the way for more complex future iterations. The game introduces new features, including an affiliate system and a weekly competition framework where players can earn BAJU tokens.

The three games listed above will be the only ones on the Bajun Network as the team transitions to the Ajuna Network, the mainnet on Polkadot. This transition called the Last Battle of Bajun (LBOB), will mark the end of all avatars on Bajun and offer AJUN rewards in exchange for the soul points on these avatars.

Each season will feature a reward pool, granting players rewards based on the soul points on the avatars they own. For Seasons 1 and 2 of AAA, 1% of the total AJUN token supply is allocated as rewards. In comparison, 2% is designated as a reward for BBB avatars. Payouts for these avatars are scheduled for September, following the conclusion of LBOB. Subsequently, all BAJU tokens will be swapped for AJUN at a 1:1 ratio, expected in February 2025.

Although Seasons 1 and 2 of AAA have ended, players can still purchase avatars from the marketplace and forge them into Legendary and Rare avatars, which secure rewards for S1 and pets for S2. Alternatively, players can join BBB, forge avatars into Legendary status, and receive AJUN tokens according to their leaderboard rank. Prospective rewards can be calculated on the LBOB website.

Ajuna recently conducted the token generation event for the AJUN token, anticipating the move to Polkadot. Shortly after, AJUN was listed on the MEXC exchange. The team also announced upcoming Hydration and Poloniex listings to facilitate token access further.

A new game in the works, Stardust Colonies, is produced in partnership with Evrloot and will be season 3 of AAA. Stardust Colonies is a strategy game situated in deep space. Cédric commented on the game, saying, "work is in progress. From what I've seen over the past two weeks, the narrative and complexity being implemented are quite impressive. Let's hope it doesn't take too much more implementation with a current plan for a November release."

With the Ajuna project backed by Animoca, the team has hinted at potential access to Animoca’s portfolio companies. This could mean a budding collaboration to enable the integration of MOCA ID from Mocaverse into the BBB mobile app.

So far, according to the team, key moments in building the Ajuna Network on Polkadot include initiating the parachain auctions, launching the first season of Awesome Ajuna Avatars, and integrating Async Backing on Ajuna and Bajun.

As the team transitions from Bajun to Ajuna, LBOB marks the final activities on Bajun after extensive testing and development. The launch on Polkadot aims to introduce more complex games, structures, and collaborations, enhancing Ajuna’s narrative and positioning it for future success.

Looking ahead, Cedric shared that the team plans to expand partnerships to showcase their capabilities, focus on onboarding more developers, create outstanding Web3 gaming experiences, and advance step-by-step.

News from the Finders Program Part 1

Written by yay.oi

• After reaching $21,277.33 from two bidders in the Auction Round, Mandala Chain's Polimec fundraise has progressed to the Community Round, for retail participants.
• Decentralized social apps chain Frequency has won Polkadot Parachain Auction 76 with a self-funded bid of 1000 DOT.
• With a latency tweak, Parity Developer Bastian Köcher has been observed building parablocks in less than 500ms, meaning 12 parachain blocks could be combined into one Proof of Validity (PoV).
• Telenova, the self-custodial, user-friendly, Polkadot wallet for Telegram, is now available in the Telegram Apps Centre.
• Cross-chain transfers of DOT and KSM to the Polkadot and Kusama People Chains are now available on Nova Wallet.
• Mythos Chain is live on Polkadot, kicking things off with 3.3M transactions on their first day.
• Moondance Labs, the team behind Tanssi, has received a Web3 Foundation Decentralized Futures grant to continue their work to grow the Polkadot ecosystem and generate treasury revenue through gas fees.
• Interplanetary Talent Services (IPTS) has received a Web3 Foundation Decentralized Futures grant to subsidize recruitment costs, and assist with human resource planning to ensure that the best talent is available to projects in the Polkadot ecosystem.
• Peaq welcomes decentralized mobile network coverage analytics DePIN Roam, who will utilize Peaq infrastructure to manage the incentivization of their anonymized mobile signal data collection.
• The Polkadot Events Bounty announces the first round of approved events since their relaunch, with funding going towards five events across Asia, Latin America, and the United Kingdom.
• For some well-earned recuperation time, Agyle has stepped down from the leadership of Talisman, and passed the reins to Head of Engineering Warp Lizard, and Head of Product Nobyte.
• On July 30th , for the Encode x Polkadot Summer 2024 Educate Series, Aurora Makovac (Lastic) presented a workshop on what the Lastic marketplace brings to the Agile Coretime Model.
• The DePIN Association hosted an AMA with its founding members, including Polkadot’s Peaq and Acurast on July 30th.
• On July 30th, Polimec hosted Polkadot Summer JAM, an afternoon of presentations and panels from leading figures in the industry featuring Filippo Franchini (Web3 Foundation), Sascha Wullschleger (BIL), Dominic Weibel (Bitcoin Suisse), Tim Weingärtner (DIDAS), Ingo Rübe (KILT), and Luca von Wyttenbach (Polimec).
• Alan Vey (Aventus) and Michael Bennalack (Mandala) discussed usecases, challenges, and future plans for their projects on July 30th.
• On July 31st, Mrisho(Polytope), Elios Hezron (OneRamp), Jibril (Dwellir), and Mohammed (Invarch/Oak/Phala) from the Polkadot African community shared their thoughts about the Ambassador Program 2.0 program.
• Peaq gave a warm welcome to the founders of decentralized gaming compute DePIN YOM on July 31st.
• Polkadot hosted Tommi (OpenGov.Watch), Kian (Polkadot Fellow), Mark (Scytale), Jonas (W3 Foundation), and Filippo (W3 Foundation) to investigate the proposals and weigh the pros and cons of adjusting DOT inflation on July 31st.
• On August 2nd, Web3 Foundation talked Business Development with Decentralized Futures Grants recipients, PoKe and PolkaPort East.

