WAG 2025! - Newsletter Edition 80

In this week’s edition:

Editorial: New Years vibes, reflections on 2024, this week’s storyline up, consider a new years resolution and goal.
Top Story - Recap Dotcember: The main insights from the Polkadot ecosystem during December.
Featured Update - Growth of the WagMedia Creator Economy: An update on the WagMedia content and creator scene.
Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between December 24th and December 31st.
Extras: Credits and anything else.

Editorial

What is up, my friends!

Happy New Year! Your weekly dose of wagtasitc stories is back. While we WAG in 2025, which is anticipated to be bullish for Web3, let’s not forget how 2024 has shaped things up with ETFs, US election results, progress in regulation, new narratives, and, of course, plenty of innovation.

Similar themes were reflected in the Polkadot ecosystem, with OpenGov driving significant changes within the world’s largest DAO. Notably, this included the definition and progress of Polkadot 2.0, as well as adjustments in inflation. Additionally, our ecosystem saw a reset on the events scene, a new conceptual framework with Cloud and Hub, the launch of trustless bridging, innovation with JAM, and much more.

Fair to say, our weekly stories and news roundups have managed to capture all of these developments, and we hope to continue providing readers with valuable insights in 2025. On that note, it’s still worthwhile to take the time to read through the 2024 roundup from our Chief Architect.

Given that our newsletter has been on hiatus during December, our top story this week recaps Dotcember, which witnessed a hated rally. We will also provide a featured update on the growth of the WagMedia Creator Economy.

As many of us start the new year with resolutions and a goal or two, how about joining us to report news or create content.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - Recap DOTcember

Written by yay.oi
Welcome back fam! While we may not all celebrate Christmas, it seems that many of you have accumulated a stocking full of loot this December. Despite a brief hiatus from our weekly newsletter, our WagMedia weekly Polkadot ecosystem roundups have kept on rolling in. You can catch up with everything you’ve missed over on our GrillApp. In the meantime, allow me to brief you on some of December’s highlights.
To get the festive season rolling, Bitwise Asset Management filed an SEC application to convert its $1.442B Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW) into an exchange-traded fund. As of December 27th 2024, the fund holds approximately $5.5M DOT making it the eighth largest holding.
Meanwhile, the discovery of an entity named 21SHARES POLKADOT TRUST listed in Delaware, as reported by CryptoSlate, has fuelled speculation about a potential pure DOT ETF in the US. Swiss-based 21Shares already offers BTC and ETH ETFs in the US, and has submitted an application for a Solana ETF.
However, as we reported back in May, the SEC’s approval of BTC and ETH ETFs came about due to the data available from the CME's market surveillance system. DOT is not presently benefitting from that kind of rigorous scrutiny, so our best chance of approval may come from a potential change of SEC leadership in 2025.
Such hurdles have not hindered the flow of venture capital into the Polkadot ecosystem with three projects receiving notable funding in December. Evrloot announced a pre-seed raise of $500k, with key contributors including Moonbeam**,** Arrington Capital**,** andDerek Yoo(Moonsong Labs). Mandala Chain, as reported by Chainwire, received $1M in its pre-seed raise, led by Harbour Industrial Capital.
Silencio secured a significant boost to its seed funding with an additional raise of $2.5M, but the news doesn’t stop there. In December they became the first DePIN to deploy on the Peaq mainnet, surpassing 1M transactions and 40k registered devices.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, news from the Peaqosystem has continued to flow since its mainnet launch in November. Four new DePINs began building on Peaq in December, including one that is expanding from Arbitrum.
Peaq also launched the DePIN Enterprise Adoption Program, which will foster collaboration and investment between DePINs and industry partners. Organizations such as Bertelsmann Investments**,** Bosch**,** Deutsche Telekom MMS**,** Lufthansa Innovation Hub**,** andTUM School of Management have already signed up.
In the meantime, decentralized robotics DePIN XMAQUINA launched the first DAO on Peaq. You’ll soon have your first chance to join the XMAQUINA DAO, and help bootstrap its multi-token treasury, by participating in the DEUS token genesis auctions. Wave one kicks off soon and is exclusively for PEAQ tokens.
Another token that is moments away from launch is Stellaswap’s veSTELLA, which will give users a greater share of protocol revenue and voting power to boost liquidity pools. This comes at a time when Stellaswap has surged past the respectable milestone of $2B in trading volume.
