DOT Wud it Take? (August 4th to August 10th)
With the US stock market witnessing around $1.9 trillion wiped out, for some, one key question remains: What would it take to turn things around?
Now turning to the Polkadot ecosystem, we can pose a similar question: What would it take to turn things around for the good of the ecosystem? This could likely center around OpenGov, which empowers the community to have their voices heard in the world’s largest DAO.
Then we have builders focused on shipping products that appeal to both new and existing users. There are also builders in the ecosystem working to turn things around for traditional industries. Additionally, some are laying the foundations for wider adoption, and perhaps a fresh perspective could be beneficial.
In this week’s top story, we will take a deeper look at what has been happening to turn things around. As many readers may already be aware, WagMedia provides opportunities for people to get involved for the good of the ecosystem by creating content. We will also cover the recent content that is being generated in this week’s featured update.
The full newsletter can be enjoyed via this link.
Dodow, Chief Editor
Top Story of the Week - WUD is going on?
Written by yay.oi
While market conditions tested the common investor this week, the Gavun Wud personality cult learned a thing or two about the riziliuns of cumunitee. Whether it be the uniting force of a culd wun, or the common goal of flapping the disembodied head of your founder and chief architect into a KusBoost, the power of community can get us through the tough times, and help us turn things around.
The dynamics of memecoin speculation has continued to shift over the years, with the pre/post 2024 Bitcoin halving era being marked by the crypto-casino narrative. Scams, rug-pulls, and general failures aside, every now and then, a project will defy the odds and succeed, often minting millionaires in the process. While luck plays a large role in this, one defining factor that has led to the success of many memecoins is a strong community.
The community of one of 2024’s success stories Dogwifhat, for example, donated over $690K to display their beloved pup’s face on the Las Vegas Sphere. Perhaps it’s an alternative funding model that the Polkadot marketing maxis could consider.
Nonetheless, the mix of humor, popular iconography, gambling, and community, results in the broad mainstream appeal of memecoins, and in turn can be a strong driver of blockchain adoption. Recognizing this, the Polkadot community began to make some collective efforts to try and capitalize on the potential memecoins could bring to the network early in 2024.
Gavun Wud, fownder and cheef arkitukt of Polkadot landed on the scene in April this year with a mission to Mak Polkadut Gud Agan. With his hilarious one-liners such as, I maede etherium az a tec demmo, the project gained traction quite quickly. That was, until Gavun unveiled his spechuh suhpriz............….
Check out our full newsletter for the full story
Featured Update - Gud Content!
Written by Sanchez
WagMedia herds creators seeking opportunities to showcase their talents, shepherding them to produce Gud Content for the Polkadot ecosystem. Curated content is appraised, with feedback often provided and awards shared openly.
The introduction of the Bounty Hub has further streamlined this process, by incentivising content related to the latest trends and narratives about industry and ecosystem updates, thus enhancing awareness. For instance, the coverage of Polkadot Decoded in July demonstrates this well, with creators going through hours of talks to pinpoint highlights from the conference.
Content can be Gud, but isn’t so much if it isn’t seen. To address this, WagMedia encourages creators to improve their approach by adopting better hooks for their content. This is especially noticeable through the engagement weighting criteria in select bounties from the Bounty Hub.
July began with the 26th bounty from the Bounty Hub, which challenged creators to explore Polkadot's current economics and recent developments. This task was based on a comprehensive post in the Polkadot Forum and offered rewards of up to $120, depending on the quality of the content............….
News from the Finders Program Part 1
Written by yay.oi
People Chain is live, you can now set your on-chain identity using the Identity feature on Polkassembly.
After going all the way to the Remainder Round for their Polimec fundraise, Mandala Chain achieved and accepted 35% of their target. Tokens have been distributed, but bonded PLMC from evaluators will be slashed.
App deployment just got easier on Acurast with CLI, a single command solution.
With Pull Request #4424 in its final stages, automatic Coretime renewals will be available on Kusama soon.
Peaq welcomes decentralized VPN and Wi-Fi DePINNetSepio, who will mint its token natively and build on the Peaq network, while exploring synergies with the rest of the Peaqosystem.
Join the Moonbeam Moonrise Points campaign to earn GLMR rewards by completing various Moonbeam ecosystem tasks and climbing the leaderboard.
The Parity X account has hinted that we might be hearing a lot more about Polkadot Parachains as a superior Ethereum Rollup solution soon.
In their latest upgrade, Stellaswap have enabled one-click swaps, boosted swap speed by 70%, reduced gas fees by 20%, and boosted security by revoking infinite transaction approvals.
News from the Finders Program Part 2
Written by Sanchez
Astar Degens (AD) has proposed two proposals to ensure the DAO’s financial health, efficiency, and future. One proposal aims to reduce monthly dividends for NFT owners to fund other ventures that will benefit the community in the future. The other intends to reallocate unclaimed rewards from the AD dapp staking after four months.
Gavun Wud has again collaborated with the Kusamarian to drop 15 special edition NFTs to players of Flappy Wud. Amongst other conditions, a player must possess a WUD balance greater than 0 and 3000 cumulative points to win one while flapping.
On the 8th of August, Mythos and Polkadot leapfrogged Ethereum to become the blockchain and L0 with the highest daily NFT sales with over $4.6 million in sales.
Birdo initiated a discussion to hand over the IP and source code of the Polkadot app to the Polkadot Community Foundation, ensuring the app is open source post-launch. The discussion also requested $50k to handle the legal and administrative fees for the app.
Referendum 1077 requests $59 million DED tokens to fund a targeted marketing campaign for the Korean-speaking community before the Korea Blockchain Week in Seoul. This will, by extension, provide international exposure to the Dotisded project.
With some coming changes, nomination pool stakers will soon be able to participate in Polkadot governance through OpenGov.
Polkadot hosted the Decentralized Mic on the 7th of August, with a spotlight on marketing and featured team members from Distractive, Airlyft, Decentered Studios, Polkadot social media and Polkadot at universities.
On the 8th of August, Seun Lanlege from Polytope Labs, Filippo Franchini and Bhargrav from the Web3 Foundation discussed trustless bridges, and the conversation centered on Hyperbridge and Snowbridge.
Extras
Awesome cover art created by Dodow.
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