Dodow

Developing DotSama! (November 25th - December 1st)

What is up, my friends!

Development is a hot topic this week as much of the community’s focus was on Polkadot’s developer conference, “Sub0” in Lisbon, Portugal.

Whilst devs and gigabrains gathered at the conference, WagMedia’s development is also progressing into the next stage of Governance v2 adoption.

As mentioned by Jay in the WagMedia Bounty 12 top-up proposal, the plan was always to, “Hook this bad boy into Gov 2.0,” which means, “experimenting with Governance 2.0 as it rolls out.”

“Where possible, we want to further decentralize the distribution responsibilities to token holders, especially if there’s enough participation to make it happen.”

It’s fair to say that we are in the early phases of Governance v2 which went live on Kusama late in November. Thus, it’s understandable that it will be a learning process. Chaos is expected in Kusama. With things moving so quickly, we recommended following the weekly “Attempts at Governance” streams.

While changes are incoming, WagMedia's mission remains the same. It’s to pursue the interest of the token holder treasury, foster the growth of community-generated content, and be a fellowship of content creators that tells the story of Dotsama.

Onboarding new members and sharing content, as well as rewards distribution will remain the same. If anything, there will likely be a larger variety of bounties with interest from new treasuries as well as existing treasuries pushing for even more content.

Recently, Jay announced that Bounty 12 funding has concluded.

Directors will now focus on individual spending proposals via Governance v2 to maintain ongoing funding for their channels.

During this interim period, awards will be paused with the exception of the WagMedia treasuries (Bifrost and Calamari still have some bounty campaigns going on). That said, feel free to find, create, and wag, as well as support your director and fellow community members to continue to have an awesome environment to create top-notch content.

With the focus on spend proposals, the weekly will operate at a reduced rate. Subscribe via Substack to not miss out on the next newsletter.

TOP NEWS OF THE WEEK

In early November, Sub0 Polkadot Developers Conference was mentioned in our previous weekly. Pnin wasn’t able to attend to capture the sights and sounds this time, but here are a couple official round-up clips. Notice any familiar faces?

No surprise that our Chief Architect would attend a large Polkadot developer conference unannounced (here’s the official speaker's lineup). The rumors were confirmed as soon as Alice und Bob tweeted, ”The boss is giving a surprise talk.”

Dr. Gavin Wood’s keynote was something he put together quickly before arrival. It covers his intentions for 2023. As the conference was focused on developers, much of it was technical, but Alice und Bob’s tweets provide an excellent simplified summary.

The presentation builds on Polkadot’s roadmap which we covered in the previous weekly here, divided into three sections. Here are a couple of threads that summarize day 1 and day 2 of the entire event, but for those looking for more detail on Gavin’s presentation, read on.

Dr. Gavin Wood on stage at Sub0

Section One

Section one of the presentation recaps what is being worked on and rolled out: 2D weights, message queues, XCM v3, OpenGov (Gov 2.0), fellowship pallet, and non-interactive staking.

2D weights is a fundamental change that switches one-dimensional weights to considering two resources: “execution time” and “space in proof of validity” when specifying the resources needed for performing functions in the network. NOTE: previously, one-dimensional weights were based on the computation time a particular operation was expected to take.

The change ensures that proofs are no longer bloated, which is crucial from a security standpoint. Currently, conservative limits are imposed to restrict what can be executed to avoid such issues, and the expectation is that the prominent use of a scheduler will come into effect with the gradual shift towards 2D weights.

Changes to message queues are a result of implementing 2D weights. The change will impose a unified message queue which is more efficient than resources on multiple queues.

XCMv3 will be key to unlocking a number of features, especially trustless bridging. Gavin is confident that there are no show stoppers for release, and it’s only held back because of dependencies on 2D weights and message queues. Csaint’s alpha shots provide a great summary of XCM v3.

Gavin believes OpenGov can create sophisticated democracies derived from different origins which will have different associated privileges and requirements. It allows for optimistic voting, which means simple proposals can get through quickly, whilst more controversial topics will get more scrutiny.

One further point made is that free delegation (see section three), is expected to encourage voter turnout with even more votes cast by subject matter experts. Check out Csaint’s recent alpha shots for a refresher on OpenGov.

Next up is the fellowship pallet, associated with OpenGov and used to replace the existing technical committee. Its implementation makes governance more agile as it forms a focused membership of technical experts, with a martial arts style ranking system.