Hydration also saw strong growth, hitting an all-time-high TVL of $65M in the Omnipool, while Bifrost took the prize hitting a whopping $100M TVL. This period of impressive milestones is further solidified by a series of strategic collaborations within the Polkadot DeFi space.
Stellaswap joined forces with Kylix Finance in a partnership that will integrate Stellaswap tokens into the Kylix Finance bridgeless multi-chain lending platform. Additionally, Kylix has teamed up with Hyperbridge to facilitate multi-chain messaging with EVM and WASM-compatible networks.
Bifrost has also designated Hyperbridge as its native bridge for multi-chain interoperability, and is already integrated into the Hyperbridge testnet. Meanwhile, Polkadex announced, in their 2.0 roadmap, that they expect to be fully integrated into Hyperbridge by Q1 2025.
Hyperbridge partnerships have been thriving outside of the DeFi space too. ZkVerify is already experimenting with multichain proof verification on the Hyperbridge testnet, while Mandala announced its plans to use the Hyperbridge ERC6160 multichain standard to extend the reach of its KPG native token.
Speaking of multi-chain native tokens, Neuroweb’s NEURO will soon receive a much-needed liquidity boost on Base and Stellaswap, conveniently coinciding with the launch of Origin Trail’s DKG V8. The scalability and speed boost of V8 have already resulted in the minting of more Knowledge Assets than the entire DKG V6 period.
While Neuroweb may continue topping the Polkadot monthly transaction ranking for the foreseeable future, frequent runner-up Phala could give them a run for their money. Phala has recently gained market attention for its role in the AI Swarms craze centered around Spore.fun.
Every AI agent on Spore.fun is deployed in a Phala Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), secured by Polkadot. The token economy of each agent and its offspring is designed to ensure self-sufficiency, including paying rent for Phala TEE servers. Time will tell if the current hype leads to increased demand on Phala as more are inspired to deploy their own AI Agents.
There was nothing artificial about the intelligent ecosystem agents that swarmed Kusama for round two of the Spammening. The official figures were released just before Christmas, and a peak TPS of 143,343 using only 23/100 cores confirmed that Kusama has achieved the highest recorded throughput on a live production network.
With all eyes back on Kusama for the first time in a while, Shawn Tabrizi seized the perfect moment to unveil a plan to make Kusama chaotic again. He wants Kusama to get back to its cypherpunk roots, embracing anonymity, activism, and a DIY ethos. With the introduction of ZK primitives he believes that Kusama could become the ideal Web3 Cloud for the dark renaissance.
If Shawn’s dark vision has got you inspired to shift your capital over to Kusama, Snowbridge will soon have you covered. Trustless bridging of assets between Ethereum and Kusama will launch in H1 2025.
Of course, all of that darkness isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. In case you’re looking for something a little more retail-friendly, the launch of the Polkadot App is just around the corner in the US. Some of our lucky beta testers have already used Polkadot Pay for two Papa John’s pizzas (of course) and Burger King, but you may want to steer clear of Taco Bell for the time-being.
As announced by Leemo at Sub0 Reset, Polkadot Pay will also be coming to Nova Wallet, albeit slightly later than he projected. One feature that did hit its target though is one-click cross-chain swaps. You can now seamlessly swap more than 180 tokens across the Polkadot ecosystem on Nova Wallet.
Another accessibility advancement that even caught Gavin Wood’s eye is the integration of Harbour’s Magic Ramp with Polkadot. Seamless transfers of Asset Hub USDC and DOT are now possible to any EU bank account, and support for UK accounts is expected in early 2025.
Magic Ramp didn’t just earn itself a retweet from our founder and chief architect, it was also featured in his annual Polkadot roundup, which dropped on Christmas Eve. Albeit quite a long read, be sure to check it out, as it provides some valuable insights into core ecosystem developments throughout the year as well as some tasty alpha for 2025.
As we say farewell to 2024, we at the WagMedia Finders team sincerely hope that you have found our weekly roundups and articles informative and entertaining. While market conditions will always be unpredictable, Polkadot is poised for some major ecosystem developments in 2025, and you can count on us to make sure you never miss a beat.
Happy New Year to all the readers, finders, creators, and directors in the WagMedia community! Let’s keep on growing together in 2025.

