Aye to Polkadoption! (September 16th -...

What is up, my friends!

The start of the week saw our improved WagMedia Bounty #12 Top Up proposal on-chain with the motion ready for the Kusama Council to vote on. The proposal came with a succinct explanation video from Jay, as well, as comprehensive supporting information and links.

A submitted comment on the proposal from @pnin sums it up nicely:

“This proposal has been much improved in clarity, structure, and vision. There's an intelligent mechanism designed to funnel and grow diversified talent, built with economic strategy and vision. The burden of proof of effectiveness (setting reasonable expectations) is also well constructed.

I'm in full support of the spend, the revision, and the ambitions herein. I think that this meets all the concerns presented by those in opposition to the last proposal.”

By the end of the week, the motion passed with 10 votes; here are the voting details. Bizarrely, Zug Capital voted “Aye” but is no longer on the council.

Although the motion was passed, it was an external motion, which means that after the Council votes, the community will vote as well, having the final decision on the proposal. The vote is now open as Referendum 234.

TOP NEWS OF THE WEEK

If you’ve been in the Paraverse for long, you’ve heard some of the biggest arguments for why Polkadot and Kusama has limited adoption. “Wen marketing? We need better UI/UX. When we have better use cases - then it’ll be apparent! Parity needs to step in.”

Each of these solutions has deeper layers of complexity than we’d like to admit.

How limited is limited adoption? I am referring to the many estimates that only about 3,000-5,000 Paraverse users are consistently active on a day-to-day basis. While the number of total wallets exceeds the hundreds of thousands, active users is a different story. Similarly, while the number of interested parties in the broader Web3 ecosystem has risen, many still perceive a high barrier to entry to bring in consistent and active users.

To achieve mass adoption, the purist may want to hold true to ideals that brought Polkadot and Kusama to this point of strength: decentralization, web3 native products and structures, and a focus on developing and operating with the teams that are here now, and who have been in the Paraverse from the beginning.

But nothing’s ever pure. The following two events this week challenges the purist’s model:

USDT is now natively minted on Statemine and Statemint making it available to be used without a bridge in the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem.
Exosama, the hottest NFT project from Donnie Bigbags, went live on Opensea with an intent to bring users to Moonbeam.

The purist may argue that USDT is too centralized and surrounded with too much controversy, but what about the trust that USDT has garnered since its inception? As I see it, USDT can bring a sense of familiarity and safety to users who have been using this stablecoin through the failure of a few different variants, one of which may be correcting itself very soon.

When thinking about Donnie’s launch on Opensea, the largest NFT marketplace on Ethereum, the purist may argue that he should have stayed within the Paraverse and built adoption through unrivaled success and a user experience that would only be present here. In reality, Donnie’s successful launch on Opensea validates the NFT market in the Paraverse and aims to bring users back in rather than move them away.

The purist can’t have it both ways. Mass adoption comes with compromise and innovative strategies to expose people to your products, and I would argue that this is good, if not great, for the Paraverse. Now that applications for DeFi, DID, governance, NFTs and more have gone live on the network, it’s time for more eyes to make their way to the future of blockchain technology.

Polkadot has been fully live for less than a year and its final forms of the most promising features aren’t even completely fleshed out, yet the user experience has been improving each and every week.

A move to appeal to the current crowd while exposing them to the future is alright in my book, but do you have a different take? Let us know in the comments below.

Now, on to the usual flurry of news & content!

Speed Reading

USDT Tether launches on Polkadot!

Nitty Gritty

Crust Network announces a partnership that shall see them providing their storage services for Metamirror. Metamirror provides digital identity and data assets solutions for bridging from Web2 to Web3.
Composable has put out a comprehensive article that explains the utility of their soon-to-be distributed Picasso tokens. It covers transactions, collator staking, fNFTs, oracle staking, LPs, and governance.
Arthswap the leading DEX on Astar, is now supported by Alchemy’s best-in-class developer platform.
Check out the sneak peek of Imbue’s new UI, along with some new features here.
Invarch has announced that private beta registration is now open for GitArch. And here’s a quick look at GitArch. Also, check out the familiar UX and smooth UI in the clip here.
Here’s the weekly update thread for Astar Network covering key news including Binance US, Cross-chain transfer with Moonbeam, and XVM. And here’s the thread that covers all the key news from its ecosystem projects.
Subquery will be airdropping $kSQT tokens to its indexers and ambassadors.
Polkadot and Kusama top the blockchain development activity chart in the last 30 days
Check out the overview of Oak Network in the article here and the thread here, courtesy of Polkadotters.
Here’s the latest article about Zeitgeist along with an informative tweet courtesy of Polkadotters.
[BREAKING NEWS] Tether (USDT) announced on September 23rd that they are now live on Polkadot.