Recognition of experts not only draws out the right people to safeguard the protocol, but it can also incentivize employers to recruit people with core expertise.

Towards the end, Gavin introduces non-interactive staking (NIS) which is different from existing staking as well as being a new asset class.

It involves locking up tokens for an NFT (receipt), and fungible tokens (counterpart), which will be liquid. After an imposed lock-up period, you will need both receipt and counterpart to redeem your original percentage of the network.

The NIS pallet is ready to go now and further information is expected prior to release.

Section Two

Section two of the presentation focuses on reform, which includes: Polkadot academy, ecosystem standardization, weight clawback, and system chain functionality.

Gavin confirmed his intention to be involved in the 2nd Polkadot academy, which is set to take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It begins on January 8th with an expected 75 to 100 students participating.

Ecosystem standardization addresses pain points when dealing with XCM configuration, XCM weights, and transaction priority. As mentioned by Gavin, more could be standardized, but these will be the ones to address in the near term as they can be completed in weeks rather than months.

The concept of weight clawback is to be more efficient with block space. It also reduces the stress on teams to code sophisticated weight benchmarking. The intention is that clawback takes place when the actual weight is known after an operation is performed.

Weight clawback can only apply to trivial operations that are not expected to take up a large percentage of the block space. Operations that are expected to require a large percentage of block space will need to implement weights benchmarking code.

The final segment of the section system chain functionality is about moving the majority of the functions off of the relay chain and onto parachains. As Gavin emphasized, the relay chain is really a security chain as it is meant to be only used for validating the network.

Functions such as governance, assets, staking, and bridging will be offloaded. Some functions are further in progress than others. For instance, we already have Statemine for assets, whilst governance is expected to move to the Collectives parachain (here’s Joe Petrowski’s article on common good parachains).

Section Three

Section three is what Gavin deemed as legitimately new concepts and technology, including: underlying data structures, Statement Holding Hub protocol, exotic core scheduling, ecosystem tech fellowship, and Polkadot Payroll.

Polkadot’s underlying data structures address how chunks of data formalize a Merkle tree. The intention is to further develop it to be a more flexible data structure as well as host new functions that make it more efficient for handling things like events.

Statement Holding Hub (SSH) protocol is essentially a Global DHT (distributed hash table - here’s a useful wikipedia link). In simplistic terms, it is a lookup service via networked computers. The development with SSH is to harness off-chain Global DHT, which can be utilized for free delegation when it comes to governance.

Gavin gives the example of being able to give permission to knowledgeable people who would pay associated costs when using your voting power. He also believes that the SSH protocol could be useful for other use cases.

The spectrum of ways to optimize the use of block space in the interest of token holders falls under exotic core scheduling. Thus far, we have witnessed parachain lease offerings as the first step in the economic scheduling of blocks.

Parathreads, which is the concept of pay-as-you-go, is an exciting yet already known step. Other mechanisms include round robin, which is when a number of parachains can share a single lease. Another approach is to have short-term one to two-week leases, which sit between parathreads and parachains.

More fellowships are expected, the next one being the ecosystem tech fellowship. It will comprise experts in Polkadot’s tooling, such as parachain building.

Aside from the role being a recognition of expertise, it is also a democratic body that could be used in governance to support issues such as bricked chains.

To wrap up the presentation, Gavin puts forward the concept of a Polkadot Payroll which we expect to be designed and documented in 2023. It’s considered a governance structure or a DAO, and it acts like a civil service.

The outline to receive a monthly income from this concept will consist of a permissionless application, and basic checks, followed by a number of periods to prove consistent valuable contributions.

Fellowships are expected to have a role in checking the productivity of applicants. Additionally, Gavin also sees this as an approach that could bring new people into the fellowships.

Gavin’s presentation was immense. As such, it’s a lot to take in. Carefully take stock of what our Chief Architect has to say, and ignore uninformed FUD claiming that “Polkadot’s CEO left.”

Now, on to the usual flurry of news and content.

