Airdot the Meme! (March 17th to March 23rd)

What is up, my friends!

Memecoins have finally airdropped on Polkadot, so is your vision Pink? Also, given the recent turn in the market, could it be that Dot is Ded?

We have an exciting extended top story this week where we explore what meme culture is all about and how the paraverse approached it. What's the future like? Will we see the explosion of memecoin mania have its turn on Polkadot?

If you consider memecoins as cultural currency, then a little history lesson reveals that Kusama got there first. Do you recall GMing or GNing Bill, and of course anyone for some sweet Chrwna?

Our top story also gets into the details of what we are currently witnessing with PINK and DED. Furthermore, we also now see the wave of airdrops really taking shape.

While some crowdloans have proven to return decent airdrops, will we start to see more approaches which broader web3 communities are more accustomed to when we switch to core time?

Catch up on all the news and events this past week, as our finders have continued to uncover the latest updates within our ecosystem.

For those interested in content in other languages, then check out our brief write-up on our lingo lounge where there are bounties to be had.

As always, if you’re keen on news reporting or want to unleash your creativity, then feel free to join us! There are plenty of rewards awaiting your creativity.

With quite a bit of food for thought here, let's swiftly move on to the top story.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - Part 1

Written by yay.oi

GM(N) Frens and Degens! We’re back with another dose of Polkaverse top news, and it’s been wild. Meme season has begun on Polkadot, and we’ve kicked it off with a double dose of airdropped goodness.

Some may say that Polkadot is a little late to the party. After all, Solana has been popping out multibillion dollar dog tokens for more than a year now, wif hats too. And Ethereum even got lucky with a frog token.

That is not to say that the Polkadot eco has been memeless this whole time. It’s just that the projects to date had been rather niche and purely for lolz. GMorDie on Kusama, for example, is comedy gold, but the tokens have literally zero monetary value and unless you collected crowdloan rewards two years ago, the only way to join the fun is to beg for FREN tokens.

Polkadot started getting a whole lot memier in November 2023. An anonymous team submitted an Open Governance treasury proposal for 999,999 DOT to launch a new memecoin called PINK. They promised to spread the word that the best thing about Polkadot is not the tech, it’s the pinkness.

Surprisingly, governance cancelled the proposal before votes could be counted. But the project did not die #PINKISNOTDED. Forty-five anonymous volunteers from across the Polkaverse with a shared appreciation for Polkadot’s pinkness came together to launch the project starting with PINKDROP, a game developed by the team behind The Great Escape. It was the first and biggest stage of a massive campaign to earn airdrop credits.

Meanwhile, larger than life DOT-whale Giotto De Fillipi, initially a meme-coin sceptic, had a change of heart and launched a Telegram group offering his governance backing for a community led, fairly distributed meme coin on Polkadot.

Within days the #DOTISDED meme was chosen. Subsequently, Lunar Strategies successfully pitched their marketing strategy for DED to the Polkadot treasury. Another successful treasury proposal resulted in the DED Foundation being formed in Switzerland to manage legal compliance and a transparent fair distribution of a DED token airdrop.

The two coins took a different technical approach to their airdrops. PINK relied on the Moonbeam EVM approach. Perhaps a tactical play to reduce barriers for new users to the Polkadot ecosystem, given that they could use their existing Metamask wallet. The disadvantage being that Metamask wallets are less compatible with the rest of the Polkadot ecosystem.

DED chose to airdrop onto the Asset Hub common goods parachain, which has the advantage of onboarding new users onto full-ecosystem compatible wallets. The disadvantage being receivers would not be able to receive the airdrop unless they had an existential deposit of DOT in their wallet.

Disadvantages aside, both projects grasped the concept of memecoin culture and how it can benefit a blockchain ecosystem. PINK and DED brought a whole lot of fun to Polkadot, strengthening the existing community and bringing new users in too.

However, with the rise in degenerate investor culture, comes the risks of degenerate projects too. Scams and rugpulls plague the memecoin industry, and questions still remain about how much immunity the robust security of the Polkadot infrastructure offers.

For both PINK and DED it is uncertain if they have any kind of liquidity locking in place. This could raise concerns about the potential for a developer to remove liquidity from the project and crash the token price.

Adding to the concern, both PINK and DED are minted on the Asset Hub. By default, on Asset Hub the asset creator is able to freeze trading of a token entirely or on target addresses, offering further opportunities for exploitation.

