Written by yay.oi
What’s ahead, roadies? While the DOT tokenomics debate rolls on, treasury approvals seem to be riding in the slow lane. One referendum stuck in a JAM this week is 1666, which requests $250K for an Inter Miami fan engagement app.
Capitalizing on the broad reach of Lionel Messi to onboard normies to Polkadot may have been an easy AYE in Polkadot’s big spendin’ days, but now fiscal caution may be gaining traction. Still, our founder and chief architect isn’t backing down. He’s gearing up to spend big to bring the mainstream market onboard.
Gavin Wood’s headlining keynote at last week’s Web3 Summit was titled Polkadot: Road Ahead. In it, he presented some ideas for adjustments to the ecosystem economy and how proof of personhood could play a role.
According to the Kus, Polkadot outflows totalled $1.55B over the last two years, with a large portion of that going to nominators. This is roughly in line with Gav’s estimate that Polkadot spends $500M per year on security.
While it is a jaw-dropping figure, it is not out of line with other highly decentralized and secure protocols. Ethereum’s annual security spend is in the region of $2.5B, while Bitcoin’s was recently estimated to be more than $16B.
So, assuming that the majority of Polkadot security incentives are sold by nominators and validators, it’s worth exploring ways that more of this value can be retained in the ecosystem. In the near term, it may be possible to reduce the annual security budget from $500M down to $90M.
One way of achieving this would be to set a higher bar, such as through KYC and interviews, for becoming a Polkadot validator. This would help to reduce the need for costly nominators by shifting more trust and responsibility to a smaller, more accountable set of participants.
Rather than calculating rewards based on annual inflation, a fixed-fee model (e.g. $5K per month) paid in fiat could introduce predictable costs while limiting sell pressure on DOT. This predictability sets the stage for a fixed DOT supply and stepped inflation.
Once the individuality project is realized, further cost reductions may follow in the medium term. Staking could be replaced with voting by verified individuals, shifting the risk from financial stake to reputation with bans replacing slashes.
Before such a major shift can happen, proof-of-personhood will first need to prove itself. The first identity mechanisms, DIM 1 proof-of-ink and DIM 2, which appears to be gesture-recognition based, are due to launch with the Polkadot Citizenship app in Q4 2025.
Speaking with Jay Chrawnna after the keynote, Gav explained that the vision for infinite low or zero cost blockspace would require utilization to increase by orders of magnitude. Rather than the 40 partially utilized cores now, he’s thinking more along the lines of a million cores.
To hit that level of utilization, we need to be exploring a much wider range of blockspace use cases, and this is where the individuality project comes into play. Gavin Wood sees it as a vehicle to onboard non-crypto users en masse. And to get their attention, he’s planning to request $3M DOT from the treasury for the fairest airdrop ever.
Continuing the alpha at the Web3 Summit, Mythical Games dropped some of its own. No strangers to onboarding non-crypto users, they shared early details about Pulse, an upcoming multi-chain gamer-focused wallet. CFO Kasper Mai Jørgensen revealed it will feature an integrated marketplace, and social gaming features such as chat and community tournaments.
Meanwhile, Mythical CEO John Linden DROPS more insights in one of Kevin Shift’s latest videos. He spoke about why Mythical chose Polkadot and shared takeaways from the launch of FIFA Rivals, which garnered favourable audience metrics.
Looking ahead, Mythical’s focus is shifting toward social engagement, something teased with the upcoming launch of Pulse. John hinted that several pieces of interrelated tech are already in the pipeline, and together, they could have a massive impact on the gaming industry.
Back at the Web3 Summit, momentum was building around Kusama’s new direction as a ZK-powered experimental and privacy-centric chain. On the Kusama track of the Synergy hackathon, the usual suspects brought the experimental vibes, while ZK-enhanced privacy showed up in the form of a sybil-resistant POAP claimer and a private voting platform.
Privacy-focused parachain Integritee was represented by CTO Alain Brenzikofer. He discussed the delicate balance between privacy and compliance, a topic Gavin Wood also touched on in his keynote.
Paired with proof of personhood, privacy-preserving apps can be built that maintain compliance while protecting users from bureaucratic overreach. In the EU, for example, transactions under €1K don’t require reporting, yet doxxing with KYC hands governments info on countless smaller transactions.
Whether use cases like this will bring in the masses remains to be seen, but expanding Web3’s reach across diverse sectors offers a fighting chance. On the horizon, the Polkadot App, the Citizenship App, the Pulse app, and more blockbuster releases from Mythical will all be targeting the mainstream market, though not everything is guaranteed to stick.
Polkadot’s sponsorship of Inter-Miami was a contentious yet bold bid for mainstream attention, and it still manages to attract criticism today. Whether you backed it or not, that investment is currently generating a lot of global impressions, even without a supportive funnel to onboard users.
A fan engagement app could be a logical continuation of the partnership, unlocking genuine in-person social interactions at games, while leveraging the global digital reach of Lionel Messi. This blend of real-world connection and digital influence could transform team loyalty into a powerful gateway for bringing newcomers into the Polkadot ecosystem.
Talks of economic reform are leading some to begin taking a more cautious approach with treasury funding approvals. The cautiousness overlooks the fact that the treasury is designed to drive growth and innovation, not just to act as a safety net.
As Gav explained in his conversation with Jay, we are playing a long game here. We need to assume that true mainstream adoption of Web3 is a marathon not a sprint. However, he assures us that Polkadot has all of the resources necessary to stay the course.
The path to Web3’s future might not be quick or easy, but if the recent gathering in Berlin was any indication, Polkadot is already making its case with proof of Summit.