Speed Reading

Frequency won the 33rd Polkadot Parachain auction

Nitty Gritty

  • Check out the article about Polkadot’s Anti-Scam initiatives. Formed in February 2021 rewards for identified scams were distributed on-chain with tips and child bounties.
  • The Web3 Foundation publishes a write-up about improvements that allow for better verification of BLS signatures (Boneh–Lynn–Shacham is used to verify the authenticity of a signer).
  • Joe Petrowski puts out Statemint’s updated roadmap, which covers a new assets pallet, advanced NFT support, Statemine native DEX, and advanced assets and cross-chain functionality. (Those on the WagMedia discord can view this solid breakdown by @swangupand via the link here).
  • Nomination pools provide simplicity as well as lowers bearers amount needed for Polkadot staking, there is currently over 500,000 DOT bonded via nomination pools.
  • Here’s Polkadot's November newsletter, which covers OpenGov, Nomination Pools, Sub0, and much more.
  • Edgeware provides its latest financial report here. Also, its solochain is now live and running after successfully completing both stages of an upgrade called “The Merge and The Switch”.
  • Ajuna’s weekly update covers its parachain now producing blocks, scheduled appearance at Sub0, Dotinsights ranking, Onfinaility marketplace, and Zondax partnership with Ledger app.
  • Manta’s article explains how to participate in their trusted set-up with over 12K contributors who have joined in. If you join you will get an NFT, also there is a gleam campaign to win some KMA tokens.
  • Applications to participate in Phala’s phat contract closed beta is now open, there will be limited spaces, whilst testers will be eligible for rewards.
  • Fractal Protocol is set to launch Substrate to Gnosis bridging on December 6th.
  • Ternoa has announced a partnership with Kylin Network to use its trustless oracle.
  • Unique Network announces a collaboration with Unit Masters via Lemonade, the move will bring about blockchain education.
  • Crust announces a partnership with Web3Auth, a move to simplify access to Crust's storage solutions with simplified login methods.
  • Catch up with Darwinia 2.0 latest developments, which include unifying address format, and upgrading of staking module, via the link here.
  • HRMP channels are opened between Astar and Phala, and asset movement can be done via SubBridge, whilst Phat contract integration will be via XCM.
  • OriginTrail has completed batch 7 and thus completed 59% of TRAC teleportation
  • Here’s Crust’s biweekly report, highlights include the go live of Cloud3, Crustfiles supported by SubWallet, several upgrades, and partnerships including Meet48 , Oneland, and Peaq Network.
  • Ternoa has completed its mainnet phase 3, which includes features such as rental NFTs, soulbound tokens, and English auctions.
  • Zeitgeist’s latest newsletter covers FIFA World Cup being the top active market, hosting live Twitter Spaces for selected World Cup knockout matches, updates on Avatar Profiles and NFT badges, protocol updates, and to expect some Polkadot Kusama cross-chain communications by the end of 2022.
  • Crust’s new community rewards program has just launched, check out the article here, for more details.
  • Check out Manta’s November update, which includes Trusted set-up, Calamari DPOS, Collator staking application, educational resources, events the team has been involved in, and much more.
  • Phala provides details of its upcoming release of Phala 2.0. app, which includes a new UI, improved staking pools, and a new vault module; more details here.
  • Polimec a liquidity mechanism for early-stage projects building on Polkadot has now evolved into an independent project. That said, Polimec will still utilize Kilt for identity solutions.

Having previously been under Kilt Protocol, Polimec now becomes an independent project

Content creation

Plenty of content was created in response to Manta’s Trusted set-up bounty. The image is from @Paulkadotter’s excellent thread

Messages From the Treasuries

  • Moonbeam continues illuminate hackathon support as they had open mics with lead developers from Axelar, LayerZero, Hyperlane and Wormhole this past week. Check out who’s working on the Illuminate hackathon here. Illuminate continues with the Illuminate 22 Cup! This initiative encourages users to perform different on-chain tasks and collect NFT jerseys. This is live until December 18th.
  • Chainlink and Moonbeam open up on this crowdcast about their partnership and how Chainlink helps dApps be more efficient on both Moonbeam and Chainlink. Another Moonbeam partner, Zircon Finance, chatted with the Moonbeam team on a recent twitter space. Learn more about Wormhole, a prominent multi-chain bridge that uses a Guardian network of nodes for verification, in this deep dive article from Moonbeam.
  • Moonbeam joins 7 other OG parachains in the newly formed Polkadot Alliance which aims to defend and bolster the Polkadot brand. Learn more about the Alliance here. Big news as $GLMR is now available on Ledger! Relation, a social graph explorer makes its way to Moonbeam bringing semantic soul-bound tokens and a mutli-chain social graph infrastructure. Learn more about Relation here.
  • Check out the first third party app built on Subsocial with Polkadot Arena, and it’s initially in Italian! Since upgraded to also include some English content, Polkadot Arena uses Subsocial’s indexer to pull articles straight from PolkaVerse onto their platform. Learn more about how Polkadot Arena launched in this deep dive article.

