PolkaYaps! - Newsletter Edition 87
In this week’s edition:
Editorial: Rugged measures, yap about this week’s interesting ecosystem insights, and who’s yapping about Polkadot?
Top Story - DOT is Yapping?: what’s happening in the ecosystem that has gotten folks talking?
Featured Report - Who Yaps DOT?: who’s yapping about DOT?
Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between February 11th and February 19th.
Extras: Credits and anything else.
The full newsletter can be enjoyed via this link.
Editorial
What is up, my friends!
If we didn’t think retail sentiment could get any worse, rugged measures via a presidential memecoin scandal seem to have just set the industry back further. Thus far, the onchain evidence doesn’t look good, and it is probably best to KIP away.
Furthermore, after a caffeine-infused interview and subsequent article releases, more layers to this story have emerged. The melee of signals, leaks, revelations, and whether it was promoted or shared has caused much confusion.
Elsewhere, confusion and intrigue deepened when it was noticed that a crypto/ic message was included with someone sending tokens for burning. Sometimes, it’s worth valuing something more coherent and resilient, which could potentially support passionate meaningful use cases.
With the explosion of yapping sparked by the Polkadot Yapper Leaderboard and prize fund, this week’s top story will continue to yap the hot news and interesting stories including reaching Consensus in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, we will be spotlighting who’s been yapping about Polkadot in our featured report.
If you’re looking for yaptastic advice, check out the awesome thread from Phunky. WagMedia is a great starting point for many, so why not subscribe to our newsletter or even join us!
Dodow, Chief Editor
Top Story of the Week - DOT is Yapping?
Written by yay.oi
What’s yappin’, PolkaDawgs? There seems to be a lot of new faces around here. While those of us at WagMedia are no strangers to incentivized content creation, rewards of up to $15K per month on the Polkadot Yapper Leaderboard have caught the attention of many. It has also begun attracting creators from outside the ecosystem.
With existing agents amping up their content and new arrivals competing for mindshare, Polkadot ecosystem tweets surged by 300%. However, Kaito’s AI-powered proof-of-attention algorithm ensures that it’s not all just white noise. To be successful, content needs to be engaging and capture the attention of the right people.
That said, a bit of face-to-face engagement goes a long way too. There were plenty of Polkadot boots on the ground this week at Consensus Hong Kong. The event was front-run on Monday by one of our greatest real-world assets Gavin Wood, for the JAM World Tour.
It was a full house at the Cyberport Arena, with Gav banging out some classics along with some newer material (courtesy of Shawn Tabrizi). For the encore, reminiscent of his iconic Web3 Summit appearance, he dropped a JAM coding live demo.
While JAM certainly has many excited, there are Polkadot developments much nearer on the horizon that even have Gav yapping. The general Consensus in Hong Kong at the Polkadot booth is that the Polkadot Hub and Cloud narrative is very effective.
Meanwhile, the official Consensus Hong Kong Polkadot ecosystem side-yaps came courtesy of local partners Polkaport East. It was another full-capacity event, with keynotes from Tommi Enenkel and Ziga Drev (Origin Trail), along with panels on institutional adoption and building on Polkadot in Asia.
All that yapping got you thirsty? It’s about time for a Hydration break. Our fluid crew have beenworking hard, pumping out referenda and news non-stop in 2025, and this week was no different...............…….
Check out our full newsletter for the full story
Featured Report - Who Yaps DOT?
Written by Dodow
Polkadot is trending on CT once again, with the yapping becoming almost impossible to ignore. Thanks to the launch of the Polkadot Yapper Board and prize fund, we’ve seen things take off. While legendary waggers like Csaint, Goku, and Emil assert their presence, it’s refreshing to see newer PFPs jumping in and yapping about DOT.
As of the end of the day on February 19th, 14 out of the top 25 yappers are new to the ecosystem. Let’s check out who they are and, more importantly, how they yap. Currently, the most prominent group on the board includes Wals, Zaimiri, Max Chadwick, and Pumpbob.
In fact, Zaimiri has already been in the top 3 for Polkadot mindshare. His rise is easy to understand; not only does he have ~948 smart followers, but he also values quality over quantity. In his endeavors, he has realized how much he had overlooked Polkadot and has certainly paid attention to the perspective of it being rollup centric.
Meanwhile, yapper-centric Wals, co-founder of a games platform and no stranger to other yapping programs, certainly sees the benefit of the Polkadot initiative. He brings up the view that we were clowned for spending $40M in 2024 but is now playing the long game with his ~480 smart followers.
Not all yappers need to have a high number of smart followers to make it up the board. Pumpbob, who is associated with a Web3 marketing agency, has done well with only ~28. He has also been quick to recognise how the community behind the world’s largest DAO can influence token inflation. Furthemore, he has also recognised the compelling impact of the Mythos rollup and seems eager to give it a try.
In his effort to try to make his content great again, Max Chadwick, who has ~300 smart followers, has decided to leverage the Polkadot initiative. He seems appreciative of the opportunity and has identified the top ecosystem agents to draw inspiration from.
On to identifying familiar PFPs across Web3 with the next selection of top yappers. The DeGods collections seem to be the most popular, with Sigrid, sporting his DeGods PFP, easily recognisable to his ~103 smart followers. He recently celebrated reaching the top 50 on the yapper board, a milestone that may have also contributed to his growth to 14K X followers.........……...
Wag Roundup
Written by yay.oi
Get yapping, folks! The Polkadot Yapper Leaderboard, powered by Kaito AI, is live. A reward pool of $100K will be distributed monthly to the top fifty Yappers starting on March 31st.
The implementation of the Polkadot Unified Address Format (UAF) has begun and is live on Talisman 2.5. As parachains (such as Bifrost) complete the UAF rollout, users will be able to use the same Substrate address across all parachains.
Polkadot Blockchain Academy is launching a new course, Blockchain Basics for Policymakers, the first of its kind. The inaugural program kicks off on April 6th in Zug, Switzerland, and will be attended by a delegation of UK members of parliament.
Entropretty, the app that will power DIM 1 Proof-of-Ink for Gavin Wood’s Web3 Citizenship initiative, is running an algorithmic tattoo design contest. Get your designs in by February 22nd for a chance to share in a prize pool of $3000 in DOT.
Acala, the first parachain to launch on Polkadot, has just surpassed the monumental milestone of 8M blocks produced.
Robonomics has released its 2025 roadmap, which will focus on its physical infrastructure layer and hardware development.
Swapping on Hydration got a little cheaper this week, with minimum dynamic Omnipool fees reduced from 0.25% to 0.2%, and minimum Stableswap fees down from 0.04% to 0.02%.
Get flapping! Gavun Wud is back with another Flappy Wud airdrop. The leaderboards have been reset, and the top twenty flappers on Wednesday, February 26th at 9PM CET will receive airdrops of up to 10M WUD.
Hyperbridge and Bifrost have requested 795K DOT to incentivize DOT-ETH and vDOT-ETH pairs on Arbitrum, Base, BNB, and Ethereum in Polkadot OpenGov Referendum 1439.
Nicolas (Velocity Labs), Flavio (Polimec), Matt (Mandala Chain), and Ziga (Origin Trail) discussed why Polkadot is the best place to build Web3 in a panel discussion at Consensus Hong Kong, on February 19th.
Extras
Awesome cover art created by SKULLZ.
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