Featured Update - Growth of the WagMedia Creator Economy

Written by Dodow
Sound storytelling, paired with smart engagement, connects with intelligent audiences, offering insights that educate, inspire, and highlight the latest developments. As Web3 evolves, you’ll find many of its top founders occasionally writing a line or two. Such is the power of content: did you know that before co-founding a Turing-complete decentralized blockchain, Vitalik Buterin explored content creation as the lead writer for Bitcoin Magazine?
Consistent storytelling helps maximise this power, with the community stepping in. This has given rise to the WagMedia Creator Economy, where WagMedia’s mission is to help tell Polkadot’s story, one creator at a time, via feedback and incentives.
Since our last featured update on the content generated through WagMedia, we have witnessed improvement in some individuals and an increased number of quality submissions. We’ve also seen the onboarding of more creators, as well as sufficient creative mindshare among a larger pool of creators to ensure that none of the key Polkadot developments get missed.
The Spammening was a compelling development, largely because, by stress testing Kusama, it showcases the vanity metric of TPS, which is often seen as the key selling point of blockchain networks. The buildup to the event was covered by The White Rabbit with some smart video work, and a quick overview came from gbaci. They were rewarded 14.5 and 14 DOT, respectively.
As for the aftermath of the Spammening, which ended up with two sessions and witnessed back-to-back Web3 TPS records, the coverage was fluid, thanks to the growth of the WagMedia Creator Economy. First, CMOSH received 11.3 DOT for continuing his solid data infographic work by illustrating Kusama leading all blockchains with 82K TPS achieved after the first session.
YMN (aka Yamne) stepped in to provide context on the follow-up Spammening session, which was hosted live by The KUS, and earned 15 DOT. The results of the second Spammening session were effectively summarised by new WagMedia creator Lily Mendez, who was awarded 16.5 DOT. Pieky took it up a notch by creating a live TPS comparison chart as 128K was reached, and received 33 DOT.
While there was plenty of content about breaking the TPS record, breaking the WagMedia rewards record with 64 DOT required something equally amazing. Emil managed to achieve this feat by providing a well-received take on a new version of the blockchain trilemma, as proposed by Gav. It potentially shifts the conversation away from scalability and the fanfare around TPS, to something more modern.
To move toward a modern approach to the trilemma, decentralization would have needed to be addressed. Ravi provided a well-constructed thread on Polkadot’s situation regarding decentralization. The piece represented a notable improvement from Ravi and earned him an impressive 25 DOT.
Resilience moves the decentralization discussion forward, and using the Nakamoto Coefficient to present it is an effective approach. CMOSH did just this with his infographic and received 18.5 DOT, with the like from Gav perhaps being even more rewarding.
Another piece of content that also received a like from Gav, was Pieky’s thread about Angie Dalton and her drive for Web3 gaming on Polkadot. In addition to Gav’s like, Pieky also received a like from Angie, along with a reward of 19 DOT.
Regarding Web3 gaming on Polkadot, it continues to be a popular topic among our creators. A couple more standouts was celestialbeing’s thread covering the upcoming FIFA Rivals on the Mythos chain, and a rundown of the best games associated with Polkadot by new WagMedia creator César. They received 19 and 13 DOT, respectively.
César applied a similar rundown approach by covering the recent notable achievements in the Polkadot ecosystem. His thread received solid engagement and was awarded 21.8 DOT. The White Rabbit did something similar by providing a brief summary of highlights about Polkadot in a long-form X post, which also garnered good engagement, earning him 13.5 DOT.
Good engagement also tends to surround content produced by judasfeeling, another new inductee to the WagMedia Creator Economy. While he is still figuring out the appropriateness of heavy price talk, he did a splendid job of covering Polkadot Coretime to debunk the FUD and was awarded 14.3 DOT.
Those who take on feedback and work on their content will sooner or later reap the rewards. Bannks, a WagMedia Creator since 2022, received 19 DOT for summarizing Gav’s JAM talk from Sub0 reset. We hope he consolidates the feedback for his well-received thread. Meanwhile, dwulf69 made a breakthrough, not only receiving solid engagement but also a commendable 27 DOT for a write-up on the Polkadot App Beta.
Overall, the WagMedia Creator Economy is thriving with content, and creators like Pieky have been busy exploring diverse approaches. His additional standouts include an experimental marketing clip about joining PBA-X and a thread about Jay Chrawnna’s influence on content in the Polkadot ecosystem. Both pieces were awarded 13 DOT. That said, unfortunately, he missed Jay’s instrumental role in opening the doors for others by founding WagMedia.
While there’s no harm in being prolific to figure things out, it’s worth studying what top creators, like Emil or gbaci, have done by allowing more time for their audience to digest the content between new postings. For instance, Jimmy Tudeski seems to have followed this approach and has uniquely put out a banger post that raises awareness of institutional investment developments around Polkadot, earning 29 DOT.
It’s important to recognize that content plays a crucial role in growing the awareness of Polkadot. We believe that the WagMedia Creator Economy provides a conducive environment to incentivize and nurture contributors effectively and transparently, embracing the ethos of Web3. The content generated speaks for itself, feel free to join us.

Wag Roundup

Written by yay.oi

Polkadot founder and chief architect Gavin Wood has published his annual Polkadot roundup, highlighting the major achievements of 2024 and giving some hints about what we can expect in 2025.
OriginTrail announces the launch of DKG V8, which brings a 1000x boost to scalability, privacy-preserving DKG Edge Nodes, and batch minting which will facilitate faster Knowledge Asset creation.
Decentralized AI Agent compute network iGam3 is expanding from Arbitrum to Peaq. It will be migrating 50% of its token supply to the Peaq network and plans to leverage Peaq’s modular DePIN functions to optimize its systems.
Evrloot’s v1.0 launch has been a roaring success, attracting more than 2500 players to its free-to-play campaign. Remarkably, 50% of players have already been converted and purchased their first NFT citizen.
Auto pools on Stellaswap, powered by Beefy Finance, are now benefiting from additional rewards thanks to the DOT Incentives campaign.
Pendulum announces PEN Tokenomics 2.0, which will halt new token issuance, burn 162M tokens, cap the maximum total supply to 150M, and divert unused token allocations to the Pendulum treasury. With the treasury coffers boosted to 55.6M PEN, opportunities open up for the community to fund initiatives such as liquidity incentives and development projects.
The first OpenGov referendum on Hydration is open for voting. It proposes to add vDOT to the money market and adjust the risk parameters of several lending pools.
Polkaworld hosted Gianluigi and Pakman on December 30th to hear all about the upcoming Kylix Finance bridgeless cross-chain lending platform. They also discussed what we can expect from them in 2025.
Full Wag Roundup 24th December to 31st December.

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.