Wagcome: Deep In DOT Chaos! - Newsletter Edition 78

In this week’s edition:

1. Editorial: Believe in something, there’s some Peaq interest, give a warm welcome to Skullz, and we have a frosty guide for you.
2. Top Story - Peaq Interest!: Coverage on the launch of Peaq who will onboard DePINs, along with other hot news items.
3. Featured Guide - How to Ride Bifrost Waves: A useful guide to Bifrost’s campaign.
4. Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between November 12th and November 18th.
5. Extras: Credits and anything else.

Editorial

What is up, my friends!

There seems to be no respite from the work that is ongoing to shape the Land of the Free after the results have settled. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seems to have struck an accord with the Web3 community, whether they be degens or the regulated. For some, the DOGE sentiment has reignited the thinking to Stop Trading and Believe in Something.

While over in the Polkadot ecosystem, not everyone believes in the zero-sum game with PvP. That said, it would be fair to assume that, either way, the community all believes in the same somethin’ somethin’, especially after Sub0 with folks re-energized. There’s certainly a rumor or two out there, which seems cryptic or rather, crypto.

Moving away from the rumor mill, there was Peaq Interest following the eagerly awaited Peaq Network launch. We will be covering the launch, as well as other hot Polkadot news items, in our top story this week. You know the drill by now.

On to moving around, we are pleased to say that Polkadot ecosystem illustrator extraordinaire, Skullz, has joined the Wag Team. You may recognise his recent awesome artwork on Youdles and Mr. Tod. Even more recent is what you may have noticed on our X account.

Catching waves on a beach was something that those of us who ventured out to Sub0 might have done last week. Another great wave to catch some points on would be the Bifrost Liquid Waves Campaign. Following our featured report on Bifrost last week, we thought it would be useful to feature some guidance, especially for newbies.

After getting your feet wet with the Bifrost Campaign, if you want to earn more BNC, there’s still time to participate in our Bifrost treasury partner bounty. Or, if you just want to create, hop on over to our Discord.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - Peaq Interest

Written by yay.oi

Imagine a day, not too far from now. You roll out of bed, and spot your roomie TOD sipping a mug of fair-trade brew. You think to yourself, what does fair-trade even mean?

You say, “Hey TOD, do you really trust that coffee comes from fair sources?”
He rolls his six eyes to the back of his head, and replies, “Dude! Not this again! There is no trust, only truth! I know exactly where this coffee came from.”

The doorbell rings. Your breakfast delivery arrives at the same time as usual. You don’t know what it’ll be this time, but it’s always a pleasant surprise. After a delicious meal, you grab your phone, switch off earning mode, and step outside. Your neighbor says thanks as you unplug your Tesla from his EV charger.

You think about how your mornings used to be a little different. Now everything seems to DePINs on Peaq, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s been a long road since the Peaq project was first unveiled in 2017, but it all culminated with a massive mainnet launch at 09:00 UTC on November 12th 2024. After amassing 50 DePIN projects and USD $1 billion Total Machine Value (TMV), many are optimistic about Peaq’s future.

The PEAQ token was listed on 12 centralized exchanges at genesis (just a couple more than LAOS). Some of the most excited holders got in much earlier. The Peaq parachain crowdloan went live in July 2023. Participants were promised a minimum of 190 PEAQ per DOT loaned vested linearly over 96 weeks, and currently they appear to have done quite well.

Crowdloan participants for Krest, Peaq’s canary network, were also quite handsomely rewarded with 800 KREST per KSM in March 2023. Holders of more than 2000 KREST during the daily snapshot phase since August 2023 may be eligible for an upcoming PEAQ airdrop. Eligibility can be checked using the Krest Calculator, and KYC will be mandatory to claim.

If this all makes you a little fearful of missing out, don’t fret. Peaq’s Get Real community campaign commences in December and could potentially offer some tasty rewards. You can already start collecting XP in the pre-season campaign, and it will be boosted by 50% after you join Season 1.

The pre-season campaign introduces 15 DePINs in the Peaqosystem. However, this is just a fraction of the 50 DePINs building on Peaq, and the race is on to be the first to launch.

Since they share a parent company with Peaq and Krest, Charge has a home team advantage. By enabling private and enterprise EV charging wallbox owners to monetize their unused capacity, Charge aims to drastically increase the availability of charging points while slashing charging costs.

Charge has also begun benefitting from the network effects of Peaq’s already vast DePIN ecosystem. In partnership with XMAQUINA, EV charging points can be tokenized, opening up pathways for community ownership, investment, and earning.

In addition, Charge has partnered with decentralized data layer Teneo, which offers operators secure storage of the data that their infrastructure produces. This adds even more revenue stream opportunities through the potential sale of data across other platforms.

On the topic of other platforms, Peaq has become an attractive destination for DePIN project migration. DePIN storage layer DeNet migrated from Polygon, and real-time communications layer dTelecom jumped ship from Artbitrum.

