Thanks Wagging! - Newsletter Edition 79

In this week’s edition:

Editorial: Thanksgiving vibes, hot news & awards, applause for our creators, newsletter festive break.
Top Story - Newsgiving Awards Ceremony!: This week’s hot news plus an award ceremony.
Featured Update - Applause for Our Creators!: The recent standout content produced by WagMedia creators.
Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between November 19th and November 25th.
Extras: Credits and anything else.

Editorial

What is up, my friends!

It’s the time of year for giving thanks and in cryptoland, 2024, there’s probably a tale or two to be told around the dinner table. For many, there is the opportunity to do some shopping to grab a bargain before the Christmas festivities kick in.

Kicking into the Polkadot ecosystem is the breaking news of an official FIFA game coming to Mythical Games. Perhaps you might have needed to front-run Black Friday and Cyber Monday because the ecosystem is enjoying a nice little breakout.

Speaking of taking a break, this week’s newsletter will be the last before we pause until the new year. Don’t worry, those still looking for news can rest assured that we’ll keep the news roundups flowing, as long as our ecosystem builders haven’t shut down for the rest of the year. We might also have a story or two in the works during the break.

This brings us on to the top story of the week, which is spamming with goodness and rivaled with excitement. Given that we’d be pausing our newsletter for the rest of the year, we thought we’d top off the top story with a bit of a Newsgiving Awards Ceremony to reflect on the year.

Many of those mentioned at the awards ceremony would have been covered by the content created by WagMedia creators throughout the year. In this week’s featured story, we will be taking a look at which creators have stepped up since our recent return.

As many of us embark on the festive activities and winter break, take the opportunity to catch up on some of our stories which you can find on X and on Grillapp. If you’re feeling inspired to find news or create content, head on over to our Discord.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - Newsgiving Awards Ceremony!

Written by yay.oi

What’s up eco-bulls, feeling festive? As the farmers bring in their bountiful autumn harvests, it’s time to set the table for a cozy Thanksgiving meal. This week had all of the Thanksgiving bases covered, with sports, special moments with family, ample hydration, and a delicious serving of Spam.

That’s not all, as our way of saying thank you to the Polkadot community, we’re presenting the first annual WagMedia Polkadot awards. But first, let’s get stuck into this week’s Thanksgiving treats.

While Thanksgiving tradition calls for watching NFL, Polkadot’s closest tie is with the Kansas City Chiefs, and they’re not playing. In the spirit of cross-chain communication, let’s communicate across borders and give thanks to the world’s game.

This week, Mythical, in collaboration with FIFA, announced the launch of FIFA Rivals, targeting a summer 2025 release. To put some perspective on the potential magnitude of this deal, FIFA Mobile, the last FIFA-licensed mobile game, accumulated in the region of 500M players. Mythical CEO John Linden is expecting at least 100M players.

While Mythical is racking up player numbers, an interview with Gavin Wood, Polkadot founder and chief architect, is accumulating some massive viewer numbers. Clocking in at 3 hours, the interview with Kevin Follonier covers an array of topics, including Gav’s experiences developing Ethereum, Polkadot, and JAM, but also offers a rare glimpse into his life philosophy, upbringing, and personal life.

Meanwhile, in his public life, Gav’s tweets have been gaining a bit of traction. That said, was it this reply that ended up putting a spammer in the works? The treasury-funded Polkadot Spammening, a stress test to showcase the network’s full potential, was due to commence on November 25th at 14:00 UTC. After a relatively incident-free test-run on Kusama, the community was getting pumped.

With less than 24 hours before deployment, the stress test was postponed without explanation. At this point we can only speculate on why. Maybe they liked Gav’s idea and wanted to blow the competition away by boosting the core count, or maybe they were kindly asked not to perform a stress test on the same day that Hydration deploys a major new feature.

Say hello to the Hydration money market! Promising to usher in the DeFi Renaissance, it opens up new opportunities for credit lines against unconventional assets, and investment leveraging.

However, by taking control of block ordering, Hydration has closed the opportunity for exploitative MEV bot strategies that front-run or sandwich attack forced liquidations. It’s one of the advantages of having your own custom chain, secured by Polkadot.

So, that’s a wrap for this week’s Polkadot powered epic developments. Now, let’s take a moment to thank and commend our top achievers for the year.

Before we start, allow us to say that while we strive to acknowledge all of your efforts, we sincerely apologize to any deserving projects, builders, or ecosystem agents that we may have overlooked.

Go check out the WagMedia Polkadot awards.

Featured Update - Applause for Our Creators!

Written by Dodow

The Wag mantra is about helping tell Polkadot’s story, one creator at a time. In line with this vision, WagMedia resumed operations in October after securing treasury funding for another 12 months. Since our return, the initial approach has focused on encouraging creators to tap into their own creative ideas while prioritizing substance, authenticity, and smart engagement.

While this means the bounty hub, which has issued over 50 bounties, will be paused for a period, it also brings us back to our roots of free content creation. That said, there is no guarantee of rewards for content submissions. Creators who have been paying attention to the Polkadot and broader Web3 landscape will likely understand the trending subjects, which present the best opportunities for recognition and rewards.

Still struggling with what to create? Have a look at the content ideas dump channel on our Discord. Of course, there’s always the opportunity to strengthen your research and writing foundations through our Finders Program, where you might get the chance to write stories like the one you’re currently reading. Or, if you’re new, we also have some Wagtastic Tips and Tricks for you.

As we head into the festive period of breaks and celebration, it’s a good opportunity to reflect on which creators and their contributions have stood out. Please note that the rewards mentioned are in tokens, so it’s important to recognise when they were rewarded, due to market fluctuations.