Content creation (Tier 1 & 2 Creator)

Bifrost’s bounty campaign on RainDOT, was popular with our content creators this past week

@DrCAO produces a number of videos this week, which cover Bifrost’s RainDOT campaign, Oak Network’s crowdloan launch (with article), and a round-up of DotSama opportunities (includes YoudleDAO, and Parallel Finance giveaway, and comes with an article).
@pitcoin created a few helpful threads, which include an Astar overview, welcoming Ethereum to POS, and an explanation of Astar’s build2earn approach. Astar’s Build2Earn is covered in the epic article here, which went thread the Writer’s room.
@Cris_Pap puts out a quality thread providing us with a breakdown of Energy Web.
@pnp creates a few threads this week, which include an overview of Polkadex, a thread that links to his article about Acala’s aUSD incident, and an overview of Nova Wallet.
@YuliKay created another short video about Bifrost’s RainDOT campaign.
@LV put out his second installment covering a selection of news coming through WagMedia, well done for doing it while having really strong coffee!

Messages From the Treasuries

Listen to the Subsocial team’s discussion with Equilibriumwhich focused on EQ’s beta launch. More listening to do as Subsocial also joined in with Cooper and Arrow to discuss the basics of Subsocial and the future of decentralized social media.
Moonbeam with many updates this week, per usual! Their connected Contracts Hackathon has now closed and they are currently discussing winners! Tune in to next week’s newsletter to hear which teams have won. Also note that those who voted in the community grants referendum on Moonbeam have been airdropped an “I voted” NFT! Check if you got one here.
Moonbeam also spent time at Messari Mainnet 2022 with Founder Derek Yoo taking centerstage. Check out Messari’s website to listen to Derek’s talk and hear what else went down in NYC this year!

Crowdloan Updates

Parathread 2058 or should we say Watr Protocol has secured a Polkadot Parachain!

Totem announces that it is now live as it produces its first block.
Kylin has released the details for their airdrop of Pichiu tokens for their Kylin holders, which was outlined in their tokenomics before securing a Kusama parachain slot with their crowdloan.
Here’s an update from Snow Network with their progress on their imminent (expected on September 19th) Kusama parachain onboarding.
Parathread 2058 who won the 27th Polkadot Auction has been revealed as Watr Protocol, and here’s Csaint’s Alpha Shot that provides a sweet overview.
Oak Network reached their 150K DOT cap in less than 24 hours since they opened up their crowdloan.

What's in Your Wallet?

Solarbeam dApp is now supported on Nova Wallet on both IOS and Android.
Your $POOP can now be sorted on the go with Nova Wallet.
Parallel’s Wallet v1 officially launched, and to celebrate here’s a chance to win some $PARA tokens.
Need a quick way to buy some tokens with fiat then, Subwallet has made it easier via Transak.

AMA and IRL Events Round-up

Talisman’s Meditation discord session took place on September 23rd with Jonathan Hellweg from Pendulum.
Here’s the Darwinia AMA recording from September 16th featuring David from Oak Network.
Check out the spaces recording from September 20th as Astar hosts Invarch for a discussion.
Replay the crowdcast from September 22nd as KodaDot hosts a session to recap Berlin Blockchain week.
Catch up on Composable’s session with Rob Habermeier on September 21st here.
Imbue Network held an excellent talk on September 21st, and a couple of lucky people were given whitelist spots.

Check out Composable Finance spaces recording, which features asynchronous Brainjar and Rob!

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.

You can find most of the Non-Anglo Content generated through WagMedia here.
From the Spanish Lounge, @MrDefi covers Parallel Finance, a selection of Polkadot Defi opportunities, and translated the KodaDot Wiki. @maczam123 created a video on Listen Network. And here’s the third installment of Dotcast by @Nachito and @
In the Portuguese Lounge, @johnrhodel translates his own Q&A with Astar, his own Q&A with Nodle, Bifrost’s support for Oak Network crowdloan, and Oak’s guide to participating in their crowdloan.
Over at the Italian Lounge, @yamane translates Mangata’s blog on their SDK, and their blog on bootstrapping new tokens feature. @paulll translates Bifrost’s partnership with Blockdaemon article, StakeBNC dashboard article, and article on WebAssembly technology on Bifrost.

