Wag is Back! (February 25th to March 2nd)

What is up, my friends!

The current sentiment with Bitcoin and the markets suggests we are back. Likewise, after a lengthy hiatus, Wag is back!

Things have been shaping up since the approval of OpenGov referenda 365. Significant advancement has been made in revitalizing the Discord bot, aligning it with a website to enhance transparency without relying on Discord access.

Laos Network has joined us as a treasury and has launched a bounty program, more details on this later.

We've reinstated the finders program, given it's all about news, this now presents an opportunity to participate in the weekly newsletter you're currently reading. This week we have 3 of our top finders joining me to produce this publication.

If you're interested in web3 journalism, we invite you to join our Discord. Who knows, perhaps one day we'll feature your writings here.

Regarding our former writing team, I thank them for their past contributions. For those curious, they've since transitioned to more pivotal roles within the Polkadot ecosystem.

Pnin continues to write scripts and now provides daily NFT insights on the Kusmarian.

Jared (aka JB) is a member of the Astar Network core team and spearheads public communications as Astar makes waves in the Japanese web3 market.

Csaint, the original founding writer of the WagMedia Weekly, has had a stint with the Kusmarian. Now dedicated to saving lives in his non-web3 pursuits, in his spare time he continues to be a prominent voice on X, offering valuable insights and discussions about Polkadot.

Progress continues swiftly at WagMedia. As older unit lead bounties conclude, expect further announcements from both our Anglo and non-Anglo content programs.

For all you budding creators out there, don't hesitate any longer – join us now! There are plenty of rewards awaiting your creativity.

Now, onto the top story!

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story Of The Week

Written by Sanchez

The recent surge of liquidity into the crypto markets, led by an increase in the price of Bitcoin, has swiftly shifted market sentiment, reigniting excitement among many crypto enthusiasts. After enduring a rollercoaster ride of emotions in recent months, it feels like we're finally back on track.

The approval of Bitcoin ETF, which opens the doors for many possibilities, and the halving expected on May 4th, 2024, have played a significant role in the gradual change in sentiment, bringing enthusiasm back. We’re also seeing a lot of teams building Layers 1 which will leverage Bitcoin. Memecoins are on a rampage and degeneracy is back.

We’re finally seeing users who took a break or grew weary as the market plateaued now find renewed confidence in these latest developments. Are your neighbors asking you what coins to buy yet anon?

It is often said that "bear markets are for building." On Polkadot, developers have kept steadfast and persevered through the challenges of the bear market. By finding ways to navigate the liquidity challenges and low enthusiasm from users amongst other problems, developers on Polkadot are building the next generation of products for users.

With a vision for true and trustless cross-chain interactions, security, and usability, Polkadot is on the right track.

Similar to Bitcoin, Polkadot has been laden with activity with a plethora of marketing proposals on Polkassembly, Agile Coretime launching on Westend on Kusama, and soon Polkadot and the Decentralized Voices program aimed at allowing more users to participate in governance on Polkadot and Kusama.

On Polkadot’s parachains, HydraDX deserves recognition as it has continued shipping and announced its plans for rebranding HydraDX into the Hydration network, launching a lending and borrowing platform, and the launch of a decentralized stablecoin on Polkadot called Hollar.

HydraDX continues to build the Polkadot liquidity hub, it has also recently listed Unique’s UNQ token and the Crust network token, CRU, and there are positive talks regarding the listing of Kilt on HydraDX. The HydraDX and Nova teams have enabled a swap feature with Nova Wallet allowing token swaps directly from the asset tab on Nova Wallet utilizing liquidity from Hydra.

Additionally, HydraDX has also announced a Hydration campaign and has 2 proposal requests up for discussion. The first requests 500,000 DOT as Treasury LP to add DOT liquidity into the Omnipool and another 500,000 DOT as liquidity incentives to attract liquidity to Polkadot. A combined 1,000,000 DOT has been requested to kick off the Polkadot Hydration campaign.

Memecoins are going ballistic across the crypto ecosystem and on Polkadot, they’re two memecoins gearing towards launch. Pink from Pinkonomic and DED from Dotisded are looking to launch soon and will airdrop their tokens to users on Polkadot.

On the topic of airdrops, Invarch, who are building the multichain account abstraction hub allowing users to manage tokens across all networks with one account, have hinted at an airdrop of VARCH to DOT stakers. The criteria looks set to be a minimum of 50 DOT staked either natively or liquid staked on platforms such as Bifrost, with a snapshot expected in March.

