Exposed! - Newsletter Edition 99
In this week’s edition:
Editorial: Based vibes, uncovering this week’s DOT exposure, and rounding up parachain governance activities.
Top Story - DOT Exposure: We cover a week of exposure across multiple fronts in the Polkadot ecosystem.
Featured Roundup: News from our Finders Program between May 15th and May 21st, plus a feature on governance related to ecosystem parachains.
Extras: Credits and anything else.
NOTE: We are struggling to publish on our regular Web3 platform, and will subsequently be linking sections on Substack.
Editorial
What is up, my friends!
The headline of Coinbase being hacked may deter people from onboarding, let alone going on-chain. Last week, Brian Armstrong addressed the data breach on X and their stance against paying the ransom. That said, the social engineering involved isn’t unique to crypto. Perhaps looking ahead, a future with proof of personhood could unlock some viable ways forward.
Given the risk of customers’ data being exposed, such exposure might well be a setback in the adoption stakes of Web3. Meanwhile, the Polkadot ecosystem has been scaling, and this week's top story covers exposure on multiple fronts that could offer some hope.
With the community's exposure to OpenGov maturing, we will provide a roundup of key governance-related activities involving our ecosystem parachains. This will be rolled up as part of our featured roundup, along with news and updates found by the Wag community.
You can also get involved and expose yourself to wagging. If you haven’t already, check out last week’s feature where we share some thoughts on how you could scale.
Dodow, Chief Editor
Top Story of the Week - DOT Exposure
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 reached167,941 DOT in April. According to Tommi Enenkel’s2025 Q1 Polkadot Treasury Report, total burns in Q1 this year were almost 600K DOT. This comes in a quarter thatrecorded the first net profit (80K DOT) since reporting began..........................…….
Continue with this week’s top story: DOT Exposure.
Featured Roundup - DOT Parachain Governance
Written by Dodow
Polkadot’s on-chain governance is widely recognised as one of the best in all of Web3. The mechanisms behind it can be adopted by parachains, enabling them to secure community approval for exposure to major features and more.
While much of the community’s focus seems to be on OpenGov and Polkadot DAO treasury funding, following is a rollup of key governance activity related to ecosystem parachains.
As covered in our Scaling Blocks story, Astar is now preparing for Tokenomics 3.0. The previous Tokenomics 2.0 aimed to address inflation by allocating more to dApps and revamping tiering to encourage stronger community support. Given the added complexity and expansion plans, this new proposal appears focused on Astar’s sustainability in a changing landscape.
Meanwhile, Moonbeam has been welcoming applications for Moonbeam Governance Guild (MGG) Term 2. It’s similar to Decentralized Voices in voting power, though each guild member is also mandated to engage in educational outreach. An example of outreach was a post about Proposal 109, a prerequisite for ERC-20 alignment and part of efforts to bring Ethereum closer.
Off-chain voting to determine the contest winners of new dApps or memecoins is the approach that Acala has taken since the start of 2025. While they are currently taking a break from contests, their latest ecosystem report covers winners, including Boomerang, who are launching an ACA LSD. In fact, there’s currently an on-chain proposal requesting a grant for BoomACA.
With the OpenGov referendum for Polkadot GigaHydration Campaign funding being tight, Hydration has stayed focused on rolling out features via its protocol’s on-chain governance. For instance, one feature could be a lifesaver for those facing liquidation while using money markets……………………………
Extras
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