Crowdloan Updates

  • Picasso Crowdloan rewards have opened up for the claim, 50% are vested, and scheduled for mid-December will be the launch of Pablo DEX as well as PICA pools.
  • Kusama Parachain Auction 62 was won by unnamed Parathread 2236, which was self-funded with 1005 KSM.
  • Congratulations to Frequency who have secured a Polkadot Parachain slot with a self-funded bid.

As part of Picasso’s eagerly-awaited launch sequence, a guide on using a wallet was provided

What's in Your Wallet?

AMA and IRL Events Round-up

  • Omni X host Moonbeam in a fireside chat on November 25th, listen to the recording here.
  • Talisman Meditations on December 1st featured Bill Laboon. NOTE: This is hosted on discord, so do make sure to join in if you don’t want to miss out.
  • Sign up for Builders Weekend in Tokyo on December 17th to 18th, where Astar will be involved.
  • Here’s a recording from November 28th hosted by Polkawarriors and features Bifrost, Beamswap, Midas, DAM, and Zircon.
  • Polkadot and Astar Ambassador Chris Malize hosted a spaces talk about Astar Network Dapp Staking on November 26th.
  • Darwinia hosted a Quiz Game on their discord on November 29th. There are prizes to be had, so consider joining their discord.
  • Interlay held a community call on November 30th to cover their roadmap and to provide a demo of their new lending protocol testnet. A subsequent demo was held on December 1st.
  • KodaDot is hosting a Christmas party in Slovenia on December the 14th, here’s an invite link.

It’s the season to be jolly, as KodaDot invite you to a Christmas Party!
  • Talisman is hosting quiz nights on their discord, the last one was on December 2nd. Prizes include commendation NFTS, so consider dropping by their discord.
  • Edgware held a community call on November 30th.
  • Get ready for the Polkadot Munich meet-up on December 5th.
  • Here’s a reminder for a workshop on December 14th on building privacy dapp on Moonbeam.
  • Set a reminder for Nodel’s Community AMA on December 9th.Sign-up for the crowdcast roundtable on December 8th hosted by Phala.
  • Polkadex is involved in BacktheBuidlers conference in India on December 3rd.
  • Here’s the event link for the Crust Community Open Call held on December 6th.
  • Check out and join the spaces on December 5th where the panel includes representatives from Astar, Gear, and more to discuss the challenges for Polkadot mass adoption.
  • Firefly Exchange (on Moonbeam) hosted a discord community call on December 2nd.

Translating DotSama

Some excellent translations and non-English original creations, which you may find fitting to share with family, friends, and neighbors around the world.

NFTs and the Metaverse: The Heartbeat of Dotsama

It’s the season of giving! Some collections are giving holders excitement as they step up with their next stages. Perhaps you can consider gifting one of the new NFTs being wagged about?
  • Rad Planet released a manifesto and teases citizenship.
  • SFY Labs is minting the Saurus Crew.
  • Dia de los animales is a new composable collection.
  • Algem unveils an NFT collection built on the Astar network.
  • YoudleDAO announces a mint date of December 3rd for ticket holders, though there has been a delay.
  • Users will be able to rent and loan GLMR Jungle NFTs.
  • Blacksquare Art Voting has started.
  • apeXchimpz banner with Knight resources have received new NaNa-BaNa resource.
  • Phala world incubation begins Dec 5-13.
  • Evrloot dropped a big sneak peak on expeditions and real-time roguelike gameplay coming Q3.
  • Cosmize will have a Christmas event and has a whitepaper release soon.
  • Scytale Ventures makes investments in Moonsama.

Content creation

DeFI

Dotsama DEFI continues to develop, as we see new features, new launches, partnerships, grants programs, and channel openings between parachains

Notifi brings push notifications to Acala Network.

  • Interlay Labs launches a grants program to fund building on Interlay and Kintsugi. The program is looking for Lending Liquidation Bots and Analytic Dashboards for AMM. Details to apply can be found here.
  • Bifrost and MangataX HRMP channel opening has happened, and more tokens will be available on both chains soon.
  • Bifrost release their November report, highlights include protocol version updates, the launch of vMOVR and vGLMR, the latest TVL status, Encrypt wallet support, and much more.

