Core Shifts! - Newsletter Edition 102
In this week’s edition:
Editorial: Core changes, shifting narratives in the Polkadot ecosystem, and which creators and their content stood out last month.
Top Story - Shifting DOT Narratives: Building on Gav’s interview with Mr Shift, there are quite a few narratives to unpack this week.
Featured Report - MAYbe Content?: The standout content from May, and how some creators could benefit from a change in approach.
Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between June 5th and June 11th.
Extras: Credits and anything else.
Editorial
What is up, my friends!
When the leader of the land of the free and the world’s richest man fall out, some core changes could be expected. Although there are no incentives to yap about it on CT, the tension is bound to bring significant attention on X. Likewise, Circle’s successful IPO draws major focus to crypto and potentially more public offerings on the global stage of traditional stock exchanges.
Meanwhile, the Chief Architect of Web3’s most resilient platform has been gaining attention through the latest interview with Mr Shift. A recap of that conversation, debates galore, core time updates, and kicking launches feed into Polkadot’s shifting narratives in this week’s Top Story.
Narratives can be important when it comes to those who create content. For our Featured Report, we’ll cover the standouts from last month’s WagMedia Creator Economy. With ongoing technical developments and shifts in attention, perhaps some creators could consider the feedback through WAG and adapt their approach.
As per usual, we’ll be rounding up the latest news and updates to keep you up to speed.
Dodow, Chief Editor
Top Story of the Week - Shifting DOT Narratives
Written by yay.oi
What’s shiftin’, Sandy? Polkadot June is upon us and Kevin Shift has led with a banger. The mammoth three-hourish interview with our founder and chief architect Gavin Wood, has already racked up the most views ever for a When Shift Happens (WSH) episode.
Next in the lineup, Drops featured Energy Web’s Ed Hesse on Tuesday, painting a future where your Tesla trades and earns in the energy markets while you sleep. And coming up on June 24th, Mark Cachia of Scytale Digital, will share why he’s making a bold play for Mythical Games.
But let’s not shift past the opening episode too quickly. After all, this was Kevin’s favorite WSH episode to date. He flew from Singapore to Lisbon to make it happen, building a custom studio on the outskirts of the city just for this conversation. Every detail, from the set design to the lighting and edits got extra attention.
Narrowing down the hottest takes from an epic conversation isn’t easy, but if there's a WAG, there's a way. The discussion kicked off with topics like the values of personal sovereignty, privacy, and how Web3 can shield us from the arbitrary and whimsical decisions of centralized entities that will inevitably screw us over.
Building on those points, if granted a magic wand to fix one thing about Polkadot today, Gav said he would make it entirely shielded with ZK technology. Polkadot offers a lot of transparency now, but that comes with trade-offs. It is easy to track individuals, their financial movements, and how they vote. Voting anonymously, as is done in Western democracies, is crucial.
Given his views, it’s curious that the Satoshi Nakamoto route of anonymity wasn’t taken, especially since he believes protocols should not have charismatic leaders. If people follow a protocol because of its leader, it risks loyalty turning to rivalry. And tribalism, according to Gav, is the one thing that will get in the way of crypto becoming something sensible………..
Continue with this week’s top story: Shifting DOT Narratives.
Featured Report - MAYbe Content?
Written by Dodow
We may be seeing a familiar pattern to April’s WAG in the growth of the WagMedia creator economy. Last month, there were a lot of content submissions with around 126, yet only 88 were eligible for rewards, with an underwhelming total of ~619 DOT distributed. The average was well below our historic benchmark of 15 DOT, and this time, 8 creators made the mark.
Before getting into the standouts for May, it might be worth recognising that we have taken a stricter stance on the top-earning participants from the Polkadot Yapper campaign. We won’t be rewarding submissions from them. It’s about fairness and potential double tipping. In any case, yapping rewards are already pretty decent.
Unfortunately, this meant our beloved Emil was unable to defend his title of top wagger of the month. Furthermore, new to WagMedia, Fabs is also excluded. Even so, we appreciate them still posting their content to help inspire others. If you’ve not seen it, Emil provided a fantastic overview of Quake running on CoreVM, while Fabs nicely covers Moonbeam’s 2025 roadmap.
The top creator for the month goes to Gbaci, who seems to have refrained from yapping. Instead, we have witnessed a good amount of experimental submissions and even as one of few Tier1 creators within WagMedia, he is very much receptive to feedback. The Great Coretime Heist of 2025 and The Parallel Finance Saga covered recent drama, receiving 18 and 20 DOT.
His standout submission was the comprehensive notes from Gav’s recent talk at ETH Prague and was awarded 28 DOT. Such pieces are often much appreciated by the community. What’s also appreciated are his insights on JAM and CoreVM, Hydration’s TVL, Asset Hub migration, and a blockchain resilience scorecard, which earned between 15 and 17 DOT………
Continue with this week’s featured story: MAYbe Content?
Wag Roundup
Written by yay.oi
The Ambassador Fellowship has kicked off the Polkadot Pop-up Summer. It aims to hit 1000 pop-ups during the campaign, while pushing swiftly toward the grander goal of 10K pop-ups per month.
Mimir, an enterprise-grade multisig solution for Polkadot, trusted by over 2000 users, has surpassed the TVL milestone of $10M.
Aventus has completed the open-sourcing of its prediction market technology source code. The code, which powers the Truth Network, is now fully accessible for auditing, contribution, and adaptation.
Magenta Labs has onboarded Hive Intelligence into the Polkadot ecosystem. With the Hive API, developers can now tap into a wide range of AI-driven applications that utilize Hive’s LLM-ready blockchain data.
Peaq, in collaboration with the Pulsar Group, has launched the Machine Economy Free Zone, a sandbox environment for exploring regulation, deployment, innovation, and investment in the United Arab Emirates.
Acurast’s decentralized compute network has surged past the massive milestone of 85K onboarded mobile devices.
Mythical has partnered with Adidas to bring licensed in-game assets and branding to FIFA Rivals. Players can look forward to exclusive drops of Adidas-sponsored players, boots, kits, and more.
Soaring to higher heights, Bifrost’s vDOT has passed the 12 million staked tokens milestone.
While still not matching Hydration’s own calculation, the addition of Hydration Lending tracking to DeFiLlama has elevated its ranking into the top 50 chains by TVL.
Polkadot Wish for Change Referendum 1608 seeks the Polkadot DAO’s approval to initiate the rollout of the non-custodial Polkadot Visa Debit Card. All integration costs would be covered by Referendum 1573, which is funding Polkadot App-related expenses for the next six months.
On Thursday July 17th, the Web3 Foundation is hosting Kusama ZK Day in Berlin, Germany. Applications for speakers are open now.
Full Wag Roundup June 5th to June 11th.
Extras
Vision Shifting cover art created by SKULLZ.
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