Independent audits and regular transparency reports detailing project finances and liquidity status are important tools for building trust in the volatile memecoin industry. But hey, getting rekt is an important rite of passage for a new degen too.

So the big question is, what else is in store for Polkadot degens? We’re still early fam! KANARY is coming to Moonbeam, GIOTTO quietly launched (deadcoin? scamcoin? who knows?), GAVWIFHAT is accepting DOT for a “presale” (maybe your big chance to get rekt!), our finders discovered LAMB which is dropping on Astar, and wen beefy is keeping the memes fresh for the Polkadot 2.0 generation.

Additionally, a few things have been brewing with inscriptions for a while, and our OG meme GMorDIE might make its triumphant return with the usual good vibes and perhaps more.

But don’t leave yet, because Sanchez has a bunch of juicy details to share about DED, PINK, as well as relatable news on upcoming airdrops.

Top Story of the Week - Part 2

Written by Sanchez

Ser, what a week it’s been. Members of the Polkadot ecosystem experienced a rollercoaster of emotions, ranging from excitement and euphoria to drama and mania from the plethora of updates regarding memecoins in the past week.

PINK, officially the first tradeable memecoin on Polkadot, launched earlier in the week. This saw excitement from the airdrop-eligible and non-eligible users. Users got varying amounts of PINK for playing the Pinkdrop game and participating in other gaming tournaments hosted by Pinkonmic. Those who didn’t get PINK had the chance to ape at launch.

The gaming tournaments included the Pink Racing League hosted by Exiled racers, the Pink tournaments at Everloot, and more. These were easy ways for community members to get a stake in Pink Points, which determined how PINK they were.

After its successful launch, PINK has been trading at a $9.4 Million market cap on Moonbeam and $664K on Base, with 34,000 holders on Moonbeam and 324 holders on Base.

A generous 16.5% of the total supply of PINK was distributed to players of the Pinkdrop game, with 12.5% allocated to 15 parachains, each deciding how to utilize it. The Moonbeam, Astar, and Acala Networks have already announced their distribution criteria. All in all, 50% of the 2.3 Billion total supply of PINK is earmarked for airdrops.

DED, on the other hand, hasn’t had it so good. The DED foundation announced a change in the tokenomics of the DED token before the distribution of DED to users. This resulted from the DED Foundation choosing the speedy execution of the project rather than waiting to get more funds from the Polkadot treasury. The 5% of DED tokens earmarked for the airdrop have been completely distributed to the wallets of users holding DOT at a rate of 36 DED to 1 DOT.

Much criticism has been aimed at the DED project for changing its tokenomics and allocating 30% to early investors and 5% to the team, a massive change from the 100% initially planned to be airdropped to users. Most users retort that while the team isn’t seeking more funding from the treasury, they have already received two funding requests for the DED token.

The DED team, led by Giotto, has maintained their stance that 5% is the initial airdrop, and there could be further airdrops later. They also maintain that no further funding is required from the Polkadot treasury. As such, DED tokens must be held to continually maintain the project.

For further insights into the DED funding requests received from the treasury, explanations from Jay and OG Tracker are available to provide a comprehensive understanding of these requests. A better understanding of these requests can further explain the team's thought process.

Airdrops have not just been tied to memecoins, Polytope Labs, the team behind Hyperbridge, has announced the airdrop of 5% of the total supply of NAND tokens after winning the most recent Polkadot parachain auction.

Users eligible include those who contributed to their crowdloan before their announcement (before 2:55 pm UTC+1 on March 21st), relayers participating in their incentivized testnet, Aye voters on their previously failed OpenGov funding proposal, and users who have tried out the Gateway on Gargantua (still active).

With other recent crowdloans, Mandala Chain also hinted several times the possibility of further possible rewards. As per their crowdloan details document “Keep in mind that we reserve the right to pay out additional rewards in the future for crowd loan participants — hint hint!”

Our previous newsletter a few weeks ago also covered the InvArch airdrop, where the expected minimum qualifying requirements is 50 staked DOT. There’s not much time left, as the snapshot has been announced to take place on March 31st at 11:59 PM UTC.

Those who have followed OpenGov (many probably did with DED at stake) will likely know that Zeitgeist will be airdropping some ZTG tokens, after their proposal for futarchy integration with OpenGov was approved.

Going back as far as last year, Peaq Network also announced an airdrop for users holding over 2000 KREST (approx. $1780 at the time of writing), the token for their canary network. There have also been suggestions over CT that Peaq might be airdropped to users of some of the applications active on the Peaq network, specifically Silencio and NATIX Network.