Content Dojo (Tier 3 Creator)

With some feedback via the Content Dojo @brhnk61 has improved his threads on DotSama parachain auctions. This is one of his recent awesome infographics!

@prophet’s work on Polkadot architecture was absolutely astonishing! They explain why Polkadot is sufficiently decentralized, detail Polkadot's Consensus Mechanism, and cover the Evolution of Consensus in General! Also, they put together a nice thread on Parallel Wallet v1.
@marvelet creates Astar Odyssey for Astar/Shiden dApps. It’s not the official site, but maybe Astar could take a few notes?
@ᒪIᒪ ᗰᗩᑎGO creates a clean infographic on benefits of Taipo protocol.
@abujulaibib joins this week with details on the Bifrost RainDOT campaign and has a step-by-step walkthrough.
@Tycho Masius explains YoudleDAO and the giveaways!
@MaximV. TFA-DAO has a wonderful one-page on transferring assets between Moonbeam & Moonriver and the weekly Moonbeam recap. They also have an interesting take on the potential of the Exosama ecosystem.
@gambo takes a stab at creating a simplified infographic for Gov 2.0 and writes a thread on Bifrost.
@paulll creates infographics on Tech Updates for Bifrost and Amplitude Grants Program.
@pnin, @Csaint02, @JB and @Dodow deliver another recap of the weekly news Writing History & Chaos!.... TLDR? check out @LV’s Coffee LV Recap.
@TheFVK explains the unique experience that The Canary Agency is building.
@kryptoschain bring us the latest news from leading parachains, Integritee launch SDK, and Is Moonsama coming to Bitcountry?
@mike (Degen Of Dotsama) explains how Acala could do a better job handling the aUSD incident.

NFTs and the Metaverse: The Heartbeat of Dotsama

Quite a bit of NFT launches and announcements were being made this past week!

YoudleDAO, taking things to the next level. There’s been a banner drop that brings benefits. The Youdle DAO floor just got swept, possibly blamed on Yung Beef, and YoudleDAO did a free giveaway. Learn about the YoudleDAO Rainbow event! Also, YoudleDAO ran a trivia contest with 100 people able to win.
The Open Emoji Battler is the first fully on-chain WASM smart contract game, now live on Shiden.
Planet Neo DinoXDino drops 46 Ice Cream NFTs, useful for a free Momo & Yeti NFT.
Bit.Country podcast episode 14 is out! An experienced professional Minecraft player gets interviewed and explains what metaverse is for him and how his impression of bit.country is.
Governance referendum 226 NFTs have been delivered.
Kodadot has officially launched on Basilisk.
Moonfit partners with ZooDAO.
The first Bifrostcollection is coming on Singular.
You can now upgrade your profile on Raresama for $POOP.
Migrate your Shiba Tales 1.0 NFTs for an airdrop.
The awesome phenomenal PhalaWorld AI-Spectre customizable NFT.

@Hoon Kim from Astar Network discusses building NFTs on Polkadot in Berlin with several other builders.
Materia Prima announces their game’s name using RMRK.

A Rarity tracker was published for the Canary Network Agency project. CNA also does a giveaway in partnership with Cosmize.
Evrloot does a tweet campaign with 3 winners selected at random.
Skylabs sale for 3d equippables is coming very soon with details on price/drop.
Hog Lordz teases their next drop.
Chaos Collective members Rich Valentino and harunoheart need to escape Russia.
The Tricky NFT team recently published an article on Proof-of-Perkability: a type of soulbond NFT based on RMRK that ensures NFT-perks aren't used to game others.
Exosama scroll holders can now mint!
SubWallet launches its first Metaverse in Bit.Country
Unique explains how Lemonade Social uses its advanced NFT technology solutions for web3 ticketing.

