Shaping DOT Year Ahead! - Newsletter Edition 81
In this week’s edition:
Editorial: AI Agent Meta or Fad, Shaping the year ahead.
Top Story - OpenGov: A New Year, A Fresh Start!: Recapping the OpenGov proposals that kick off 2025.
Featured Report - Develop DOT Africa: The mission of Polkadot Africa.
Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between January 1st and January 8th.
Extras: Credits and anything else.
The full newsletter can be enjoyed via this link.
Editorial
What is up, my friends!
AI has been a hot narrative dominating mindshare on Crypto Twitter in recent weeks. In particular, the field of Agentic AI has given rise to the AI Agent meta. The rapid launch of new AI Agents has partly fueled a shitcoin casino, leading to criticism that they are just another form of memecoins.
While some may believe that the current form is mid curve and serves to cater degen gamblers, others see it as the best thing in crypto since DeFi. In fact, it’s now spawning into DeFAI, showcasing the possibilities of AI in this space. As it is still early days, the jury remains out on AI Agents, although it's pretty hard to ignore.
In last week’s top story, we briefly covered how Phala has supported the AI Agent mania. This week, another Polkadot ecosystem builder, OriginTrail, was revealed to support the Opus AI Agent ecosystem via DKG v8 and its NeuroWeb rollup on Polkadot. Meanwhile, InvArch has welcomed an era of AI Agents voting and controlling things DAO. Like, what Wud Gavun think?
Given that it’s only been a week into 2025, who knows how things will shape up for the rest of the year. That said, through OpenGov, the world’s largest DAO does have a tendency to influence the year ahead. So, for this week’s top story, we’ll be taking a closer look at some of the proposals kicking off the year.
One recently executed proposal, which aligns closely with WagMedia, is Polkadot Africa. This week’s featured report will provide some insight into its mission. Additionally, if you happen to be in the region, there will be a meet-up in Nairobi on January 18th.
Finally, if you feel you can shape things up with the Polkadot X account, look out for application details for the Social Media Editorial Board. Several WagMedia creators have been involved, so why not join us to kick-start your content creator journey?
Dodow, Chief Editor
Top Story of the Week - OpenGov: A New Year, A Fresh Start!
Written by yay.oi
Get back to work, fam! Holidays are over. While some of you are kicking off the new year with a bit of self-enrichment, the Polkadot DAO seems to be at something of a crossroads. With record treasury spending in 2024 stealing the limelight from a year of great achievements, there has been a notable shift in OpenGov towards reduced spending.
The good news is that, according to Tommi Enenkel’s Polkadot Treasury Report preview, the treasury balance sheet is looking quite healthy at a 210M USD-equivalent. So, as we remind the world’s largest DAO that the treasury is there to be spent, let’s take a look at some recent proposals both succeeding and struggling, to anticipate those that will help us kick-start the New Year.
Our first big spend of the year is increasingly likely to be Token Terminal’s Referendum 1346. It’s a 1M USDT request to build improved datasets that will help decode the complexities of the Polkadot ecosystem for mainstream analytics, unlocking standardized and marketable metrics such as TVL and active users for every parachain.
While the substantial price tag initially hindered the proposal from getting off the ground, the tide seems to have turned with recent AYE votes from Decentralized Voices (DV) delegates Kus DAO, Lucky Friday, Polkadot Hungary, and Saxemberg. The referendum has entered the confirmation period, and will pass if it can hold on until January 13th.
With one week left in the decision period, things are not looking as optimistic for Conor Daly’s $3.5M 2025 Motorsports Program sponsorship request. Despite offering a much greater value proposition compared to 2024 – six IndyCar races as opposed to one along with additional business development initiatives – Conor’s referendum has not managed to attract significant support from any large holders or DV delegates.
That said, Conor is not without proponents in the Polkadot ecosystem. On the KusDAO Discord, Jay Chrawnna warns, “If we lose Conor we will 100% regret it when treasury is at 1B”. Meanwhile Phunky, in his Christmas message, urges the community to push treasury-funded initiatives, such as Conor’s, because 2025 is the year for Polkadot to make its mark, especially in the US........…….
Check out our full newsletter for the full story
Featured Report - Develop DOT Africa
Written by Sanchez & Dodow
Polkadot’s growing presence in Africa marks a turning point. Through OpenGov referendum 1347, the community of the world’s largest DAO has voted to fund the Polkadot Africa initiative. The mission aims to address challenges on the continent, by creating clear pathways for talented Africans to thrive in Web3, fostering awareness, adoption, and growth in the process.
With Africa being the second most populous continent, it is characterized by a large unbanked population and high mobile penetration. Additionally, there is growing demand for cross-border financial solutions, and as a result, the region offers significant opportunities for blockchain adoption.
Furthermore, with several African countries facing high inflation and a youth demographic eager to engage with new technologies, interest from the Web3 industry has been growing. However, despite this potential, Africa's opportunities in the blockchain space remain largely untapped by Polkadot.
In contrast, other Web3 ecosystems such as Ethereum and Solana have successfully attracted African talent through initiatives like EthAfrica and SuperteamNG. While some may link this attention to token value, the reality is that these ecosystems have made it clearer and more accessible for creators, developers, and everyday users to engage and contribute.
Polkadot Africa seeks to rectify this by leveraging existing ecosystem initiatives to create accessible pathways for Africans to join the network. Educational outreach and developer training are central to the mission, with meetups across various countries serving as key entry points for newcomers...……...
Wag Roundup
Written by yay.oi
The PBA-X blockchain technology online course kicked off on January 6th. The four-week program features an all-star lineup of instructors from the Polkadot ecosystem, including Shawn Tabrizi, Kian Paimani, and the one and only Gavin Wood.
According to DotLake data, the number of unique non-zero balance accounts on Polkadot continued its monthly streak of all-time highs in December.
The Peaq machine economy has grown by 50% in one month, achieving the impressive milestone of 4.5M registered devices.
The OPUS AI agent is integrating with the OriginTrail DKG v8 and Neuroweb AI as a knowledge miner. OPUS plans to use NEURO token rewards collected for publishing knowledge assets to strengthen the OPUS ecosystem by buying back OPUS tokens.
With the launch of Gavun Wud Agent v2, our fownding agent has been released from the confines of Telegram onto his very own X account. Deployment onto the Phala TEE Cloud is coming soon.
Season 1 of the Evrloot Marks campaign has come to an end. Almost 3000 players joined the Web2 free-to-play game, with 2000 converting to the full-featured Web3 version. Stay tuned for Season 2, which promises updates such as group battles, PVP Arena, a marketplace orderbook, and new opportunities to earn Marks.
The lending pool on Hydration just got a whole lot more interesting with the addition of vDOT. Hopefully, you’ve already had your fun, because the lending supply cap was hit within 15 hours.
On Saturday 18th January, Polkadot Africa will be hosting its first 2025 meetup at the Nairobi Game Development Center.
Extras
Awesome cover art created by SKULLZ.
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