Gray Matter! (April 14th to April 20th)

Apr 23, 2024

Token 2049, in Dubai, was the defining setting for Chief Architect and Polkadot Founder Dr Gavin Wood to jam it up by unveiling the JAM Gray Paper. This momentous occasion also signifies 10 years since he released the Ethereum Yellow Paper.

The Gray Paper is immense with tons of insights, definitions, references, concepts, formulas; and it shapes up how we arrive at the JAM chain protocol. It’s important to recognise that there is still quite a bit of work to be done.

Unsurprisingly, this week's top story will attempt to provide coverage of the Gray Paper. While our newsletter writers are still digesting what can be considered a complex piece of work, we aim to offer an initial interpretation of what it represents, including the aftermath and anticipated future outlook.

There was also other important news this week, which in most other weeks could be considered the top story. Therefore, we shall provide a featured story to cover those “timely core” significant updates, which might have been somewhat overlooked.

The full newsletter can be enjoyed via this link.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story Of The Week - JAMazing Gray!

Written by yay.oi

It’s been a very special week for Polkadot at Token 2049 Dubai, culminating with the main event which was due to start on Thursday April 18th. With the Polkadot Yacht Party on the 16th and Polkadot Pulse on the 17th it was no surprise to see the Polkadot faithful starting to roll in early.

Filippo Franchini tweeted his arrival in Dubai on the 15th, and was met with a seemingly bizarre reply: be careful heavy rain is forecasted tomorrow…

With the gray skies cleared, our man of the moment Gavin Wood made it to Dubai in time for his speech on Thursday 18th. Titled The Big JAM, we didn’t know what to expect. Polkadot devotees have already had time to (or at least attempt to) digest the RFC and Gavin’s sub0 keynote and the subsequent WagMedia newsletter coverage.

Perhaps the clues have been there all along, it was considerably symbolic that upon the unveiling, Gav’s long gray mane is no more, replaced with a fresh new buzz-cut. As ten years after writing the Yellow Paper, the technical specification of Ethereum, Gavin Wood presented the Gray Paper, a technical specification of JAM and a fresh new start for Polkadot……..

Check out our full newsletter for the full story

Alternative Top Story - Timely Core Updates

Written by Sanchez

After the passing of the Referenda 375, Coretime sales are set to go live on Kusama on Thursday, the 25th of April. This ends the parachain auctions, which were how projects looking to build on Kusama got a slot.

Agile Coretime enables efficient and effective utilization of Polkadot’s blockspace resources, by offering developers flexible and less expensive access to it. Teams can buy bulk Coretime for the consistent use and upkeep of their parachains, purchase instantaneous Coretime, or even rent or borrow Coretime when needed in a pay-as-you-go system.

With Coretime now live on Kusama, Coretime marketplaces like Lastic and Region X have also been launched. These marketplaces will provide easy access to Coretime from the respective Coretime chain on Kusama and Polkadot. The Coretime chain serves as a ledger that accounts for all of Coretime's sales, purchases, activity, renewals, and more…….

General & Governance News

Written by Turing Machine

Did you notice the joint winners for Polkadot Auction #67, following is how it breaks down. KILT won lease period 17 (until September 23, 2024) with a self-funded bid of 100 DOT, while Ajuna won lease periods 18-24 (until May 8, 2026) with a self-funded bid of 20,000 DOT.
Polkadot treasury funded initiative, Decentralised Identity Provider (DIP), developed by Kilt is now live. DIP is an enabler for the adoption of Decentralised ID, as it allows any parachains (and in the future other chains) to offer identity services. For instance, Mandala chain mentioned a partnership with Kilt for .ID in a recent Space Monkeys episode.
Polimec announced the first wave of projects to raise funds on its platform, which includes Apillion and Mandala Chain.
Tanssi network has launched its incentivized Testnet campaign Let's Forkin' Dance! Starting on 30th April, there will be on-chain and off-chain challenges to earn rewards.
Polkadot parachains partly halted during the 1.2.0 runtime upgrade at block 20438530, from approximately 11:40 - 12:40 UTC on 21st April 2024.
Referendum #682 calls upon the Polkadot community to signal their willingness for the Technical Fellowship to supervise and ratify the rollout of the JAM protocol, as specified in the Gray Paper.
Referendum #680 proposes to initialize Snowbridge, the Polkadot<>Ethereum bridge, on both Bridge-Hub and Asset-Hub.
Chainalysis requests 1M DOT to provide data, analytics, and compliance solutions that foster entry into the institutional market.

More here

NFT & DEFI News

Written by Sanchez & Turing Machine

SFY Labs has refunded all users who purchased an Age of Chronos Incubator on Astar EVM. After moving to the Moonbeam Network, the new strategy for launch will involve free mints with previous buyers of the Age of Chronos Incubator whitelisted for the mint.
LAOS Network has joined the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA). The Blockchain Game Alliance is raising awareness and promoting the utilization of blockchain within the gaming industry.
Unique Network has announced an NFT competition on Zealy, with a reward pool of $500 in DOT to 25 lucky participants. This is to support Conor Daly and his Polkadot car at the Indy 500 races.
LAOS has integrated with the Talisman wallet. As a first step, users can support the LAOS parachain auction by crowdloaning DOT through the Talisman wallet.
Bifrost opened their Grants Program. Yield optimisation features, LST backed stablecoin, and yield trading are just some of the tracks listed.
Centrifuge announced a $15 million funding round raise to drive Institutional adoption of DeFi.
Acala published a breakdown of their next Sinai Upgrade, which includes support for OpenGov, Cross-chain security (Sentinel), Async Backing, and JAM.
Polkadex makes onboarding to their Orderbook easier by introducing Polkapool, an AMM mechanism which enables Auto-Swap transfers of potentially easier accessible assets such as DOT.