Polkadot News: January/February

Polkadot Academy

The fourth wave of Polkadot Academy ended in Hong Kong with the participation of more than 90 students from more than 35 different countries. Now, graduates are ready to make a difference in the Web3 world, powered by Polkadot. In the @danicuki words, Rust is the best language to build blockchains. The language capabilities is literally protecting billions of dollars.

https://twitter.com/AcademyPolkadot/status/1754015502899224826/photo/1

Acala's retroactive funding

The Acala team's proposal to request retroactive funding from ORML, Chopsticks, and Subway is passing with 96.7% of the votes. One of the co-founders, Bryan Chen, believes it is fair to pay retroactively for all work done. In the same vein, Shawn Tabrizi believes that the Acala team is the team that has contributed the most success to the Polkadot team (apart from Parity).

Coretime Sales

The referendumproposing Burn Revenue from Coretime Sales is being rejected with 66% of the votes.

USDC on Polkadot

Binance exchange has integrated USD coin (USDC) into Polkadot and now allows withdrawal and deposit. Additionally, Circle announced that it has successfully issued the native version of USDC on Polkadot Asset Hub, a crucial component of the parachain system that acts as a platform for issuing assets in the ecosystem.

Web3 Foundation: Decentralizing Voting Power

The Web3 Foundation started Decentralizing Voting Power on Polkadot and Kusama with the aim of delegating its own KSM and DOTs to individuals who are active in opengov. In this way, in addition to further decentralizing governance, you will be empowering users actively involved in the ecosystem and in decision-making.

Parity tech launches ink version 4.0

With a more intuitive version, with a more simplified design and more comfortable default behavior so that Devs can implement their codes. Also, The new storage setup reduces the footprint of our on-chain contracts.

Another new feature is introducing an End-to-End (E2E) testing framework.

https://www.parity.io/we-just-released-ink-4-0

BEEFY Referendum

Referendum #343 Set BEEFY genesis (thus starting BEEFY consensus on Kusama) is open for voting and has 99.8% votes in favor.