Overall, it certainly appears that Polkadot is finally starting to make an impression with airdrop farmers and memecoin degens alike. Lowering the barrier with Agile core time and Tanssi Network, who already have over 60 appchain projects lined up, surely there will be more airdrops and memes to come!

The Lingo Lounge

Written by Dodow

It’s important to recognise that a decentralized network such as Pokadot does not restrict or censor diverse communities. Thus, it is befitting that non-Anglo content is featured within the Wag mission.

Historically, WagMedia opened its doors to a lingo program back in June 2022, under Kusama treasury Bounty 12. The reception was immense as the initiative grew to support 18 languages, including German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Romanian, Portuguese, Japanese, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Czech, Filipino, Thai, Mongolian, and Vietnamese.

Furthermore, with the dawn of the OpenGov era, three of the language units went on to successfully fund their own independent missions. As things stand, only AIWeb3 (Chinese language unit) still exists. The Poltuguese Content Guild (Portuguese Language Unit) and Creadores Web3 (Spanish Language Unit), appear to be replaced with new teams picking up the mission with newer OpenGov funding requests.

With the re-established WagMedia initiative there is no surprises that non-Anglo content once again centers around the lingo lounge. It’s the channel where you sign-up to get involved, ideas are discussed, and more importantly where bounties are announced.

Led by IK, who has been instrumental to the lingo program since its initial inception, the focus this time round is more on non-Anglo original content. That said, he has arranged the program into 3 categories, original content, translations, and dubbing, so there will likely be opportunities that cover a broad range of tasks.

Before diving in and getting the new non-Anglo discord role, it is worth understanding that awarding non-Anglo content is achieved via peer review. Therefore, it might be in your interest to encourage more of your fellow native speakers to participate.

Thus far, there have been several bounties that have been announced and following are a couple of standouts that have piqued some interest.

Telenova was one of the exciting announcements that came from Sub0, and the bounty was to extend with different languages Goku’s dogfooding bounty, to go through users' experience of the new application. Notable submissions came from Yamne in Italian, Chitu in Hindi, and in Spanish we have submissions from Polkasama and EatYourCryptos.

Translations have always been popular with those creating language content, and now our very own WagMedia weekly can sometimes be read in another language. Check out Agile Core Fun(d) translated in Hindi by Chitu.

If you have had enough of all the airdrop hunting and memecoin farming, why not visit the lingo lounge and give creating a chance? Coincidentally, we have a dogfooding Pink bounty for both Anglo and non-Anglo creators.

General News

Written by Gigs

• The Polkadot Blockhain Academy launched its remote program, PBA Remote.
• Energy Web X released a new version of its marketplace, which sees general UI improvements, enhanced app stability, and accessibility on multiple operating systems.
• PLMC, the native token of the Polimec protocol, lists on MEXC and XT.com.
• Powerpod, a decentralized EV charging network on Peaq, announced its ambassador program.
• Peaq Network, in collaboration with Outlier Ventures, launched a DePIN Base Camp initiative which can provide up to $200K investment to support imminent DePIN projects.
• Asset Hub system parachain launched on the Paseo Network, other parachains are set to follow soon.
• Insightful data about the Polkadot ecosystem and its parachains has been made available on Dune Analytics.
• Subwallet concluded its Grill contest, with 35 winners sharing a prize pool of 80K SUB.
• Polkadex tripled its crowdloan rewards cap to encourage and attract contributors as they bid for a new lease.
• Astar Network partnered with AlchemyPay to provide a Fiat on-ramp for native ASTR on Polkadot and zkEVM, with accessibility in over 173 countries.
• Nova Wallet and Subwalletadded support for DED.
• Basilisk, the Canary network of HydraDX, won a Kusama slot with a self-funded bid of 122 KSM.
• Introducing DOTnow Payments, a non-custodial cryptocurrency payment gateway allowing payments in DOT for services on Apillon.
• InvArch Network announced its ambassador programme, the InvArch Embassy, inviting everyone to be a part of it.
• Talisman Wallet seeks to incorporate Polkadot Multisig on its platform and enhance operations management by teams.
• Moondance Labs, the team behind Tanssi Network, raises $6 million in funding for development and expansion.
• Polytope Labs outlines a plan for Hyperbridge, which includes tokenomics, an airdrop proposal, crowdloans, and other initiatives.
• The DED token airdrop commenced, with allocations significantly reduced from 1K to 36 tokens per held DOT following a snapshot.
• Hyperbridge wins the 65th Polkadot auction with a bid of 273K DOT.
• Moonbeam kicked off its community Pink Drop, 25% of its allocation was distributed under three categories.