Content creation (Tier 1 & 2 Creator)

@Crane documents **YoudleDAO’**s insane FOMO finish in a tweet thread.
@DrCAO also covers YoudleDAO’s sell-out in a video. He also does a video overview of Evolution Land from Darwinia.
@pnp covers Public Pressure’s PODS in a thread.
@Everythingblockchain also covers **Public Pressure’**s PODS.
@kryptoschain makes a fantastic tutorial about Bitcountry Pioneer’s metaverse. He also makes a video about Bitcountry and Moonsama, Oak winning an auction and Sora launching the first crypto debit card on Polkadot! There’s a third video on Integritee launch SDK, Oak Network's crowdloan now live, and RMRK & Ajuna's latest news.
@CryptoX creates a website to introduce newcomers to Samaverse, Exosama, Moonsama, Pondsama, and everything in-between.
@TheFVK makes a comprehensive twitter thread on the Canary Network Agency project. He also makes one on Evrloot.
@yamne shares their experience testing Evrloot 0.5.
@Bidaoleermeester88 discusses the potential of exosamaand its ecosystem.
@Tycho Masius makes a great overview thread on YoudleDAO.
@paulll discusses how to earn Bifrost raindrops and shares images of the Asgard NFT collection directly from Berlin’s blockchain week.

DeFI

Eyes on various screens with the DeFI opportunities and news being reported

Auto-compounding of staked Turing is now available on Nova wallet.
YieldBay List is now tracking Zenlink on Moonriver and rapidly adding new features.
As part of the Parallel/Heiko farm product relaunch, the team will be providing some sweet APY incentives. Initial LP pairs will be PARA/GLMR, HKO/MOVR, PARA/PHA, and HKO/PHA.
Check out this succinct summary of the benefits of Raindrops for Bifrost’s RainDOT campaign.
Users that staked DOT in Bifrost before 13th September receive an airdrop of Raindrop points!
Acala has released an incident report that provides a fairly comprehensive summary of what went wrong and subsequent responses. Later, they publish an article providing details of their path to resuming operations.
Composable puts out an article to explain the future of Mosaic, given their recent announcement of the first KSM-DOT bridge powered by IBC.
Polkadotters release an article, tweets, and weekly news centering around the Bifrost RainDOT campaign.
StellaSwap announces that they will offer users insurance to protect DeFI assets with their InsurAce collaboration.
Equilibrium is entering the closed beta phase!
Coinbase Wallet is now supported on Solarbeam.
Wormhole supports Moonbeam, the second parachain to launch on Wormhole.
ArthSwap lists GLMR.

Content creation (Tier 1 & 2 Creator)

@PNP brings us their parachain weekly on substack, this week discussing Astar Network and Bifrost Finance. Also, creating a thread that overviews StellaSwap.
@Everythingblockchain makes a video about the RainDOT campaign, accompanied by this handy infographic.
@MaxTheo explains Zeitgeist Prediction Markets For Dummies, creates a Zeitgeist app tutorial, mints vDOT on Bifrost, and details the OAK Network Crowdloan.
@DrCAO provides valuable educational videos and complementary articles covering a number of things. This week discussing the new farming incentive program from Parallel Finance
@Crane writes a great thread about Bifrost’s vDOT.

Governance

On Kusama, did someone mention pools? Parachains and dApps also making progress with governance

Web3Alertshas passed a proposal to cover the costs of integrating with Interlay over a 6 month time frame.
KILTfinalizes plans to move from Kusama to Polkadot with their recent referendum.
Referendum 230 passed enabling an initiative to bootstrap nomination pools that will be completely controlled by Kusama governance and facilitate by ONE-T, a member of the Thousand Validators Programme.
Amplitude passed their first referendum which burned 36 million tokens that were left over from the Crowdloan allocation.
Governance is on the way to Moonwell! Check out this tweet to learn more about how to activate your voting power by delegating your $MFAM.
Referendum 231 is up for vote! This referendum unfortunately has a bug that has been pointed out by the council who is asking the community to vote the proposal down. Please take caution and stay tuned for governance updates!

Rumours & Alpha

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

Astar congratulates MoonsamaNFT on their 1 yr anniversary. And make another hint at $POOP.
Kusama ape club might migrate a collection to Raresama.
Looks like you might be able to use $POOP as collateral to mint a stablecoin via the upcoming DAM protocol.

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:

First Zeitgeist Markets Predict $PICA launch on Kusama and Polkadot News - SER, Have ya' Heard?
Visualizing Clean Data from The Blockchain w/ Lemo Tsui from Web3Go - Space Monkeys Podcast 069.
Bounty #12: Final Kusama Treasury Proposal - AAG Ep. 2.
AI NFT Tutorial on Kusama's Singular w/ Midjourney - P-Ninja on the Road.
Legal Security on the Blockchain w/ Logion Network - 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

What the $POOP is going on?

Aye to Polkadoption! (September 16th - September 22nd)