Starting off with the existing top-tier WagMedia creators, we have Emil and gbaci. For all you aspiring creators, it’s worth following them on X and analyzing the content that they put out.

Emil has picked up where he left off, creating compelling content that is easy for audiences to follow and attracts smart engagement. He received 55 DOT for his comparison of JAM and ETH’s roadmap, and 54.5 DOT for his reflection on how Polkadot has evolved since 2021.

Taking on complex topics and getting eyes on them is what you’d typically expect from gbaci, and he did not disappoint. He summarised Shawn Tabrizi’s JAM talk from Decoded, Rob Habermeier’s NOMT talk at Sub0, and Gav’s JAM talk at Sub0. The rewards received were 34.5 DOT, 13.5 DOT, and 36 DOT respectively. Also, a few pointers were provided, so don’t get discouraged if you ever receive any feedback–our top-tier creators get them too.

One thing to note with the submissions from our top-tier creators is that they allow enough time between posts for the audience to digest the information. Meanwhile, both Emil and gbaci were given additional tasks. Emil has been providing feedback on other creator’s content and has also directed the Ajuna Treasury Partner Bounties. You may have also noticed some content from the Wag X account that was written by gbaci.

Those who have been involved in WagMedia since 2022, would likely have come across the content created by Jimmy Tudeski and yamne. Not only have they produced content in English, but both have also been involved in non-English Polkadot communities and content in other languages.

Jimmy is a recognized figure on the events scene, as well as runs nodes and provides leadership to the Polkadot Polish community. You can really sense his passion for the Polkadot ecosystem in his recent content submissions. He was awarded 20 DOT for his take on Polkadot’s multicore computing architecture, and 36 DOT for his comparison of Polkadot and Ethereum’s latest roadmap.

You may have heard of Polkadot Arena, especially if you are involved with the Italian Polkadot community. Led by yamne with support from ScrawnyPetauro, it’s currently in a rebuilding phase. The approach has been to grow its reach with content in English and Italian. Under the Polkadot Arena brand, yamne created an introduction thread about Mandala and interviewed the Acurast founder, while ScrawnyPetauro produced an X article about Kylix Finance. They were rewarded 14 DOT, 17.5 DOT, and 23.5 DOT, respectively.

If you enjoy content that is based on data, you may have seen some of the content published on the Wag X account, produced by CMOSH via our Reporter Program. CMOSH has harnessed his skills with great results. He received 60 DOT for his impressive infographic that compares data throughput in Web3, and 23 DOT for a visual representation of Polkadot’s Nakamoto Coefficient against other major networks.

In 2024, we have seen a few newer personalities step up their creativity. Notably, TuringMachine joined WagMedia during our reboot in Q1 and has since become part of the Wag Team. Additionally, two other individuals, The White Rabbit and Pieky, have redirected some of their energy from OpenGov to focus on content creation.

With his strong image work and unique storytelling, The White Rabbit has emerged as a recognised figure with a growing presence in the ecosystem. A recent submission covering the imminent launch of Hyperbridge earned him 13 DOT. His real-time coverage of Shawn Tabrizi’s and Gav’s presentation at Sub0 was both appreciated and rewarded with 18 and 20 DOT, respectively.

Meanwhile, Pieky finally came around to embracing WagMedia, and his passion for Polkadot shines through in his content, which carries an authentic voice. He was awarded 35 DOT for his first submission covering Polkadot Inflation, and we took a lenient approach to his use of a cashtag due to the strength of its authenticity. Clearly, he understands that price talk is prohibited and smartly earned 21.3 DOT for a price discussion that isn't a price discussion.

Both The White Rabbit and Pieky have demonstrated a proficient understanding of creating content. We hope that the feedback provided through WagMedia will help them scale to greater heights. For instance, Pieky has been busy experimenting, earning between 7 to 13 DOT for the following: the long-term view of Polkadot, how Polkadot enables L1 truths, Polkadot is more than just a token, a perspective on Bitcoin and Polkadot, and DarkGov.

The value of authentic and smart storytelling extends beyond English, and in our non-Anglo Program, Le KOLkadot and Polkadot Arena have stood out in recent weeks. Le KOLkadot, who produces content in French received 10 DOT for his submission on Mythos. Meanwhile, yamne, under the Polkadot Arena brand, earned 22 DOT for his impressive piece on Shawn Tabrizi’s talk about Multicore Resilience in Italian.

Moving on from free content creation to more focused content, WagMedia’s Treasury Partnerships enable our ecosystem projects to tap into the creator pool to create awareness.

As mentioned earlier, Emil was tasked with directing the Ajuna Treasury Bounties. The third bounty had been still ongoing since we fully resumed our operations. The standout submissions were from Gigs, celestialbeing, and smdawudeen. Perhaps more valuable than the 3K, 3.3K, and 2.2K AJUN that were rewarded was the feedback from Emil.

To help boost the awareness of its Liquid Waves Campaign, Bifrost once again opened a Treasury Partnership with WagMedia. So far, Le KOLkadot has impressed on two occasions with content in French, while Gigs also fared well. Their pieces received 100, 175, and 75 BNC, respectively. Additionally, you may have noticed that our newsletter has recently featured Bifrost on two occasions to help inspire our creators.

WagMedia can be considered one of the most uniquely community-focused initiatives in all of Web3. While we are aware that other ecosystems also fund content, the mission aligns with the World’s Largest DAO. It's about empowering the community to help tell Polkadot’s story, one creator at a time, in an open and transparent manner.

Hopefully, the selection of creators and the content covered gives you a feel for what WagMedia is about. Feeling inspired–join us!

Wag Roundup