NFT News

Written by Turing Machine

• LAOS network provides notification to interested DOT stakers that they intend to launch their crowdloan at Auction #68, which starts on April 21st.
• You can now mint the generative art NFT collection “The Break” created by Tsung-yu Lu, which dropped on Kodadot on March 21st.
• Unique Network have distributed the rewards for the Spark Fest wave 1 Airlyft campaign, winners were announced on X.
• Holders of Public Pressure POD NFT, which are listed on Raresama, get ready for an airdrop of 20K W3M tokens by completing the identification process.
• A new memecoin called LAMB has announced that it shall be airdropping to the Astar community.
• Token generation on Asset-Hub and existential deposit distribution all took place before the airdrop for DED.
• Forever Has Fallen is an interactive story-driven metaverse about a bounty hunter, launched on Unique Network.

DEFI News

Written by Turing Machine

• Bifrost and Velocity Labs announced a partnership to solidify and extend Liquid Staking Standards within Polkadot and beyond.
• PINK has been listed on Beamswap, the Moonbeam DeFi HUB.
• xcUSDT is now available on BEAMEX, it’s currently the only place for native stablecoin leverage trading on Polkadot.
• Following a community vote, Interlay’s iBTC has been incentivized in a pool on StellaSwap.
• Centrifuge launched their on-chain management platform, aimed at fund and asset managers looking to setup tokenized investment products and strategies.
• The PINK Racing League on Exiled Racers comes to a close, with Bifrost’s 10k $GLMR prize pool has been awarded to the 33 selected winners.
• Panorama Swap is live on Shiden Network, currently you can join the liquidity pools with token swaps to follow.
• BEAMEX reached a record of $2,000,000 daily trading volume!
• Acala has announced a refund of 5% of the loss from the Starlay Finance exploit, two weeks ago. This adds to the circa $400K from Starlay Finance, which covers 1\4 of the total loss.
• PINK has been added on the HydraDX permissionless asset registry, trading via the Omnipool is imminent.
• PINK has been airdropped this week through Moonbeam Network, and it’s available to swap on StellaSwap, Beamswap, as well as on BASE via a Uniswap pool.
• PINK is now available and verified on DEX screener, where you can view real time analytics and charts.

Governance News

Written by Turing Machine

• You can track all the deliverables and reports from OpenGov proposals in a more transparent and efficient way, as the OG Tracker is now live.
• Interlay submitted a referenda to make adjustments to stablecoin lending markets on its platform.
• Interlay proposal #101 has been submitted to add Bifrost BNC, creating the first lending market for the token.
• OG Tracker published a detailed example on how OpenGov proposals are being tracked.
• Litentry submits a proposal to update to runtime version 9175 and remove superuser do (sudo).
• Voting is live from 18th to 25th for a new season of the Community Grants Committee on Moonbeam. NOTE: committee membership has been increased from 5 to 9.
• Polkassembly enhances user profiles, you now have greater visibility of mentions, comments, and reactions.
• The DED foundation had announced that they are no longer seeking funds from the Polkadot’s Treasury, and shall instead look for a speedy launch.
• Acala network and its canary Karura had an issue with their RPC nodes and temporarily halted the networks from 20th to 21th this past week.
• Interlay submitted a proposal to open an HRMP channel with Phala Network.
• Mythos proposed to open an HRMP bidirectional channel with the Assest-Hub.
• OG Tracker published an overview of their internal badge system which enables a faster user experience.
• Polkadex Referendum #16 and #17 approved the listing of the DED/USDT and PINK/USDT pairs on the Polkadex Orderbook. Currently PINK is trading, while DED is frozen until further announcements on exchange listings.

Event News

Written by Gigs

• Decentralized cloud computing and the role of DePINs was covered in Peaq’s weekly AMA on March 21, which featured Alessandro De Carli, founder of Acurast.
• Filippo Franchini of the Web3 Foundation hosted a Polkadot AMA special on March 21 to break down JAM, it featured guests Alice und Bob, Dakota from InvArch Network, and Kian from Parity.
• Snake Soldiers were guests on #poweredbyRMRK spaces on March 20, and provided insights on the project, its use of RMRK standards, and their future plans.

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.

Dig the awesome cover art created by aemonk.