Trustless Love - Newsletter Edition 86

In this week’s edition:

1. Editorial: Love vibes, sharing this week’s ecosystem love stories, and reading DOT love letters.

2. Top Story - DOT is Love: plenty of love stories to uncover this past week.

3. Featured Report - DOT Love Letter: we take a closer look at Messari’s Polkadot Q4 Report.

4. Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between February 6th and February 10th.

5. Extras: Credits and anything else.

Editorial

What is up, my friends!

Love is in the air and on the field as the Commander of the Free World makes history as the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl. Some will be celebrating, while others will be heartbroken with the result. Rather than make a swift exit, you can enter the mythos and replay the moment your way.

In terms of replaying things, the announcement of yet more tariffs has caused angst in the markets. That said, while retail sentiment leans towards heartache, the institutional relationship with Crypto remains confident. At the same time, we now have a country replaying the Trumpian adoption approach and turning up the heat with the launch of a memecoin.

Speaking of adoption, sometimes it’s worth DeFing convention by embracing those close to you and potentially making the community great again. Meanwhile, over in the Polkadot ecosystem, we’re on the road to unifying our love for the cloud. In keeping with these emotions, we’ll continue our love mission with the Polkaverse in this week’s Valentine’s-themed top story.

Given that it might be hard to handle emotions when you receive a love letter from the likes of Messari, this week’s featured report will be uncovering our desires with a recap of Messari’s Polkadot Q4 report. Additionally, you might want to check out Vampsy’s Part 2 Analytics report for even more insight.

Looking for more passionate insight? Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and get your weekly dose of hot news and great takes, delivered straight to your inbox.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - DOT is Love

Written by yay.oi

What’s beating, heartbreakers? The Feast of Saint Valentine is upon us and the DOTing Polkadevoted have been yapping their affections louder than ever this week. It’s almost as if they know something we don’t. Whatever that may be, one thing is for sure – love is all aroundus at this special time of year.

Take Austrian Polkadot “power couple” Alice and Bob, for example. This week, those inseparable lovebirds published the latest edition of their passion project The Polkadot Treasury Report 2024. It paints a much rosier picture of the pink protocol compared to their previous work.

While H1 2024 was spent courting the general public with some generous spending, a tightening of the purse-strings, paired with inflation adjustments, has resulted in a healthy treasury balance of $210M. One could assume there’d be some spare change to rekindle the relationship with our old flame Conor Daly.

Alas, it was not to be. Despite winning the affections of four DV delegations, a couple of large DOT holders put that idea to rest in the final days of voting. At least we still have Messi.

If you think that shade of pink that Lionel’s rocking might suit a loved one this Valentine’s Day, Inter Miami CF has got you covered. While stocks last, Polkadot pink training jerseys and quarter-zip training tops are available for purchase on the MLS online store.

For the bigger spenders, perhaps a romantic getaway takes your fancy? How about Paris, the city of love? You’ll be there just in time for NFT Paris 2025, sponsored by Polkadot. More than 15 ecosystem teams will be in attendance, and you’ll be able to catch up with them at Polkadot’s booth while enjoying the works of 48 artists showcased by KodaDot.

Why stop at Paris when Hong Kong is beckoning? You could enjoy a weekend of wining and dining, following it up with some intellectual stimulation on Monday from our very own orator of the heart, Dr. Gavin Wood.

Life isn’t only about JAMmin’ on the Orient Express for Gav lately. He has a passion project of his own, as told in DOT is Summit. Jay Chrawwna cracked a bromantic cold one with Gav on last week’s edition of Space Monkeys to hear all about how Proof of Personhood is progressing.

You may remember the headlines, Gav’s first proposal for proving individuality and gaining Web3 Citizenship was through the Digital Individuality Mechanism DIM 1: Proof of Ink. Many weren’t ready for that level of commitment. With a couple of beers under his belt, he spilled some details on the much more accessible DIM2 and DIM3.

DIM2 will involve a regular rendezvous with the Polkadot Citizenship App, while DIM3 gets a little more intimate. Still, it remains the only mechanism that has lasting resilience against AI. Though, given its potentially gruesome fallibility, we’ll be steering clear of biometrics.

You may ask why we need to prove our personhood in the first place. One potential perk is the increased sybil resistance and efficiency of airdrops. Of course, the Polkadot community is no stranger to efficient airdrop mechanisms.

WUD you believe the community hasn’t got together for a dynamic airdrop session since last Christmas? Looks like we’ll be waiting a little longer, but hey, they say absence makes the heart grow fonder, right Stella?

Four days later than planned, Stellaswap’s new V4 DEX finally dropped, promising lower gas fees, enhanced efficiency, and an array of new modular features. To show its love for the community, Stellaswap has boosted all V4 liquidity pools by 25% for seven days.

