Written by yay.oi
What’s shiftin’, Sandy? Polkadot June is upon us and Kevin Shift has led with a banger. The mammoth three-hourish interview with our founder and chief architect Gavin Wood, has already racked up the most views ever for a When Shift Happens (WSH) episode.
Next in the lineup, Drops featured Energy Web’s Ed Hesse on Tuesday, painting a future where your Tesla trades and earns in the energy markets while you sleep. And coming up on June 24th, Mark Cachia of Scytale Digital, will share why he’s making a bold play for Mythical Games.
But let’s not shift past the opening episode too quickly. After all, this was Kevin’s favorite WSH episode to date. He flew from Singapore to Lisbon to make it happen, building a custom studio on the outskirts of the city just for this conversation. Every detail, from the set design to the lighting and edits got extra attention.
Narrowing down the hottest takes from an epic conversation isn’t easy, but if there's a WAG, there's a way. The discussion kicked off with topics like the values of personal sovereignty, privacy, and how Web3 can shield us from the arbitrary and whimsical decisions of centralized entities that will inevitably screw us over.
Building on those points, if granted a magic wand to fix one thing about Polkadot today, Gav said he would make it entirely shielded with ZK technology. Polkadot offers a lot of transparency now, but that comes with trade-offs. It is easy to track individuals, their financial movements, and how they vote. Voting anonymously, as is done in Western democracies, is crucial.
Given his views, it’s curious that the Satoshi Nakamoto route of anonymity wasn’t taken, especially since he believes protocols should not have charismatic leaders. If people follow a protocol because of its leader, it risks loyalty turning to rivalry. And tribalism, according to Gav, is the one thing that will get in the way of crypto becoming something sensible.
Sensible protocol development doesn’t necessarily mean giving the people what they want now. Instead, the focus has been on solving the tough problems early, because that’s what unlocks the revolutionary products of the future. We’re arguably beyond the point where incremental speed upgrades bring real benefits. Real progress needs a shift in perspective.
This is where JAM steps in. We’ve heard how continuations and semi-coherency contribute to JAM’s ability to run any application on-chain, but explaining JAM simply without any jargon was still somewhat of a struggle for Gav. Then it hit him, it’s a magic internet supercomputer.
When it comes to the magic internet money that will power that computer, he made it clear in a recent Polkadot Forum post that he has no intention of releasing a JAM token. DOT anchors the Polkadot economy, and he doesn’t see how a JAM token would bring any net gain to the Polkadot ecosystem.
To him, Polkadot is the product, JAM is the protocol. In addition, as an open-source protocol, there’s nothing to stop anyone else from launching their own JAM-based chain and token. That freedom is by design. Gav doesn’t just want JAM and the PVM to power the next iteration of Polkadot. He wants to see them become the standard, neutral Web3 protocol.
Elsewhere on the Polkadot Forum, a heated debate is brewing about an upcoming proposal to shift the treasury’s diversification strategy. Last January, Phunky’s Wish for Change Referendum 1394, despite never receiving a decision deposit, drew overwhelming support for the idea of a Bitcoin strategic reserve.
Building on this signal of support, the new proposal suggests converting 500,000 DOT to tBTC over the course of a year, using the Hydration DCA feature. It is much the same as the treasury’s current strategy of stablecoin acquisition. Referendum 457, which kicked off that effort, already flagged BTC and ETH as the next logical step.
Supporters, such as Ben (Hydration), would like to see the treasury buy and hold BTC indefinitely. Over the past few years, BTC has outperformed DOT and, unlike stablecoins, it still has some upside potential. For the Polkadot Treasury, holding Bitcoin could act as a long-term hedge, reducing volatility and preserving value for years to come.
Evan (Marketing Bounty) has put forward an alternative approach. He’d like to see a buyback of Polkadot ecosystem tokens as a show of conviction. A vocal Italian who doesn’t even own any crypto argued that this would just produce short-term price spikes without real demand to sustain them.
On the other hand, Lurpis (Bifrost) supports the buyback strategy. He sees a better risk-reward ratio in buying undervalued ecosystem tokens and believes that the price increases could boost confidence and attract external liquidity. That said, more rigorous slippage modelling and market impact analysis would be required to minimize losses to arbitrage.
Meanwhile, on another front, Parity may be conducting some loss minimization of its own. According to the Coretime Baron, the one available core in Coretime Sale #10 was snapped up on opening by Parity for 922 DOT. True or not, the Baron’s pressure has clearly had an effect, as moves are being made to shift away from the auction model in its current form.
No strangers to the Baron’s hijinks, Mythical is shifting into overdrive with the launch of FIFA Rivals on June 12th. It’s a little later than the App Store led us to believe. If you haven’t already, don’t forget to claim your day one collectibles. Next up, it’s time to start collecting fragments to craft players from the first official FIFA CWC player pack.
Adding another jewel to Mythical’s IP crown, FIFA Rivals has partnered with Adidas. Get ready to unlock Adidas sponsored players, boots, kits, and more in-game. And let’s not forget, FIFA Rivals is a Web3 game, meaning everything you earn is yours, verifiable on-chain. You can hold it, trade it, or sell it now, and in future updates or crossovers.
In addition to Adidas, Mythical has reportedly paired up with global football media platform One Football. While the original tweet has now been deleted, the evidence remains. We’ll have to wait and see what’s in store for that partnership. One thing is clear though. Mythical isn’t just shipping, it’s earning attention in all the right places.
When asked by Kevin Shift if the concept of parachains was a success, Gavin Wood pointed to Mythical as a standout example. What it is doing with in-game assets, in a mature industry, reflects real utility. And more than that, it delivers Web3 freedoms in an industry that would otherwise be using centralized services.
With Polkadot, and the Web3 vision, Gavin Wood is playing the long game, building lasting value not easy money. In contrast, by focusing on scaling up smart contracts, protocols such as Solana are able to give the people what they want now, even if that may be a quick fix of vapid nonsense.
Always two steps ahead, Gav sees that scaling up won’t cut it. In the long term, computation needs to be distributed. We need to scale out, not up, and that is what Polkadot and JAM aim to achieve.
Web3 is neither a race nor a contest. it is a redefinition of our increasingly digitalized world that aims to deliver personal privacy and sovereignty. Tribalism and fragmentation are not helping this vision come to fruition.
JAM is not just the next chapter of Polkadot, but rather an open invitation to build on a protocol that has the potential to become the standard for Web3. If we want to rewrite the rules of the digital world, we will need more than just Polkadot at the table. Whether today’s protocols answer the call, or a new generation rises to meet it, the shift is already underway.