BangDOT! (March 10th to March 16th)
This past week was all about the Polkadot Developers conference, also known as Sub0, held in Bangkok, Thailand.
While many gigabrains at the event were banging out announcement after announcement, the WagMedia discord was busy sharing all this alpha via our finders program.
Therefore, this week, we present a double top story feature on the event. Hopefully, our fresh takes will keep you excited as we get into Dr Wood’s keynote, as well as present some of the latest application features from our ecosystem builders.
The full newsletter can be enjoyed via this link.
Dodow, Chief Editor
Top Story Of The Week - Over the JAM
Written by yay.oi
Sawasdee Krap Wag Fam! This week’s top news comes from the City of Angels in the Land of Smiles, Bangkok, where the Sub0 Developer conference gathered the brightest minds from across the Polka-sphere. This is the 6th Sub0 conference and the first Asian edition.
In his inaugural keynote at Sub0 Berlin 2019, Gav laid the foundation for Polkadot’s future. The core message was that strong community governance is crucial to the continuous valuable evolution of Polkadot. So, when he presents a bold new vision, he always reiterates that the Polkadot community has the final say in turning it into reality.
In the spirit of valuable evolution, this year’s keynote marked a dramatic shift from the ideas presented in 2022.
2022’s keynote emphasized that the relay chain, as a security chain, should only be used for its primary purpose of validating the network. Other functions should be moved off the relay chain and onto regular or common good parachains.
Fast forward two years and a lot has changed, the relay chain has infinitely more potential yet it’s being underutilized. The solution named JAM chain by Gav, represents a significant upgrade that will increase efficiency and speed, whilst maximizing the utilization of valuable Polkadot Core resources.
Check out our full newsletter for the full story
Top Story Of The Week - Sub Features
Written by Sanchez
At the just concluded Sub0, held in Bangkok, the team at Novasama Technologies announced the launch of Telenova. Telenova is a Polkadot wallet built into Telegram, which allows onboarding in less than 1 minute. Users can use this to send, receive, and manage token assets. Transfers can be made to user contacts and wallet addresses, making it a smooth experience to onboard many users with support for stablecoins expected soon.
Similarly, at Sub0, Bifrost announced the launch of Loopstake, a leverage staking protocol on Polkadot. Leverage staking is a strategy for amplifying staking rewards utilizing liquid staking tokens (LST) on lending platforms. Users can use a maximum of 4X leverage to boost their staking rewards according to their appetite for risk.
Sub0 also featured demos showcasing the products being built by different teams. Following is a limited selection……
Check out our full newsletter for the full story
General & Governance News
Written by Gigs
To infinity and beyond! A seven-member Polkadot Social Media Editorial Board was inaugurated to expand the ecosystem's social media presence and community collaboration.
A BEEFY technical announcement was released during the week.
Mandala Chain wins the 64th Polkadot Parachain Auction with a bid of around 124k DOT.
Ink! v5 is released, providing significant security enhancements.
Karura to extend a slot on Kusama following its 130 KSM winning bid.
Talisman submitted a Unified Retroactive Proposal #2 for funding to improve user experience, adoption, and security on Talisman wallet and Talisman Portal.
The Decentralised Future of Business Development for Polkadot (Ref #506) proposal which has passed, requested 50K DOT to source, vet, and place five top-tier business executives into the program.
NFT & DEFI News
Written by Turing Machine
The NFTs cross-chain Proof Of Concept by Unique Network has been concluded, the team has now introduced an NFT Think Tank to discover new business opportunities and go-to-market strategies.
BEEFY is not “just” about consensus, the memecoin has been born with its BULLRUN game expected soon.
Expect top-notch lore and content as our very own WagMedia legend, Pnin, officially joins the Evrloot team as a writer.
Polkadex releases its Hestia update, which brings “cexy” improvements to the UIX, liquidity mining, and trading fees.
Parallel Finance’s oracle appears to have been compromised this past week, It allowed a hacker to withdraw an equivalent value that was greater than the original lending position. This is based on on-chain data, as there has been no official communication from the team.
Events News
Written by Gigs
Only a handful of events were hosted by projects in the Polkadot ecosystem, as most teams were at Sub0 during the week.
Mark your calendar for DePIN 2049 on April 18.
Extras
A big shoutout goes to Alice und Bob for his live reporting on X, and also to The Kusamarian for providing us with daily sights and sounds ensuring the key messages were captured.
Awesome cover art created by aemonk.