Hydration, however, is spreading the love for a whole six months. A total of 197M protocol-owned HDX, accumulated from scheduled DCAs of DAI, H2O and iBTC, is being distributed to HDX stakers for 25 weeks, resulting in APRs in excess of 30%.

Meanwhile, the Kusama community has sent their adorations right back to the Hydration Omnipool in a massive vote of support. Referendum 490, which passed with 100% of votes in favor, will provide 33,333 KSM of liquidity to the Omnipool. Finally, KSM and DOT can be lovingly exchanged without always leading to CEX.

Hydration’s passionate pursuits show no signs of slowing, and next on the agenda is Ethereum. While it has already been decided that MRL wETH should be exchanged for Snowbridge ETH as soon as it's available, Lolmcschizz has upped the stakes with a surprise proposal.

If accepted, it would see ETH and wstETH crossing the Snowbridge threshold together to be united in the Omnipool as a stablepool pair. Additionally, there would be the potential to add yield-bearing ETH to the money markets.

That said, the wstETH/ETH marriage of convenience may be challenged by another yield-bearing suitor. Once ETH can be directly bridged to Bifrost over Snowbridge, it will pave the way for implementing vETH 3.0. This new addition to the beloved suite of vTokens can be directly minted on the Bifrost parachain, though some might prefer we take a more cynical view of the terms in relationships

They say if you love something, set it free, and Bifrost’s vTokens may soon be free to roam much further than before. According to Seun Lanlege of Polytope Labs, vTokens will soon be integrated on the Hyperbridge DApp, which already supports trustless bridging to six chains.

Of course, the love flows both ways, and from more places than one. Moonbeam has been recording impressive inflows lately. In a seven-day period, over $1.5M of liquidity flowed in to SUI-tly nourish our SOLs like an ETH-ernal flame.

Moonriver, meanwhile, is expressing its own burning desire. Referendum 69, famously known as the most romantic number, proposes to burn 100% of transaction fees. Time will tell if this fiery proposal sets hearts ablaze.

So, with things beginning to heat up this Valentine’s evening, let’s not forget that Polkadot ain’t no one-minute-chain (more like 500ms, am I right?). It offers a stable and secure foundation on which to build a long-lasting relationship.

Forget the trust-me bros. Polkadot offers transparency and truth, and whenever you’re feeling hungry there will always be proof-of-steak. Whatever your preference, BEEFY, GRANDPAs, BABEs, or ELVES, Polkadot has it all and more.

This Valentine’s Day, why not break down the barriers of centralized romance and embrace the permissionless affection of Polkadot. There’s plenty of love for everyone to share as we build our decentralized future together, block by block.

Featured Report - DOT Love Letter

Written by Dodow

When the focus is on you, it can sometimes read like a love letter, especially when around Valentine’s. Perhaps Messari recognized this when they packaged their love for Web3’s most resilient ecosystem in their Polkadot Q4 report.

So, how did they make their confession? Did it make our hearts flutter? With a little help from some of our ecosystem’s most passionate storytellers, let’s dive into how Messari’s report resonates. If you’re short on time and just want the key insights, check out Pieky’s timely thread.

Threads are a great way to expand awareness beyond what Messari highlighted. TL;DR: growth of transactions went from 20M to 60M, stellar advancements with trustless bridging, record-breaking TPS performance testing, ~1200 active developers, and a 71% market capitalisation increase.

On to the Ecosystem Analysis section, the main takeaway is the growth of rollups, or is it parachains? Even Messari is a lost soul when it comes to deciding which term to use. Neuroweb and Frequency lead in volume, with Q4 averages of 26M and 9M respectively. There were also notable volume contributions from Phala, Litentry (now Heima), and Mythos.

In terms of active addresses, Messari indicated Moonbeam, Acala, and Mythos led the way with 15%, 3.6%, and 2.7% respectively. However, one of their infographics stated Hydration instead of Mythos? Best we shoot an arrow through that error and focus on the latest infographic produced by the Kusamarian, which shows that 10 of the top 20 rollups are hosted on Polkadot.

The Ecosystem Analysis section also attributed growth to trustless bridges, with Snowbridge boasting 70M TVL. Things have certainly taken shape, as you might fondly remember our top story back in June when Snowbridge launched. CMosh also expressed a soft spot for the launch in his thread.

Meanwhile, Hyperbridge processed over 600k cross-chain messages. For further insight, gbaci teased us with a long post about Hyperbridge in September, while The White Rabbit kept the anticipation alive in October with its imminent launch.

