Summit Happening? - Newsletter Edition 90

In this week’s edition:

Editorial: Summit vibes, re: launches, and reporting February’s standout content.
Top Story - RE Launch!: covering a week of re-launches as well as new launches.
Featured Report - FEBing Content!: recapping the content that has impressed since the last report in January.
Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between March 4th and March 12th.
Extras: Credits and anything else.

Editorial

What is up, my friends!

Amidst the backdrop of trade wars and government efficiency, the White House Crypto Summit was billed as a historic event with the tagline “Crypto🤝Make America Great Again”. The summit itself was front-run by an executive order for the much-anticipated Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

Details of the executive order were clearly communicated by Crypto Czar David Sacks. The key takeaway is it establishes a U.S. digital assets stockpile from seized assets, so doesn’t include any purchasing. Looking back at August’s BTC conference, Trump did, in a way, indicate a stockpile.

With the lacklustre news, the summit did receive mixed reactions and was mainly disappointing, much like how the markets reacted. Perhaps one of the bigger reactions to the event was the unveiling of the gigantic FIFA trophy, which sparked rumours of a token launch.

Meanwhile, the Polkadot ecosystem already has confirmation of something FIFA-related that could rival this unveiling. Additionally, we have some launches and relaunches to look forward to, the details of which we will cover in this week’s top story.

Switching to details about the WagMedia creator economy, our featured report will highlight the standout content from February. Several creators have upped their game and are now FEBing content with their efforts.

If you think you have what it takes to make it into our next report, then join us. Currently, there’s an opportunity where you could potentially maximize your skills with a frosty bounty, plus yapping incentives.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - RE Launches!

Written by yay.oi

What’s sailin’, captain? With shipping season in full swing, container loads of features are flooding through the Polkadot ports. While tides may be turning elsewhere, Polimec is charting a new course to fund the next wave of ecosystem projects.

Fundraises on Polimec have been on hiatus since the Mandala raise, which wrapped up in August 2024. Mandala’s was the third Polimec fundraise, and the second to pass the minimum funding threshold, securing 35% of its target.

Following feedback from fundraising participants, Polimec identified some key areas for improvement. With a few adjustments, it is expected that participation rates and funding outcomes could improve.

This led to a successful on-chain governance proposal, aptly named Polimec Evolution. It streamlined the raising process, cutting the time down from 49 to 21 days, and simplified the funding target system by introducing a universal minimum threshold of 33% for fundraising and incentives.

Rather than get cracking on the next fundraise, Polimec devs continued the evolutionary spirit by shipping a series of new features and enhancements over the following months. This week saw the launch of the Polimec mobile app and a referral campaign.

While we have plenty more to look forward to in the near future, perhaps the most exciting development of this week is the relaunch of fundraising. To kick things off, the seven-day Evaluation Round for Xcavate began on March 13th. The Funding Round will follow as long as evaluators bond the equivalent of 10% of the funding target in PLMC tokens.

Founded by PBA alumnus Richard Houldsworth, Xcavate will soon be launching its platform for fractionalized and tokenized real estate investment. Investors will be able to purchase fractions of a property as small as 1%, receive proportional rental yields, and have a say in property management decisions through on-chain governance.

UK property sales are anticipated to commence in April, secured by full FCA approval expected by August. Global expansion is also on the horizon, with property sales in a second region earmarked for November.

As all the pieces fall into place for Xcavate, things aren’t quite there yet for the liquidity situation of KSM on Polkadot. That said, Lolmcschizz has been doing his utmost to ensure things are heading in the right direction.

The Polkadot-Kusama bridge is operational, and KSM has launched on the Hydration Omnipool, but a dose of DOT Incentives could really unleash some deeper liquidity. Before that can happen though, there’s a bit more housekeeping to attend to.

While Kusama Referendum 490 has allowed KSM liquidity to start trickling into the Omnipool, it is still significantly lacking in the Polkadot and Kusama Asset Hub pools. Unfortunately, these pools are used for automatic swaps to cover bridging fee shortfalls, and some people are getting rekt by slippage.

Yet again, Lolmcschizz and Leemo have come to the rescue with a pair of governance proposals on Polkadot and Kusama. If passed, they’ll provide a base level of liquidity to these pools, aiming to protect future bridgers from unexpectedly high fees.

In the meantime, there’s still plenty of action going on in the Omnipool. Incentives are now live for tBTC, with APRs as high as 28%. In new token news, HRMP channels between Hydration and Energy Web are now open, and the first EWT token has already made the journey over.

Moving on to a multi-chain vision of a much grander scale, Bifrost deployed Runtime 0.17.0 this week. With it comes multi-chain vToken minting over Hyperbridge using the SLPx module, Async Backing, and a transition to OpenGov.

In addition, Bifrost launched Season 2 of its DOT Unbonding Subsidy Program. During the campaign, anyone who unstakes DOT and mints vDOT will be compensated for lost yields at a rate of 12% during the 28-day unbonding period.

