Secure DOT Value! (June 16th to June 22nd)

What is up, my friends!

Hope you are enjoying the summer vibe along with some juicy yields from the injection of liquidity that we reported about last week. Taking a broader view, it seems we are in a period where sentiment appears negative, as the market is down and many are experiencing a decrease in the value of their wallets.

There was also the breaking news of security vulnerabilities reported by Certik, who claim to be wearing their white hats before eventually informing the longstanding crypto exchange Kraken about the situation. As things stand, things appear to be resolved, but it certainly makes you reflect on the robustness of the systems in place within the industry.

When it comes to Polkadot, the ethos is centered around high-quality, secure, and decentralized blockspace, and with it, a powerful system that offers shared security for those building within it. “Secured by Polkadot” can be considered a mark of adhering to valuing quality, and this week we finally got to see it stamped on Snowbridge.

The launch of Snowbridge has been highly anticipated, furthermore, it aligns with the Polkadot ethos by providing a secure, trustless bridge between Polkadot and Ethereum. Our top story this week covers Snowbridge and its value, as well as the value of other hot news items within the ecosystem.

This week has also gathered quite a bit of attention about the Head Ambassador program, given the queue of proposals from candidates explaining the value they bring to secure votes. We will take a closer look at the candidates in this week’s edition, providing details that may help voters make an informed decision.

If you’re a creator, you might want to take a closer look at the various bounties that have been recently announced. This past week, both of the ecosystem projects who have established a WagMedia treasury have issued new bounties.

By the time you read this, you might be late for the Polimec bounty on their evaluation process, which ends on June 24th and offers rewards of up to 400 PLMC tokens. However, there’s still time for the LAOS bounty, which offers rewards of up to 5K LAOS tokens to cover their upcoming token presale.

Without further delay, let’s move on to the stories and news updates, which hopefully you will find valuable.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - Snowcasing Value

Written by yay.oi

What’s frostin’ DOTsicles! Just as Polkadot DeFi summer starts heating up, along comes an icy reminder of crypto winters past. If you don’t like the look of all of those red candles, there’s still plenty of incentivized stablepools in the Polkadot ecosystem like Hydration (~44% APR), Stellaswap (~42% APR ), or Beamex BLP staking (~118% APR).

Even better, it’s now a whole lot easier to bring your funds over from Ethereum. That’s right fam, this week Snowbridge, the trustless bridge to Ethereum launched on Polkadot. It’s the wintery treat that’s been coming soon™ since 2020.

The idea of trust-free bridging to Ethereum dates all the way back to Polkadot’s White Paper (2016). In 2019, Gavin Wood listed some projects for interoperability between Polkadot and Ethereum. However, it wasn’t until August 2020, shortly after the Polkadot mainnet launch, that Snowfork’s Web3 Foundation funded Snowbridge, a general-purpose trustless bridge to Ethereum, was announced.

Snowfork completed the work for its initial grant, delivering a bridge based on an Ethereum Proof of Work light client and Parity’s original BEEFY proof system, in September 2021. Due to Ethereum’s move to Proof of Stake and subsequent updates to the BEEFY protocol, this version of Snowbridge was never deployed.

Continued work on Snowbridge was initially self-funded, but in 2022, Snowfork was awarded both retroactive and future funding. Final deployment would not be possible until the genesis of Polkadot Bridge Hub (April 2023), BEEFY (April 2024), and final audits (May 2024).

Currently, Snowbridge allows token transfers of ETH and ERC-20 tokens (WETH, WBTC, SHIB, PEPE, TON, wstETH, tBTC, and MYTH to Mythos chain). The token bridging fee is presently 0.000399 ETH (~$1.40) for transfers from Ethereum to Polkadot, but gas fees will vary.

More exciting features will be released in the coming months, such as cross-chain messaging. This will enable interfacing between Polkadot XCM and Ethereum smart contract calls, opening up a world of opportunity for cross-chain applications.

Around that time, transfers of Polkadot assets to Ethereum will be enabled too. If that sounds too far off don’t worry, it looks like KILT will be providing an interim solution for the ERC-20 wrapping of native tokens.