Staying on the messaging theme, Messari played cupid with XCM across rollups, highlighting the growth of DeFi on Polkadot. Looking back, our community might recall how Bannks and Daureen opened our eyes to the DeFi scene in September. And more recently, The White Rabbit captivated us with a stunning visual on the interconnections.

To wrap up the Ecosystem Analysis section, an overview of the developer base revealed a strong peak of 1261 active developers. The enduring affection between Polkadot and devs was explored in Le KOLkadot’s “dOt is dEaD” series and cherished in Emil’s heartfelt Polkadot 2.0 thread.

Next up was the Financial Analysis section, where the report took a cue from one of Crane’s DOT data dumps, going through numbers on Market Cap (71% QoQ) and Transaction fees ($492,141 in Q4). Price talk is usually a delicate affair, something we tend to avoid in WagMedia, but every so often, someone finds a way to make it compelling, as Pieky did.

Messari might also share the same perspective on price talk, rounding out the Financial Analysis section with a heartwarming look at the treasury (ended Q4 at $168M) and supply (touching on lowered inflation). For a deeper analysis into the treasury, Alice Und Bob’s report just dropped. And many of us know Pieky likes to whisper sweet nothings about inflation.

Moving on to the Network Analysis section, the focus shifts to the heart of Polkadot, the Relay Chain. Usage saw active addresses up 45% QoQ, while security and decentralization strengthened through the Decentralized Nodes program. For a thoughtful breakdown, Ravi’s thread is a perfect match, and CMosh’s latest infographic provides some visual charm.

Most of the Polkadot faithful understand the power of OpenGov, and we've expressed its appeal in our stories Wag is OpenGov and DOT Treasury Requests. We also kicked off 2025, devoting a story to OpenGov: A New Year, A Fresh Start! Messari put two and two together concluding the Network Analysis section on a positive note, highlighting a 40% increase in voter turnout and a 150% rise in Referenda submissions by the end of 2024.

The Q4 report then lights up with fireworks, showcasing the Spammening and our achievement of 143,343 transactions per second (TPS). It also sweetly clarified that this was using only 23% of available computing resources, with theoretical throughput capable of exceeding 623,000 TPS​.

Our Growth of the WagMedia Creator Economy story blew loads of kisses to the Spammening. The White Rabbit captured its magic on video, gbaci shared an endearing overview, CMosh illustrated it with an infographic, YMN added thoughtful context, Lily penned a sweet summary, and Pieky beautifully crafted a live chart.

Before the closing, as per usual, Messari shared the Roadmap update, highlighting Polkadot 2.0 and the future of JAM. It’s fair to say WagMedia creators have sung many love songs about it, with Emil’s epic thread standing out as a devoted tribute. For passionate JAM tunes, check out gbaci’s work covering Gav and Shawn’s talks, or Bannks’s thread on Gav’s Sub0 presentation.

Rather than leave you with Messari’s closing summary, our ecosystem’s creators capture it with more TLC. Polkadot in 2024 is gracefully summed up in Ravi’s thread, or if you relish visual storytelling, Lily’s infographic is delightful.

Looking ahead to Q1 2025, Emil pours his mind into detailing the hottest narratives, while Esther paints an elegant high-level roadmap. Pieky shares the excitement of ETF filings, YMN follows the pulse of Inter Miami, and Lily spotlights the anticipated games on Polkadot. Meanwhile, CMosh reveals hidden truths, and Celestialbeing lovingly distills our Chief Architect’s vision for thriving blockchains.

Wag Roundup (February 6th to February 10th)

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

DOT Ecosystem News

Written by yay.oi

• The 2025 Inter Miami CF Polkadot pink training jersey has dropped in the MLS online store and is available for $54.99 while stocks last.

• The Polkadot Treasury Report for 2024 has been published, and things are looking a little less dire than indicated in H1 2024. While spending for the year totalled a sizable 133M USD, the treasury now has a balance sheet of 210M USD, and the theoretical “runway” has been extended from two years to ten years.

• The Messari State of Polkadot Q4 2024 Report highlights a sharp 120% year-on-year increase in transactions, led by Frequency and Neuroweb. Daily active addresses also rose by 44.6% quarter-on-quarter.

• This December, the Polkadot Blockchain Academy is launching an in-person technical course on JAM. Selected technologists and academics from Polkadot, Ethereum, and Web2 will learn directly from the builders of JAM. Rumor has it the destination will be unforgettable.

• The Web3 Foundation has awarded a Decentralized Futures grant to BEEFtainer, a team that is working on some enhancements for the BEEFY protocol used by bridges such as Snowbridge and Hyperbridge.