The Wagmedia weekly and content creation services are back to provide users with top-notch information and reportage, detailing product updates of projects on Polkadot and providing the latest news on what is what and who is doing what.

We are truly back!

With that being said, let’s have a quick run through of news and updates around the Polkadot ecosystem.

General News

Written by yay.oi

• The Capital Markets and Technology Association (CMTA) welcomes Polimec, a provider of decentralized, transparent, and regulatory-compliant fundraising utilizing robust on-chain KYC credentials issued by Deloitte.
• Crypto VC firm KOL Capital announces its investment in omni-chain inscription platform DOTIns.
• Former Cisco executive Michael Ganser joins Peaq Network to help forge connections with Web2 companies and foster enterprise adoption.
• Appchain infrastructure protocol Tanssi will be assisting Phyken Network to build their green energy asset tokenization platform.
• The Tannsi Network ecosystem has gathered 60 projects, 60% of them new to Polkadot and Substrate, in just 9 months.
• Moonbeam’s Real World Asset market heats up with projects such as Transfero’s Brazilian Real stablecoin, and asset tokenization platform Tokeniza.
• Kusama Auction #130 winner Parathread 3346 was revealed as the crowd-sourced decentralized cloud computing platform Acurast.
• Unique Network token (UNQ) has arrived on HydraDX.
• Polkadot.js users can now create a local fork at any time to simulate transactions thanks to the Chopsticks testing environment created by Acala.
• Talisman announces its support for the Substrate-based blockchain of the crypto-friendly micronation of Liberland.
• Fast and smooth cross-chain swaps are now possible on Talisman thanks to the integration of Chainflip.
• Nova Wallet release v7.9.3 fixes some cross-chain transfers, introduces WalletConnect Deeplinks, and Landscape & full screen modes in the Dapp browser.
• Fearless Wallet has integrated Chainlink price feeds on Arbitrum to provide rates and balances of ETH, BNB, MATIC, and DOT.
• Polimec celebrates the 1st anniversary of its Ambassador’s Program.
• Bifrost and DED collaborate on a pre-airdrop campaign on Airlyft.
• PINK offers players a second chance to earn pink points playing PINKDROP.
• Rewards from the first Centrifuge crowdloan on Polkadot in 2021 need to be claimed by April 5th 2024.
• The campaign to celebrate the partnership between Litentry and Karat DAO has ended with rewards to be distributed on March 28th 2024.
• Litentry’s burn event has been postponed to March 6th 2024.
• Check out this article where Litentry explains how its IdentityHub Web3 identity aggregation platform benefits both users and projects.
• To promote IdentityHub, Litentry has launched a campaign on Club3.
• Rumor has it there’ll be a Hyperbridge crowdloan coming to Polkadot soon.
• Bifrost supports Mandala’s Polkadot Crowdloan by enabling users to contribute through SALP.
• Astar dApp staking v3 is now integrated into Talisman.
• Oak Network partners with CESS Storage to explore data storage and content delivery network (CDN) solutions.
• Zeitgeist launches an Oscar’s trading campaign.
• LAOS co-founder Toni Mateos was recognized as part of the team that won an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement for his contributions to Dolby Atmos Cinema Sound System.
• Mandala Chain announces Republic DAO as its first official DAO.
• The Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), invites the community to help shape their governance framework.
• Origin Trail publishes White Paper 3.0: Verifiable Internet for Artificial Intelligence.

NFT News

Written by yay.oi

• Unique Network wins Polkadot Auction #63 with a self-funded bid of 59,900 DOT.
• In its monthly update, Unique Network celebrates climbing the ranks of the Polkadot ecosystem and reveals some impressive NFT minting stats.
• After the success of DED MINE, DED, Unique Network, and DOTins are launching a new contest to find the next hypercasual game to release on DED Games.
• The final phase of Unique Network’s Spark Fest runs until March 9th 2024 with a prize pool of USD$1,000.
• Thirty lucky attendees at ETHDenver were able to mint free exclusive generative art NFTs at the KodaDot booth.
• Evrloot shares some impressive data from their collaborative event with PINK. The event generated some impressive results: 882 unique wallets minted an NFT, and with 65,000 transactions in 7 days Evrloot recorded the most dApp interactions on the Moonbeam Network.
• In another collaboration, Evrloot brings a dark fantasy themed map to the Great Escape.
• The Astar Degens treasury has adopted HydraDX’s vDOT yield DCA strategy, distributing DOT interest as ASTR to NFT holders. Additionally, eligibility for the DED airdrop has been confirmed.
• Bit.Country announces the NUUM airdrop eligibility requirements and a bonus for Odyssey Event participants. You can check if you are eligible here.
• The fifth Astar Degens Zealy Sprint is now live with USD$50,000 of ASTR in the reward pool and prizes worth more than USD$9,000.