With all of these new wrapped assets flowing into the Polkadot ecosystem, we’re going to need some more liquidity. Next on the agenda for Snowbridge will be treasury proposals for liquidity bootstrapping and future funding.

Snowbridge has the potential to bring significant value to the Polkadot ecosystem. Not only does it provide a secure and trustless means of capital inflow from the world’s biggest DeFi ecosystem, it is also a new opportunity for Polkadot and Ethereum developers to innovate in ways that are mutually beneficial to both ecosystems.

Meanwhile, decentralized and regulatory compliant funding platform Polimec is helping us realize the value of an array of fresh Polkadot projects. Have you claimed your Web3 Foundation subsidized Deloitte KYC Credential and free PLMC tokens from Polimec yet? If not, what are you waiting for?

Apillon, the first Issuer on the Polimec platform, entered its Funding stage this week. The first phase is the Auction Round, for institutional and professional investors, which is used for price discovery. After that, comes the Community and Remainder rounds where the remaining tokens are sold at the weighted average price of the Auction round.

Two more projects are in their Evaluation phases on Polimec. The Evaluation phase lasts for 28 days, and gives investors the chance to do their due diligence and bond PLMC tokens that can be rewarded or slashed depending on if the project achieves its funding target.

First up, sustainability impact verification platform Impactscope hit its Evaluation target in just 13 days. This was followed by Mandala Chain, which focuses on emerging markets, receiving a massive vote of confidence by hitting their evaluation target in less than two hours.

There will be plenty more value finding on Polimec over the coming months. One project to look out for is Hyperbridge, the trustless bridge to all chains, who have already had their parachain slot secured by a very successful crowdloan totalling 273 468 DOT.

LAOS, whose crowdloan didn’t go quite as planned, are taking a different approach for their token crowdsale. Just like Moonbeam, Acala, and Unique Network before them, they’ll be using Tokensoft to distribute 3% of their token supply for a price of 0.08c (Fully Diluted Value $80,000,000). If you’re interested, make sure you register by July 10th.

Seventeen candidates have already registered their interest in becoming Polkadot Head Ambassadors, bringing a wealth of potential value to the ecosystem beyond their substantial paycheck ($120,000).

Promising candidates specializing in Business Development, Governance and Community, and Information Security have already been approved, offering a diverse skillset in key areas essential for Polkadot’s ongoing development.

Recognised by Gavin Wood as ‘1337 h4x0r’, fellow Polkadot co-founder Robert Habermeier is another valuable member of the ecosystem with critical skillsets. While Gav has been touring the world touting JAM as the cure to over-opinionation in the Polkadot ecosystem, Rob has come up with an intriguing proposal.

He calls it the Plaza, and it would be an evolution of the current Polkadot Asset Hub system chain. The aim would be to integrate Rust and EVM smart contracts, which has already been proposed in Referendum 885, in addition to bridging pallets and staking. Furthermore, until the desired level of scaling is achieved, fees should be near zero.

The Plaza would be a solution to unnecessary fragmentation on Polkadot, improving usability and providing a space for smart contract builders to develop when entire chain development is unwarranted. Rob also sees an opportunity in the Plaza to bring more value into the Polkadot treasury via transaction ordering priority fees.

If you’ve been wishing for a priority express lane to unbond your staked DOT, keep an eye on the proposed enhancements from Web3 Foundation’s Jonas Gehrlein and Alistair Stewart. In their RFC, they propose a solution that could reduce unbonding time to as little as two days. Improvements such as these offer welcome motivation for more users to help secure the network.

It is the foundation of shared security that is one of the strongest components of Polkadot’s true value proposition. The choice of blockspace becomes easier as developers are free to start building knowing that they can rely on the battle-tested security of the Relay Chain. Trustless interoperability through bridges such as Snowbridge and Hyperbridge extend this security to cross-chain possibilities.

Through its careful compliance measures, Polkadot, the world’s biggest DAO, has achieved a level of decentralization that positions it well for long-term sustainability and growth within a regulated environment. Furthermore, its governance model has become a benchmark that others aspire to.