Meanwhile, Solana has seen migrations from drive-to-earn crypto navigation app MapMetrics, cloud gaming platform YOM, and hot off the press, crowd-sourced compute network Azen Protocol. Did you see this unexpected cross-chain shill of our beloved Gavun Wud this week? Perhaps YOM isn’t the only one feeling suppressed by the Solana memecoin bloat.

Of course, escaping the bloat isn’t the only reason for migration. For decentralized food delivery service Bistroo, their reasons for migrating from Ethereum centered around Peaq’s DePIN friendly economics, and modular DePIN functions.

So far, there are five modular DePIN functions on Peaq. Firstly, there is Peaq ID, which is assigned to each device connected to the network and allows them to verify, authenticate, and transact with each other.

Dynamic permissions are assigned to users of the network with Peaq Access. At a simple level an example would be to temporarily grant a charge.xyz user permission to use an EV charging point.

Peaq Verify is used for the verification of data generated by devices on the network. This is important to ensure that data collected comes from an authenticated source rather than any kind of malicious actor.

Payments between machines or users are facilitated by Peaq Pay. It ensures that the user has the funds to pay for a service, and that funds are not released until the service is completed in full.

Finally, the AI-Agents modular function, powered by Fetch.AI, allows DePIN builders to integrate autonomous AI agents into their systems. This allows for a broad range of automation and machine learning optimizations, benefitting both user experiences and economics.

No AI agents were involved in Polkadot’s recent economic optimization. However, thanks to the Polkadot governing community, the new simplified linear inflation model commenced at block #23467057 this week. While time will tell if it improves the overall tokenomic outcome of DOT, the effects are already being felt by stakers.

That said, a bit of dynamic inflation optimized by an autonomous AI agent wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea. With Peaq’s modular DePIN functions, perhaps automated DOT inflation parameter optimization could become a possibility.

Although it is still early days for Peaq, it’s already becoming evident that both its tech stack and its entire ecosystem of DePINs, are modular and growing by the day. We can look forward to seeing how the network effects of the Peaqosystem result in brand-new use cases and community-owned machine economies.

XMAQUINA co-founder Mauricio Zolliker is adamant that robots are coming for our jobs. However, he assures us that, despite the concerns, this will be a good thing. Time will tell, but one thing is certain. Building on decentralized infrastructure such as Peaq, secured by Polkadot, is crucial to ensure that the opportunities of the machine economy are accessible to the broader community. With opportunities from 50 DePINs already rolling out, and many more to come, Peaq interest is just getting started.

Featured Guide - How to Ride Bifrost Waves

Written by Dodow

Bifrost’s journey has been extensively covered in our recently published WagMedia Newsletter Featured Report, which you can find on X and Grillapp. The feature demonstrates the resilience and hard work that have gone into making Bifrost the top LST platform in the Polkadot ecosystem, and possibly even beyond.

As mentioned in the featured report, Bifrost’s Liquid Waves Campaign represents a shift in tokenomics that not only addresses sustainability but also provides an opportunity for the community.

The simple objective of the campaign is to accumulate WAVE points, which will be converted into bbBNC at the conclusion of the final season. The new bbBNC token is effectively a dividend certificate for a share of revenue generated by the Bifrost protocol under the updated tokenomics.

If you participated in Bifrost’s earlier Rainbow Campaigns, your Raindrops can be converted into WAVE Points. A “Convert” button will appear on the campaign page, with a conversion ratio of 100:1.

The following guide is aimed at those who would like to seize the opportunity to participate in the campaign, and are either new to Bifrost or have limited knowledge about it.

This guide can be broken into the following sections:

1. Event Registration
2. Getting Tokens Ready
3. Minting vTokens
4. Governance Bonus (not available for EVM users).
5. Additional Yield

Go check out the guide.

Wag Roundup

Written by yay.oi & Dodow

• At 9am UTC on November 12th the Peaq mainnet went live, with the PEAQ token listed on 12 centralized exchanges from day one.
• Energy Web introduces Katalist, a nonprofit platform focused on the decarbonization of maritime shipping.
• The community has embraced sustainability, as KILT delegator staking rewards have come to an end.
• Block #23467057 marks the beginning of the new inflation era for Polkadot.
• Xcavate has obtained the UK’s FCA approval to join the Regulatory Sandbox Accepted Firms.
• LAOS Network has partnered with Web3 gaming development platform Sequence to address the free-to-play gaming market. The partnership introduces a 190M LAOS token grant for developers. It also looks to expand bridgeless minting across EVM chains and offers an embedded wallet solution compatible with gaming engine stores in Web2
• Triple farming is back, as Bifrost has replenished the vDOT pool in anticipation of Hydration’s money market.
• With the passing of Wish for Change Referendum 1217, Braille has begun working with the parachains to prepare them for the upcoming unification of Polkadot addresses.
• YOM announces the migration of its token from Solana to the Peaq network due to memecoin bloat hindering visibility.
• Polkadot’s Decentralized Mic panel on November 14th featured Nate (Distractive), Nico (Velocity), Angie (DOTPlay), and Gautam (BlockDeep) to share their insights about gaming and DeFi on Polkadot.
• Full Wag Roundup 12th November to 18th November.

Extras

• Awesome cover art created by Dodow.

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