DEFI News

Written by yay.oi

• Take a look at Bifrost’s monthly report. The total TVL has continued to increase and is now at more than USD$111,000,000 and total vDOT minting supply has surged to 6,500,000.
• Liquid staked Manta on Bifrost surges past the impressive milestone of 800,000 vMANTA.
• The Bifrost DOT Unlock Event ends with 296 unique addresses participating across Polkadot, Astar, and Moonbeam and sharing a prize pool of 15,000 BNC.
• Bifrost’s Polkadot Unlock Harvest 2.0 came to an end with 2.3 million DOT liquid staked and 75,000 vDOT minted daily. A reward pool of 124,000 BNC tokens will be distributed to participants.
• Take note: Bifrost has updated its X handle from @Bifrostfinance to @Bifrost in an effort to provide clarity and showcase the brand.
• Yield Booster is coming to Beamswap. Users will be able to vote to increase rewards in their chosen pool by allocating stGLINT tokens.
• Following the introduction of the Yield Booster and Branched V3 upgrade, users holding assets in Beamswap Farms will need to approve the migration of these assets by the team from previous to new farm pools.
• You can now play the lottery on Beamswap. Tickets cost USD 50c worth of GLMR with numbers drawn every 2 days.
• Crust Network’s CRU token has arrived in the HydraDX Omnipool.
• After the passing of Interlay Referendum #94, native USDC is live on Interlay for borrowing, lending, paying fees, and as a native and qUSDC collateral asset.
• EURC, AUDD, and NGNC are now bridgeable with Stellar on Amplitude’s Spacewalk.
• At the request of the community, one-click PEN unstaking is to be enabled on the Pendulum Portal.
• LDOT was the top performing Liquid Stake Derivative on Stellaswap with a seven day volume of USD$721,000.
• The community has voted for USDC-GLMR to be boosted in Stellaswap’s 3rd round of the Vote for Boost Marathon.

Governance News

Written by Gigs

• Nishaun Marshall’s Bold Fusion Proposal is exploring an intriguing blend of motorsport and blockchain. The partnership idea with Polkadot promises exposure and innovative marketing opportunities.
• Zeitgeist’s Futarchy proposalis about Data-Driven Governance on OpenGov. It aims at enhancing decision-making through active participation, data analysis, and transparent governance practices.
• Karura aSeed II Vote is coming to a close. This proposal is focused on resolving debts and transforming vaults as part of the Acala 2.0 Exodus plan.
• The Web3 Foundation is empowering delegates with the Decentralised Voices program. It recently announced delegates for Polkadot and Kusama, providing them with resources to make impactful decisions.
• OpenGov.Watch received a grant in recognition of its efforts. This will help in its goal to enhance Polkadot's accessibility and comprehension.
• Phala seeks a treasury allocation to repay borrowed funds utilized in its last Parachain auction.
• Introducing the OpenGov Scraper feature, which monitors proposals with attached USD values for easier tracking.
• HydraDX submitted two treasury proposals in the course of the week, requesting funds to boost liquidity and incentivize liquidity mining.
• HydraDX and Pendulum initiated HRMP channels between both networks to facilitate seamless interactions.
• The new runtime version 13 of the Pendulum network was unveiled recently with updates to enhance functionality.
• CRU was successfully added to the HydraDX Omnipool, thereby expanding trading options.
• Zeitgeist decides to reward its OpenGov participants pending the approval of the futarchy proposal.
• A support group was established on Telegram by Polkaworld. This group is for proposal discussions and support appeals.
• Pendulum released a proposal aimed at maintaining block production efficiency by removing inactive collators.
• Integritee collaborates with Basilisk DEX. A voting round was launched to accept an HRMP Channel for enhanced network utilization.

