Written by yay.oi
What’s tweetin’, yappers? While the Yaps campaign is beginning to broaden the exposure of the Polkadot word beyond its core community, an unfortunate side effect is the scourge of AI reply guys.
Tweaks to the Kaito algorithm are weeding out lower-quality AI yappers from the Polkadot leaderboard, but removal from your comments feed requires a more hands-on approach. As for AI harvesting X feeds to generate news articles, an effective solution remains elusive, but at least they’re citing their sources.
For example, as if he needed more exposure, this week Tommi Enenkel’s tweet was picked up by the AI-enhanced news-outlet Blockchain.News (BN). While BN’s coverage didn’t add much in the way of insight, the story itself does deserve our attention. The Coretime Baron, last reported in Catchin’ Up, is up to their old tricks.
After buying out all available cores in Coretime Sale #9 at the starting price of 92.2 DOT, the starting price for Coretime Sale #10 will jump to over 900 DOT. With the subsequent renewal price rising by 3% each sales period, the Baron finally has some bargaining power. Not taking any chances, ParaID 3415 was first to take the bait and paid 2000 DOT for a 92.2 DOT core.
The Baron might have won a fan or two along the way, but more importantly, they’ve exposed some flaws with the current system. If nothing else, they’ve added pressure to accelerate the development of a trustless secondary market. Until then, we may have entered a price discovery period, and perhaps some deflationary pressure from burnt Coretime sales proceeds.
Coretime burns are but a drop in the ocean (280.72 DOT) compared to the monthly 1% Polkadot Treasury burns, which reached 167,941 DOT in April. According to Tommi Enenkel’s 2025 Q1 Polkadot Treasury Report, total burns in Q1 this year were almost 600K DOT. This comes in a quarter that recorded the first net profit (80K DOT) since reporting began.
As usual, Outreach was the biggest spend category, reaching $7.5M USD. The biggest outreach spend was $3M USD, which went towards Polkadot integration with Brave browser. In contrast to some historic massive KOL spends, a mere $150K USD went towards Kaito integration to kickstart the Polkadot Yaps campaign.
The Development category came in second with a spend of $5.5M USD. In this category, $1M USD for Token Terminal integration was our first big spend of the year. Another million went to Nova Wallet, while Polkadot API received $660K USD. Snowbridge, at $1.2M USD, was the largest spend of the category.
Despite drastically reduced spending, and a runway of at least ten years, the Q1 report did not gain anywhere near as much exposure compared to H1 2024, which was the polar opposite, as reported in DOT is Trending. While modest spending and a net profit might seem positive, the treasury’s purpose is to fund growth. Cautious spending can result in missed opportunities.
Racking up a few travel expenses from the treasury, the shiny new Polkadot pink bus made the epic 2,411km journey from Denver to Consensus Toronto this week. Presenting were Parity’s Dave Sedacca and Jay Chrawwna of The Kus, while Polkadot booth #2103 gave Amazon AWS a run for its money.
While the Consensus main event provided some great exposure, the best vibes were at the WebZero Blockspace Hacker House, behind the pink door, at the Lodge on Queen. With 429 registered attendees at the opening party, beats were pumping, rhymes were flowing, and outsiders were asking, “When are we going to throw an event like this?”
Often parked outside, the Polkadot pink bus fulfilled its duty transporting Consensus attendees to the venue in style. But it was so much more than that. Brunch venue, photo studio, and impromptu outdoor rap stage, the Polkadot pink bus (which is still awaiting an official name, might I add) was the star of the show.
Of course, what is a Hacker House without hackers? Mentored by an all-star lineup from the Polkadot ecosystem, participants were competing for a bounty pool of $20K USD. Sutanpu, a dApp for travellers to mint soul-bound NFT stamp mementos, took the first prize ($5K USD) in the Build Track and the exposure helped to initiate talks with one of their newest fans.
As they reminisce about the ride home from the venue, the Polkadot pink bus may be gearing up for a much more inhospitable obstacle. The Darien Gap, a treacherous and impenetrable 160km strip of forest, blocks the road between North and South America. Could be a little awkward for the ol’ Polkybus, because WebZero has some massive plans in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Building on the epic Sub0 Reset last year, WebZero has presented an ambitious proposal to take things up a few notches. With the working title Sub0: Symbiosis, it aims to combine Sub0 and Decoded into a single three-day event immediately before Devconnect. The venue, a neo-brutalist 20-room multi-floor event space, would hold 20 themed rooms and two stages.
Merging Sub0 and Decoded offers a chance to create a truly impactful flagship event that brings developers and users together under one roof to explore, collaborate, and help shape what’s next for Polkadot. You too can help shape this symbiotic event by joining the discussion on the Polkadot Forum.
In other ecosystem discussions, just 6 months after Polkadot inflation parameters were adjusted, Tommi Enenkel has initiated a conversation about the possibility of reducing inflation further. Perhaps, to him, the Q1 surplus exposed an imbalance in the new model. At this point it’s hard to say.
Shawn Tabrizi took things further by proposing a tokenomics model without any inflation at all. On the other hand, Jonas Gehrlein, the original proposer of last year’s inflation adjustment, called for stability. Current inflation is already in the region of 7.5%, reducing to 7% next year. Maintaining predictability is likely to help retain validators and stakers.
OpenGov: A New Year, A Fresh Start! called for some bold spending in 2025, but safe spends on tooling and analytics continue. Just this week, a mere 310 DOT was spent by the treasury. The Polkadot DAO has matured, and the treasury balance sheet is healthy, but broader exposure is still limited.
With the Polkadot Hub about to launch, now is the time for building momentum. The Polkadot GIGAHydration campaign would be a great starting point, but the referendum is on a knife’s edge. To capture the attention of the world, why not think bigger? The money is there, the tech is unmatched. Let’s kick-start summer by showcasing the capabilities of a fully-loaded DAO.