This year sees the release of the trinity of Async Backing, Coretime sales, and Elastic Scaling, which the community has defined as Polkadot 2.0. The advances to scaling and speed that these bring, paired with the interoperability brought by trustless bridging, position Polkadot as a sound technological competitive protocol.

It’s proposals such as the Plaza that recognize the value of what we have right now, and how we could direct resources to maximize its potential. Now that we can bridge ETH and ERC-20 tokens to Asset Hub, imagine the possibilities with EVM smart contracts already integrated. The Plaza could be a perfect introductory space for newly onboarded Ethereum users and developers.

Projects such as the tokenized gold platform TVVIN recognize the current potential of Asset Hub. They cited comprehensive asset management, stability, security, and trustless bridging as some of the main reasons they’re migrating their launch from Cardano to Polkadot.

There's plenty to get excited about for the Polkadot of the future. When paired with the developments of Polkadot 2.0 and trustless bridging, the JAM chain era is earmarked to bring an exponential boost to speed and scalability along with an unprecedented level of computational flexibility.

Proposals such as Plaza, UX Bounty, and other targeted adjustments, recognize that Polkadot is a world class technology, albeit with some minor barriers to entry. It can be considered imperative to foster a strong user and developer base now for JAM to live up to its full potential upon release.

Special Report - Who’s DOT Ambassador?

Written by Sanchez

Ambassador programs in Web3 are often considered promotional strategies that projects employ to boost their PR. Whether incentivized or not, ambassadors are expected to represent and promote the project's brand and interests.

They achieve this by hosting and attending events synonymous with the project, onboarding new users, creating relatable and easy-to-understand content, and helping users navigate the ecosystem.

With the approval of referenda 487, the Polkadot community can now decide to recruit up to 21 head ambassadors, each receiving a monthly salary of $10,000. This move is poised to attract the best in the industry to work with Polkadot. Ambassadors are expected to be knowledgeable about the workings of Polkadot and able to speak fluently about the ecosystem's ideologies and principles.

Compared to the old Polkadot ambassador system, which consisted of 17 regional head ambassadors with off-chain decision making, the new system embraces a more decentralized approach. This includes selecting ambassadors and managing their salary payments and treasuries all on-chain.

There’s also a hierarchy with different tracks that will exist for the various groups of ambassadors. Head ambassadors have the most influence, followed by senior ambassadors, and then ambassadors. Furthermore, as with appointments, the removal of head ambassadors must go through OpenGov, requiring community support through votes.

Appointment is challenging, as each candidate is in the spotlight, required to submit their application on-chain with a substantial 5000 DOT decision deposit. Their proposals are then vetted by the community and voted upon.

If you've been following the drama in OpenGov, you may expect similar controversy in these appointments. So far, there have been reports of applicants lobbying for votes and certain applicants collaborating to vote for each other.

Furthermore, some community members have suggested that members of the Decentralized Voices (DV) program should not apply because of the rigors and expectations of both programs. Alex, a former head ambassador, opined that the new system is a whale game intended to allow a few to control the voices.

Currently, 21 applications have been submitted, consisting of former head ambassadors from the old regime, builders, and community members who have held important positions in the Polkadot ecosystem. At the time of writing, applications can be broken down into three categories: closed, deciding, and submitted. Let’s take a closer look at each group.

The closed category will eventually consist of those who got appointed, and those who didn’t. So far, we have had three appoints: Leemo, David Pethes, and Irina Karagyaur.

Leemo, co-founder of ChaosDAO, council member at Hydration, and a team member at Novawallet and Robonomics, has been elected the first Polkadot head ambassador.His application received 53.7 million DOT in support, with the community recognising his considerable contribution in sharing information around OpenGov and proxies.

The second confirmation goes to Six, also known as David Pethes, who had a stint in the same position under the old regime. As stated in his application, Six's earlier contributions include organizing Polkadot events in Budapest and Amsterdam and helping onboard the Mosaic chain, Mandala chain, G6 Networks, and CCTF DAO. Six aims to bring financial institutions, governments, and enterprise companies into the fold.