While minting of vDOT continues to surge, the process just got a whole lot easier thanks to a new one-click liquid staking feature on SubWallet. Hot on its heels, vBNC broke through the 10M mint milestone this week, prompting the Bifrost WAVE BNC Explorers campaign to raise its minting target by 800K.

Given the volume of new features being shipped by ecosystem projects this week, it’s only natural that one or two might miss the mark in terms of user-experience. Never fear, the Polkadot UX Bounty has it covered with the launch of the UX Audit Grants Program.

The UX Bounty will match eligible projects with UX agencies and experts, covering 100% of user-experience auditing expenses up to $10K. Usability issues and friction points will be identified, ensuring that DApps can deliver a smooth and intuitive experience for users.

Meanwhile, the choppiness of the broader market hasn’t exactly provided the smoothest seas for shipping this week, but in the hands of seasoned sailors, rough waters are par for the course. As an ursine undercurrent begins pulling on positive sentiment, terms like “bear-trap” or even “bear-market” are creeping into crypto conversations.

As the wise say, bear markets are a time to build. But at some point, Web3 will surely need to decouple from all the hype and speculative cycles. Build when a token is up, build when a token is down, and ship when the product is ready, not when the market dictates.

The ship may have sailed for some, but let's make sure it's always shipping season on Polkadot.

Featured Report - FEBing Content!

Written by Dodow

Since the last update in our Jamuary Content report to the end of February, WagMedia’s creator economy posted ~77 pieces of content. From the submissions, ~70 pieces of content were awarded, with a whopping total of 1007.5 DOT distributed across them.

To be more specific, rewarded content submitted on our Discord from January 24th to February 28th averaged ~15 DOT per piece. There also appears to be a core group of eleven creators FEBing content, as each of them met or exceeded this average during the period. So, let’s get into who they are and what stood out.

Backing up his yapping with plenty of content, Emil has broken the WagMedia awards record once more, marking another successive month of the achievement. He received a massive 73 DOT for his epic thread covering the hot Polkadot narratives on the horizon. We recommend aspiring creators (or yappers) review it, as narratives are a fantastic starting point for inspiration.

As expected, Emil has also been consistent with the quality of his content. He covers the 21 shares DOT ETF filing, OriginTrail use cases, the forthcoming Polkadot Play, updates on JAM, highlights more narratives, and analyzes Ethereum through the JAM Gray Paper. His rewards were 20, 38, 24, 22, 20, and 38 DOT respectively.

Our next top performer during the period was Pieky, who received 60 DOT for his piece that teases Polkadot’s Proof of Personhood concept. The creativity, inspired by the iconic Terminator movie, received recognition from many, including Gav.

Pieky also produced numerous awesome pieces of content, with respective rewards of 27, 25, 28, 40 and 15 DOT. The standout pieces included: Polkadot’s association with the TikTok bid, smart institutional money on DOT, reflecting on the innovative mindset, the breaking news of both DOT ETF filings, and a recap of Messari’s Q4 report.

Also starting to gain recognition from Gav is Lily, whose growth has progressed well through WagMedia. In particular, she earned a solid 40 DOT for an overview of gaming in the Polkadot ecosystem, followed by 17 DOT for her take on the DOT ETF filing.

Maintaining high standards requires dedication, and during this period Ravi has successfully continued his strong performance. He received a decent 25 DOT for his coverage of Polkadot’s stablecoin adoption and 15.8 for key network insights from January. Furthermore, Ravi provided a recap of the JAM tour leg in New Delhi and was rewarded with 16 DOT.

Much-anticipated high standards are expected as gbaci returns from his recent hiatus. He kicked things off with his bull thesis for Polkadot and followed it up with his take on the compelling catalyst with smart contracts on Polkadot, receiving 25 and 17 DOT, respectively.

Meanwhile, CMOSH has been consistent in delivering attractive angles that highlight his impressive infographics. For instance, his piece exposing Polkadot’s decentralization claim provides a strong hook and earned him 26 DOT. A timely quoted repost comparing throughput was also great for raising awareness and was awarded 25 DOT.

Memes can be very powerful for raising awareness, and The White Rabbit has certainly grabbed the carrots on this. How about some Polkadot DOHnuts or news-breaking plans to scale Ethereum?

Grabbing a spot alongside this dominant group of Wag creators are celestialbeing, Ester, and YMN. An impressive 42 DOT was awarded for providing insights from Gav’s recent Forbes interview, 21 DOT for expectations for Polkadot in 2025, and 20 DOT for raising the awareness of Messi wearing the new Pink jersey.

Finally, newcomer Fardeen also managed to make the grade and received an awesome 24 DOT for his video interview with ParaSpell on the equally awesome Awesome DOT podcast.

On that awesome note, the content from our creators in this report has amassed an astonishing 781.8 DOT in total. Perhaps you might want to give it a try!

Wag Roundup (March 4th to March 12th)

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