Foundational! - Newsletter Edition 100
In this week’s edition:
Editorial: Icy situation, shaping ahead with DOT foundations, and celebrating 100 editions of our Wagtastic newsletter.
Top Story - DOT Foundations: Covering foundational developments that shape the Polkadot ecosystem.
Featured Roundup: News from our Finders Program between May 22nd and May 28th, plus a celebration of 100 editions of our newsletter.
Extras: Credits and anything else.
Editorial
What is up, my friends!
Things got icy this past week, and we’re not talking about Trump’s latest tariff threats. While protocol exploitation is a constant worry, the fallout was met with question marks and mixed reactions. Was the right thing done for users? Did you think it was collaboration or collusion? Perhaps it’s worth considering strategy, framework, and the foundations behind these systems.
Resilience is often overlooked as folks become consumed with hype and vanity metrics. However, it’s seen as foundational to the Polkadot mission and sits at the center of its design. In this week’s Top Story, we’ll take a closer look at how DOT foundations are shaping the way forward.
We’re also celebrating our 100th newsletter edition of bringing you ecosystem stories and updates in our Featured Roundup. Coincidentally, this coincides with what can be considered a Polkadot Birthday, marking the fifth year since the network started producing blocks.
If you want to strengthen your foundations, whether it be reporting news or creating content, get involved with WagMedia.
Dodow, Chief Editor
Top Story of the Week - DOT Foundations
Written by yay.oi
What’s slicin’ pizzaiolos? This week marks the 15th anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day, a crypto milestone that served up one of the first known attempts to use BTC to buy something tangible in the real world. With a price tag of 10K BTC, this is also the first year that those two Papa John’s pizzas crossed the $1 billion mark.
Showing its comparative youth, Polkadot celebrated its 5th birthday on Monday May 26th. To be precise, the first block was finalized at 2020-05-26 15:36:18 (UTC). From pizza to parachains, the entire Web3 space has come a long way, and for Polkadot part of that journey has been shaped by one of the most mature foundations of decentralized governance.
As reported in DOT Cohorts!, one of the most recent major developments in Polkadot ecosystem governance was the introduction of the Web3 Foundation (W3F) Decentralized Voices delegations. As promised with the introduction of its new Governance Coordinator, the W3F has begun exploring ways to further iterate the program.
Karam Alhamad has invited the community on the Polkadot Forum for feedback on what the future of the initiative should look like. At face value, the program could be seen as a form of centralization, counter to Web3 ideals.
So the question remains: has the DV program succeeded in facilitating broader discussion and participation in governance, or has it just created a new elite class of voters? To get the debate rolling three scenarios have been put forward...........................…….
Continue with this week’s top story: DOT Foundations.
Featured Roundup - Newsworthy Milestones
Written by Dodow & yay.oi
We’ve reached our 100th newsletter edition! To celebrate, we’ll briefly recap our wonderful journey of delivering you a steady stream of Wagtastic stories and news. Our journey began not long after the inception of WagMedia, when legendary wagger Csaint took on the task of compiling all the top news, content, and alpha we find each week to post only on Subsocial.
NOTE: Unfortunately, Subsocial no longer seems to be accessible, so some of the links via the embeds might not function. Technically, the data for our historic newsletter editions that were minted should remain preserved on-chain, but it is currently not retrievable.
With the sheer volume of Polkadot ecosystem news and content, it was inevitable that a writing team would eventually form to keep things on point. Led by Dodow (obsessive news finder), it included the established voices of Pnin (The Kus writer and reporter), JB (Astar’s Master Scholar), and Csaint (honorary DOT bullposter).
The team reported on numerous breaking stories, including unfortunate hacks, exciting roadmaps, and happening events, as well as dressing up for trick-or-treat and giving thanks. As with most fabulous groups, things did come to an end, with the newsletter shutting down in 2023 as the Wag mission separated into individually maintained and funded units.
Thankfully, Wag is Back and with its return in early 2024, the newsletter became even more ingrained in the news finders program. In addition to the democratising of news being found by the community, those who took this task seriously and showed promise could be elevated to directly writing segments of the newsletter.……………………………
Extras
Foundtastic cover art created by SKULLZ.
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