Similarly, Irina Karagyaur, who has been active in the Polkadot space since 2020, is another successful applicant. Formerly the Head of Metaverse at Unique Network, Irina has contributed significantly to the ecosystem, including moderating events and representing Polkadot at international gatherings such as the United Nations COP26/27. Recently, she was selected as a Polkadot delegate for Decentralized Voices Cohort II. Irina also served as a sub-curator for the events bounty and is currently a curator for the games and BD bounties.

Moving on to the deciding category, which currently has the bulk of candidates in the mix, there is a varying degree of support. Following is an overview of the situation within this group.

Applicants who have had really strong support from voters include Rishant Kumar (Rish), Tommi Enenkel (Alice und Bob) and Abdulbasit Sadiq (Abdulbee)

Rishant Kumar is currently the growth lead at Kilt Protocol, and his application is currently passing with 100% support. Rish is responsible for building Polkadot Now, a vibrant Polkadot community in India, and organizing Polkadot events there. He has also collaborated with Mario Nawfal, Cointelegraph amongst others to expand the reach of Polkadot.

Closely following Rish is Abdulbasit Sadiq, with 98.2% aye votes in support. Abdulbee was formerly the Polkadot head ambassador for content and has extensively participated in curating bounties, auditing governance proposals, and moderating. He is currently an executive member of the Polkadot Anti-scam team.

Alice und Bob, the co-founder of ChaosDAO and OpenGov Watch who has previously worked with Mangata (now Gasp) on Kusama, comes next with 92.2% aye votes. A Polkadot stalwart, and the curator of the referenda to define Polkadot 2.0, Tommi has lectured at the Polkadot Blockchain Academy, represented at events, and moderated fellowship calls.

While the aforementioned applicants have had strong support from voters, applicants like Michiko Watanabe from Japan currently has 57.6% votes supporting their proposal. Additionally, the coalition of core members of the OpenGuild consisting of Cris Nguyen, Tin Chung, and Patricia Arro, have their application passing with 54.5% of the votes in support.

At the same time, there are a series of applications currently struggling. For instance,the application of Zoe Meckbach, the VP, partner, and council member at Phala Network and the global head ambassador during the old regime, is currently failing with 23.68 million DOT voting nay.

Ezio Rojas, who has curated several bounties and is part of the second cohort for Decentralized Voices on Polkadot, has his application failing with 95.6% nay votes similarly to Lorena's (Blockya) application, which is failing with 91.3% nay votes. Lorena was the head ambassador for Latin America from 2021 and co-founded the Polkadot Hub.

Other applications currently failing include those from Albert (I Love Cripto), the former head ambassador for Spain; Mario Altenburger; William; Angelina Kakiiza; Georgi; and Max Rebol, the co-founder and CEO of Harbour Industrial Capital, a Polkadot-focused VC Fund based in HK.

When it comes to the submitted category, there are also recently submitted applications from Remy, Hope Clary and the Mexican collective, which has also been recently selected in cohort 2 of the Decentralized Voices program.

Potentially, the number of applications for the head ambassador role could increase if the proposal to reduce the decision deposit from 5000 DOT to 500 passes through referenda. The proposal can be deemed essential because the current decision deposit is considered too high, potentially alienating certain community members from applying and leaving few who can afford to apply.

As with any ecosystem, Polkadot requires dedicated ecosystem agents tasked with its maintenance, management, and development. The Polkadot ambassadorial program is one initiative focused on promoting the Polkadot brand and bringing in new users, developers, and institutions.

Another initiative is the Polkadot Technical Fellowship, which consists of experts and developers on the Polkadot and Kusama Networks who consistently seek to improve the ecosystem and encourage new contributors to participate.

You can also make the case that WagMedia plays a valuable role in cultivating content and nurturing content creators within the Polkadot ecosystem. Several prominent names that have either started or honed their skills through this initiative have since become ecosystem agents. For more details, please refer to the OpenGov funding proposal.

WagMedia’s create-to-earn system and wide variety of knowledgeable, well-experienced directors to guide creators have offered a compelling content solution for Polkadot and its parachains.

