DOOT! - Newsletter Edition 89
In this week’s edition:
Editorial: DOOM vibes, from on-chain JAM to the buzz at Denver, and some Wag developments.
Top Story - On-Chain JAM, In-Life Buzz!: bullish news on running DOOM on JAM and what people are bullish about at EthDenver.
Featured Update - Campaign for BNC!: there’s no time to spare for the second phase of Bifrost’s Liquid Wave Campaign.
Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between February 27th and March 3rd.
Extras: Credits and anything else.
The full newsletter can be enjoyed via this link.
Editorial
What is up, my friends!
The markets appear to be rotating from Doom and Gloom to Boom. Surely, it is bullish news for the Web3 industry? That said, some folks might be playing it wrong, and you start to question whom you can trust. In some cases, you might even discover some truths.
Perhaps it should be more about less trust, more truth, as Dr. Gavin Wood demonstrates running the classic game DOOM on the JAM Chain over in the Polkadot ecosystem. This exciting news aligns with the bullish sentiment coming out of ETHDenver. As such, in our top story this week, we will be taking a closer look at the recent on-chain JAM as well as the in-life buzz.
We also have some recent WagMedia news to update you on. Niftesty has continued to evolve the development of our Discord-to-website integration. While the bot functionality is progressing in the background, you may have noticed the faster loading, better emphasis on creators, and the uplift from our recent rebrand.
Check out our website for the latest news and community content, without needing to join our Discord. It also provides convenient, open, and transparent visibility of our funds. Meanwhile the other visible development is with our treasury partner Bifrost. Not only have they kicked-off the next stage of the Liquid Waves Campaign, but they have also announced a content bounty. To help provide some inspiration, we have put together a featured update.
As always, feel free to sign up to receive an email notification when our weekly newsletter is available, with all the latest stories and updates.
Dodow, Chief Editor
Top Story of the Week - On-Chain JAM, In-Life Buzz!
Written by yay.oi
What’s slayin’, Doomguys? This week, while the leader of the free world was fomenting fiscal friction in the Sinosphere, Polkadot’s Ambassador-at-large was countering the chaos, flexing his diplomatic détente with a pixelated peace offering.
Gavin Wood, as reported in Celebrating DOT Chinese Community, has long recognized the value of developers and investors in China. With JAM, the next major iteration of Polkadot, on the horizon, his recent tour of China highlighted his ongoing connection to the region.
Finally wrapping up in Shenzhen on March 5th, the JAM tour reached its pivotal point in Shanghai on February 28th, where Gav unveiled a breathtaking development. For the first time, he demoed running unmodified regular software using the JAM CoreVM.
So, can JAM run DOOM? Yes, it can, and it can do it on-chain. Before you butt in and say “Cardano already did that”, allow me to interject. Cardano ran DOOM on Hydra, an off-chain L2 scaling solution. In Shanghai, Gavin ran DOOM directly on-chain, with JAM.
Blockchains aren’t supposed to be able to run unmodified regular software, but JAM can. In Gav’s demonstration, JAM was able to handle all of the game logic, and render every frame at 30fps. It can technically compute 900fps, but even if you could find a monitor that fast, there would be some rendering bottlenecks at the DA level.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S. of A., ETHDenver wrapped on Monday. Courtesy of The Dots, the motto of the week was: Everything you’ll hear at ETHDenver is already built on Polkadot.................…….
Check out our full newsletter for the full story
Featured Update - Campaign for BNC!
Written by Dodow
Back in November 2024, we covered Polkadot’s premier Liquid Staking Protocol, Bifrost. We provided a comprehensive overview of its journey, including the future direction with the new Bifrost 2.0 tokenomics and the launch of a campaign to usher it in.
This was immediately followed up with a guide on how to participate in the first phase of its Liquid Wave Campaign. LST Camper was the first phase and centered around minting vTokens (i.e., liquid staking derivatives). The campaign managed to generate $2,433,735 in TVL, subject to severe market conditions.
We are now at the second phase of the campaign and have until 27th March to participate. This phase is called BNC Explorers and focuses on Bifrost’s primary token, BNC. The approach is somewhat similar to what we laid out in our featured guide. So, if you are new, you might want to look at the event registration section and make sure to use a referral for an invite bonus.
For those already registered, use the link: https://wave.bifrost.io/bnc to get started. As with the previous campaign, the objective is to accumulate WAVE points, which when announced at the end of the campaign, can be redeemed for bbBNC. There are three main ways of earning WAVE points and a further two, subject to bonus conditions...........……...
Wag Roundup
Written by yay.oi
Doom doesn’t always correlate with gloom. On the Shanghai leg of the JAM Tour on February 28th, Gavin Wood demoed DOOM, proving that regular unmodified software can be run on JAM.
Polkadot parachain Frequency has joined forces with the AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky, the decentralized social network created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. The partnership will leverage Frequency’s verifiable decentralized infrastructure for independent data storage and indexing of AT Protocol’s publicly accessible content.
Vbrick, a leading end-to-end enterprise video solution provider, in collaboration with Blockdeep Labs, has announced plans to launch Verified Authentic, a video content ownership verification framework, on Polkadot. The first operational phase is expected to launch in Summer 2025.
The Hyperbridge Initial Relayer Offering token sale of BRIDGE has come to a close, raising $2.8M. Combined with the pre-seed round, this brings total funding to $5.65M.
BNC Explorers, the second phase of the Bifrost Liquid Wave campaign, has kicked off and will run until March 27th. You can now earn WAVE points by minting vBNC, referring friends, and participating in governance.
If passed, Polkadot OpenGov Referendum 1468 will upgrade the Snowbridge Gateway contract on Ethereum, enabling the bridging of native unwrapped ETH to Polkadot and native assets such as DOT, to Ethereum.
Subwallet now supports OpenGov voting for directly nominated and nomination pool-staked DOT.
Heroic has launched AimDots, a Polkadot-themed map for Counter-Strike 2 on Steam. Complete the map in under one minute to achieve GODLIKE status.
On February 27th at ETHDenver, Shawn Tabrizi’s keynote explored Polkadot’s native rollup solution, and how it is evolving into the Web3 cloud.
Extras
Awesome cover art created by SKULLZ.
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