News from the Finders Program Part 2

Written by Dodow

• Carbify, a gamified carbon neutrality project, partners with Moonbeam. Its NFTree batch 14 will be available on Moonbeam via the Rariable marketplace and is set to serve as a multichain hub. Each NFTree is a representation of a real word tree from the Amazon rainforest and will provide up to 20 years of rewards in the form of tokenized carbon credits.
• Take part in LAOS Network’s latest Zealy campaign for a share of the 45K LAOS and $700 USD prize pool.
• Similar to Pump.fun, Only.fun opens the shitcoin casino on Polkadot, allowing users to launch memecoins with ease.
• Check out the new H-Emitters drop by hal on KodaDot.
• Gavun Wud is stressin on the Tanssi incentivized testnet–join in now!
• Tanssi welcomes BEEFY and Gavun Wud to their testnet. Furthermore, both Polkadot memecoins are set to provide utility through launching their own appchain via Tanssi.
• Flappy Wud 1.2 has launched with a new dynamic airdrop feature, where players can earn points for WUD.
• The Damned Pirates Society refutes a treasury funded risk report. In addition to not fairly recognizing an OG NFT gaming project and its published contracts, there seems to be an overuse of AI.
• Apillon's NCTR token lists on Stellaswap. Followed-up with a listing on Hydration.
• Stellaswap removes the xc prefix from Polkadot native assets, making it easier for users to distinguish between bridged assets.
• Bifrost’s Astar liquid staking token, vASTR, becomes the second LST after vDOT to enter Hydration’s Omnipool.
• Fearless wallet has added support for assets on Pendulum and Amplitude.
• Chainalysis is back with a OpenGov discussion on their latest improved treasury proposal. They are requesting 6.5M USDC in installments over 3 years to initially cover the Polkadot Relay Chain, Asset Hub, Moonbeam, Astar,and Hydration.
• The Technical Fellowship was set to vote on implementing a staking unbonding queue. A replacement referendum will be introduced after changes are made to RFC 97 by its authors, Jonas Gehrlein and Alistair Stewart from the Web3 Foundation.
• Hydration have opened up a governance discussion on their proposed approach to utilize its treasury Protocol Owned Liquidity (POL). At the time of posting, the Hydration POL was valued at $24.5M. The proposal includes using 17.47 WBTC in the money market as possible collateral for their Hollar stablecoin, repurposing equally DOT from the Omnipool to the money market and staking, converting 309.16 MRL ETH to Snowfbridge’s ETH for use in the Omnipool, implementing yield DCA strategies, and more.
• Leemo has publicly called out Michiko and has since tabled an OpenGov proposal to remove her as Head Ambassador. Concerns include her lack of activity and participation since being elected, minimal evidence of contribution to the ecosystem, and the fact that her accounts seem to be funded through Kraken, which is banned in Japan.
• After the first round of applications, Spazcoin, Crane, Xupanweb, and Legend Nodes have been accepted into the Bifrost Fellowship.
• Calling Darwinia and Crab collators: please upgrade your nodes so that Asynchronous Backing can be enabled.
• In Tommi we trust, as Alice und Bob is elected again as Head Ambassador, following an issue with the preimage the first time.
• Decent partners proposes a Root Track referendum to set the balance of the Polkadot Treasury to zero.

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.

• Many thanks to the Ajuna team for assisting us with answering some questions for the featured report.
• Awesome cover art created by Dodow.