Content creation

@Paulkadotter creates a nice thread and infographic on Bifrost liquid staking with GLMR and MOVR.

Governance

Plenty of tracks to think about in OpenGov, whilst a few more referendums to go via the first version of Governance
  • As Open Gov is being worked through, Referenda 1 and 2 were canceled by the passing of Referendum 6. This was necessary due to a faulty call that was reserved for the root origin. At least it’s on the canary network! Referenda 1 and 2 have already been replaced with 3 and 5 respectively. Engage in the discussion on Polkadot forums about the future of Open Gov!
  • As the first version of Governance is phased out, Referendum 250 may very well be the last proposal to move through the old system. It aims to remedy Genshiro’s recent request to swap parachain leases and Kinstugi’s HRMP channel with Statemine. But wait! Referendum 251 was submitted to move Zeitgeist to its new lease due to a bug in their latest runtime upgrade.
  • Moonwell’s governance continues to impress as another proposal has been passed to rebalance the $WELL token incentives. Another proposal is live to bring USDC, ETH and WBTC to Artemis via Wormhole where there are plans to open up a GLMR/WELL pool
  • Moonbeam looks to add a registrar for on-chain identity verification similar to the relay chains while Edgewarelaunches a meme competition
  • Curious about Phala governance? Check out this guide which details how to go about submitting proposals. Khala’s governance looks to improve on their Delegate to Earn model which aims to incentivize delegation of votes
  • ChaosDAO is leading the charge in the new era of governance as they aim to be actively involved in on-chain governance. Check out this thread to learn what their vision is and be sure to consider delegating votes to the ChaosDAO account!
  • Interlayis proposing a few referenda to change a few things in the network including lowering vault rewards and lowering the secure threshold levels for liquidations. This appears to be in preparation for their plans to introduce more DeFi to their platform.
  • Long-time community member, Adam, has compiled a google doc of Open Gov parameters and added a few suggestions to help improve efficiency.

Rumours & Alpha

Do Your Own Research! These finds are unconfirmed alpha in Dotsama:

  • The latest episode of "The RIRI SHOW" features InvArch’s founder, Dakota Barnett. Check it out, as some alpha is shared.
  • Those who have used Axelar on Moonbeam are looking likely to be eligible for an airdrop.

Beginner’s Guide

New to Polkadot? Or maybe you have some friends who keep coins on a CEX but haven't become a part of a community yet? Share this with them to get them started! It will be updated weekly with new content and is open for changes. Feel free to leave a comment and I'll add content that's needed.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Dotsama

Another mind-blowing week! Our WagMedia discord is the primary source for most of the content in this newsletter – thanks a ton fam! These are just the highlights, for more in-depth news join the discord and get incentivized to learn more about the ecosystem and provide news, alpha, and content to us all. As always, I’m open to feedback and I hope you find this helpful. Looking forward to yet another week of exponential growth in the DotSama ecosystem.

What is WagMedia?

WagMedia Discord.

Jay Chrawnna’s The Kusamarian channel provides us all with extremely entertaining updates on everything DotSama. Here is the playback listing of the past week:

  1. Polkadot Open Governance & the three Ingredients of a Decentralized Workforce - SER Have ya Heard?
  2. How This Blockchain Project is Deploying Compliant Privacy on Polkadot and Beyond - Space Monkeys 80.
  3. Shill Your NFTs on a Whole New Level with 3D AR Assets on Otto's Night Market - P-Ninja on the Road.
  4. Endless DEX Liquidity with HydraDX's $LRNA and Omnipool on Polkadot - Csaint's Alpha Shots.

Looking for more to read, why not check out the other works by the Wag Weekly Squad: Pnin, Csaint, Jb_blah, and Dodow.

Tips appreciated

KSM

GL85fwNiFfUqkCcmtrq7eD5DphB1QWJrxkgMme5qdSuFfap

Metamask

0x66b9f30B38Cb6d61374D15D8A9D220561E715995

Bifrost is back with another legendary meme bounty!
#PolkadotKusamaDotSamaNFTsDEFIGovernanceSub0OpenGovDr. Gavin Wood
0
DodowPost author

Dotty WagMedia Guy

WagMedia Weekly News

News you need to know to stay on top of significant DotSama developments. Courtesy of WagMedia and Polka Häus

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WagMedia Weekly News
News you need to know to stay on top of significant DotSama developments. Courtesy of WagMedia and Polka Häus