Events News

Written by Gigs

• ETHDenver24, with the theme "Year of The Spork Whale", was a major highlight of the week for the Polkadot and Web3 community. There was ample participation in the event by members and teams in the community. It began on February 28 and ended on March 3.
• A Chainflip and Talisman Space was held on February 26 to acquaint members of the Talisman community with its new partner Chainflip. There were also discussions about bringing cross-chain liquidity to the Polkadot ecosystem.
• The Ajuna community held an AMA on the 29th of February with talks about missions, Polkadot Play, BBB, and AJUN.
• Monday Mogwai giveaway was held on February 26 in the Ajuna discord. A raffle was used to pick the lucky winner of the Ajuna Avatar.
• A mini-summit at ETHDenver24 was held on February 28th with Polkadot and Web3 the focus of the summit.
• A research roundtable of the Picasso Network Research took place on the 27th of February on the Composable Finance Discord server.
• Polkadot AMA on Account Abstraction and Multi-signature was hosted on February 29th by Fillipo from the W3 foundation. The main discussion was proxy-based multisigs using MultiX.
• On the 1st of March, an event was hosted by Polkaworld on Twitter with guest speakers; Luca (Polimec), Andrej (Bitcoin Suisse), Withelm (Icoinic Capital), and Justin (CIK on the Block); about the Imminent Launch of Polimec. This event explored the topic of participation opportunities in Polimec.

As we kick start a new week, upcoming events that could interest you include:

• Gavin Wood's Keynote at sub0 Asia 2024 on March 12
• Web3 Summit in Berlin is set for August 19 to 21
• Encode and Polkadot Hackathon set the finale and prize giving on March 27
• Polkadot Day has been arranged at Budapest Blockchain community week 2024, on March 22
• Unique Network to host an AMA with CEO, Alexander Mitrovic on March 6
• Beyond Beats looks at Web3’s disruption of the Music Landscape, on March 7

The Laos Treasury

Written by yay.oi

We’re happy to welcome our newest treasury partner to the WagMedia fam, Laos Network. Laos have been working tirelessly to sort out the problem of ridiculous gas fees for minting NFTs on certain blockchain platforms. Their solution, the Bridgeless Minter dApp, is already live on Kusama and is due to hit Polkadot next.

The Bridgeless Minter takes care of the gas-fee problem by offloading the majority of the minting workload onto the much more efficient, and cost-effective Laos parachain. You won’t have to drop a fat stack of ETH to launch your monkey pic collection on OpenSea anymore.

Users pay a one-time native gas fee to mint a collection using a universal ERC-721 contract, and then they can mint as many NFTs as they like paying only LAOS tokens (launching in late March).

The Wagmedia x Laos content creation Bounty Program kicked off in February with a total reward pool of 37,500 LAOS tokens. Laos Bounty #1 has already wrapped with eight creators sharing a pool of 3,600 LAOS.

Creators were asked to share their experience of using the Bridgeless Minter dApp on K-LAOS to mint a collection of NFTs on Polygon or Ethereum without paying native gas fees. Bounty awards went to the following:

• @EatYourCryptos dropped a thread and video winning him first prize and earning a tidy 600 + 150 LAOS.
• In a close second was a thread by @daureene which netted 450 + 150 LAOS.
• The bronze medal went to @amedkarimm gaining him a not too shabby 300 + 150 LAOS.
• Proving that quantity can be rewarded just as well as quality @EmilKietzman took the 600 + 150 LAOS the prize for the most views.
• Our judges decided that there was something special about @Gigs thread, so he got 450 +150 LAOS.
• Finally, @dgreatanda, @DotHacks, and @celestialbeing each walked away with a well-earned 150 LAOS participation reward.

Keep your eyes peeled on when the next bounty is announced.

Wag to Come!

Written by Dodow

If you've made it this far into the newsletter without skipping, congratulations! Your mind must be buzzing with news and insights about our vast ecosystem. You might even be starting to see how the finders program serves as an excellent platform for anyone delving into web3 journalism.

For those involved in WagMedia initiatives, you're likely aware of the fantastic opportunity to create content and earn rewards. If you haven't visited our Discord lately, exciting opportunities are on the horizon.

Our creators section is in the process of getting a makeover, with new channels opening up. Check out our standard general content channel, where feedback and retroactive rewards may be available.

We've also introduced a bounty hub focused on the latest and most compelling narratives. Our first topic is "Polkadot is more than just a chain." And who knows what other fun things Goku has in store for the meme channel?

Led by IK, the non-Anglo content section is making a comeback for those with language skills. Sign up in the lingo lounge to apply for translation or dubbing work.

If you're interested in producing original non-Anglo content, check out the announcement about creating a short video or thread based on the latest Kusmarian interview with Fabian Gompft, CEO of the Web3 Foundation. Remember, translation or dubbing is not the objective; use the video for reference.

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.