General News

Written by Dodow

• As reported by parachains.info "Tillery has crabs" wins the latest Polkadot auction slot with a self-funded bid.
• Rob proposes the Plaza, a Polkadot System Chain that evolves the Asset Hub to consolidate a number of features including smart contracts, bridges, and more.
• Restaking to secure and support DePINs comes to Peaq Network, with the integration of Parasail (a restaking layer for DePINs).
• ImpactScope passes its evaluation target on Polimec.
• You can now onramp USDT conveniently to Polkadot Asset Hub through Banxa.
• Get ready for a number of pools coming to the Energy Web X marketplace soon.
• Web3 Foundation's Jonas Gehrlein and Alistair Stewart have submitted an RFC to the Fellowship that could see unbonding of staked DOT reduced to as little as two days.
• Did you manage to snag some PLMC? The Polimec dispenser opened again, and remember, you need to complete KYC in order to claim.
• You can now deposit native USDC and UDST into Polimec to participate in token sales.
• Litentry has completed another round of token burn.
• Subquery has been chosen to provide indexing for cross-chain transactions on Hyperbridge.
• Subwallet has integrated the Polkadot Kusama bridge.
• Professional and institutional participants are invited to drive price discovery for Apillon's NCTR token sale in the auction round.
• Snowbridge, the trustless bridge between Polkadot and Ethereum, is now live. It’s an initial release, with more upgrades, bug fixes, wallet support, and asset support to come.
• Energy Web X has launched an Energy Web Academy online training program.
• Acurast announces a partnership with CoralApp, a maker of Web3 optimized smartphones, ensuring that their phones come pre-installed with Acurast's software.
• Phyken Network opens up its incentivized testnet.
• NovaWallet provides support for assets on Polimec.
• In less than 2hours, Mandala's evaluation on Polimec reached its target.

NFT & DEFI News

Written by Dodow

• Check out the gameplay in the Skylab teaser video. To celebrate this and the recent migration to Astar, they are doing a giveaway.
• LAOS Network has partnered with Tokensoft to do a public token sale. Register before July 10th, as the sale period starts on July 11th and ends on July 15th.
• You can purchase an NFT from Zolfaqqari's Xest collection on KodaDot from June 20th.
• Eco Empires is one of the new games joining Moonbeam's Lunar Gaming Festival, get an early start on 24th June.
• Ajuna Network has enabled Asynchronous Backing for both Ajuna and Bajun, game on!
• Ajuna's The Last Battle of Bajun kicks off. This epic campaign, ending on September 21st, allows users to participate to gain more assets on Bajun, which will eventually convert to Ajun.
• Polkadex announced their existing CEO and co-founder Gautham J will be stepping down. Executive director and co-founder Vivek Prasannan will be supporting the transition to a DAO.
• As part of Moonbeam's Season 3 ecosystem grants, Beamex will be incentivizing 5K GLMR per day.
• Get ready for more LSTs on Acala. Any idea on who's first?
• Bifrost provides updates on the crowdloan distributions for Energy Web X and LAOS, contributed through SALP.
• You can now cross-chain transfer Darwina’s RING token to trade on Hydration’s Omnipool.

Governance & Events News

Written by Dodow

• Subject to TGE, Ajuna’s AJUN token is expected to be tradable on Hydration once the channel opening is approved.
• Polkassembly has introduced filters, which can impose restrictions on who can comment on OpenGov proposals. Hopefully we get less trolls, and more productive comments.
• Leemo has been confirmed as the first Polkadot Head Ambassador, with 99% approval on OpenGov.
• Polkassembly making it easier for Head Ambassador applications.
• Binancians hosted an AMA, which featured Christine Lee, Ecosystem Development Lead at Tanssi, on June 20th.
• Moonbeam discusses their recent Innovation Fund for Gaming and RWAs on June 19th.
• Centrifuge co-founder Lucas Vogelsang was present at an in-person meetup, in Zurich on June 24th to discuss institutional adoption of RWA.
• On June 21st, Marvin Tong hosted the first Phala AI AMA featuring AI clones of famous crypto figures.
• Set your reminder for Litentry’s community call on June 26th.
• Kingdom Ventures hosts ImpactScope at a Royal Roundtable on June 24th.

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.