• After 15 months of service, Fabian Gompf is stepping down from his position as CEO of the Web3 Foundation. Thomas Fecker Boxler will take his place as the interim CEO. Gompf continues his support for the Web3 Foundation mission as a council member and advisor.

• Season 1 of the Peaq Get Real campaign has commenced. Claim your upgradable Peaqonaut NFT and start your real-world interactions with Peaqosystem DePINs now for a chance to share in a $100M incentive pool of tokens, devices, and merch.

• With the addition of 1,045 new DAO members and more than 3.7M PEAQ tokens swapped, Wave 1 of the XMAQUINA DEUS token genesis auctions has sold out.

• Litentry has completed its rebranding and is now known as Heima. The new name reflects a shift in focus away from identity aggregation to chain abstraction.

• The Turtle bridging DApp now supports USDC, USDT, and DOT transfers between Polimec and Asset Hub, as well as one-way transfers of DOT from the Relay Chain to Polimec.

• KILT has enlisted Victus Capital to help kickstart the next phase of its growth led by the newly formed KILT Foundation.

• Nova Wallet v9.3 has launched, adding support for Ledger Flex and Stax, a new Popular category in the DApp browser, and an enhanced asset details UI.

• Nova Spektr’s v1.14.0 update adds Polkadot JS Integration (beta), and support for Polkadot Technical Fellowship voting.

• DOT’s lonely days in the Hyperbridge DApp might be numbered. By the looks of it, it will soon be joined by the whole suite of Bifrost liquid staking vTokens.

• Minting of Astar’s vASTR liquid staking token on Bifrost continues to surge, now surpassing 100M.

• If you prefer your wrapped BTC a little more decentralized, look no further. tBTC is now live on the Hydration Omnipool. Served ice cold, thanks to Snowbridge.

• The Hydration HDX buyback 25-week staking boost campaign has commenced. With 197M HDX distributed over the period, APRs in excess of 30% are expected.

• Stellaswap V4 pools may have been delayed slightly, but when they launch, V4 liquidity providers can look forward to a seven-day 25% rewards boost.

• Have you noticed the new EVM tab on the Bifrost Subscan page? Browsing of Bifrost EVM transactions, contracts, assets, and accounts is now supported.

• Polkalottery brought its LOTY token to Acala on February 10th, adding 1M LOTY and $68K to the DOT-LOTY and USDT-LOTY pools.

• Check your inventory, looters. Evrloot has distributed six companion egg NFTs to the KGen Green January winners, and equipable NFT backgrounds to members of the top three clans in the Season 1 Marks campaign.

• The final stage of the transition of the Bajun Network on Kusama to the Ajuna Network on Polkadot will be the 1:1 swap of BAJUN to AJUN tokens on February 27th. This will happen automatically for self-custody and MEXC holders. However, Gate holders must withdraw their tokens by February 17th.

• Displaced, a limited-release 32-mint generative art collection by White Koala, dropped on KodaDot on February 10th and sold out within four hours.

• TOD-AI is live on the Polkadot Discord. Head on over and enter your prompt to create your very own TOD image.

• Polkadot OpenGov Wish for Change Referendum 1416, initiated by Alice und Bob, proposes to allow the Marketing Bounty to execute formal contracts with its service providers via the Polkadot Community Foundation.

• Polkadot Referendum 1417 proposes to close the Technical Support Bounty due to a lack of activity over the last 10 months.

• Rather than continuing to direct 20% to the treasury, Moonriver Referendum 69 proposes to adjust the proportion of burned transaction fees to 100%.

• Voting has started for Hydration Referendum 22, which will implement runtime release v35.0. This runtime overhauls the Omnipool fee structure to reduce trading fees, increase LP yields, and rebalance referral rewards.

DOT Ecosystem Events

Written by yay.oi

• Kylix co-founders Gianluigi and Pakman hosted Enrico and Mo of Mintlayer on Friday, February 7th. They discussed their recent partnership, which will facilitate native BTC lending and borrowing.
• Edgetributor SUBDAO hosted the second edition of Polkadot India Workshops at IIT Mumbai on February 8th and 9th. The two-day program included blockchain fundamentals, development on Polkadot, and an introduction to JAM.
• On Monday, February 10th, Peaq shared everything you need to know about its $100M Get Real campaign.
• PolkaPort East, in collaboration with 852Web3,is hosting a special Consensus edition of the Polkadot Monthly Meetup on February 11th in Hong Kong. It will be an informal event, with no speeches, for networking and drinks with builders, investors, and enthusiasts.
• EasyA will be hosting a 2-day Hackathon at Consensus Hong Kong on February 19th, sponsored by Polkadot. Participants will receive mentorship from leading ecosystem teams and have the chance to pitch their projects to industry leaders and VCs while competing for cash prizes.

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.