Wag’s Behind da Code? (May 12th to May 18th)
Behind the Code represents one of the most significant pieces of content that follows the journey of Polkadot and brings people into the ecosystem. It resonates with what we're about at WagMedia, with our focus on content creation and news storytelling we look to bring people in too.
To celebrate the release of the first installment of Behind the Code, Season 2, we shall be featuring it in our Top Story. In emulating the approach of captivating storytelling, we shall also cover a few other items that caught our eye this week.
A few newsletters ago, we mentioned Polimec joining WagMedia as a new treasury and did a special profile report about them. This past week their very first bounty was announced, furthermore, it has been extended to May 24th.
The bounty includes coverage of Apillon, given it will be the first project to fund via Polimec. Therefore, to assist those looking to be evaluators as well as potential sale participants, check out our special profile report about Apillon in this week’s edition.
The full newsletter can be enjoyed via this link.
Dodow, Chief Editor
Top Story Of The Week - Behind the News
Written by yay.oi
A real-life drama began unfolding before our eyes over in OpenGov. Meanwhile, a groundbreaking proposal could see Polkadot technology empowering 150M US social network users to take back control of their online identities.
But let’s kick things off, by taking a look at the highly anticipated return of the Polkadot treasury funded Behind the Code series.
As told in Space Monkeys 146, the story of Behind the Code started in 2016 when Gavin Wood got in touch with his old school friend, director Simon Hipkins, to see if he’d be interested in doing some filming for his new project, a successor to Ethereum.
Hipkins filmed Gav on and off over the following years, and in 2019 proposed to cut the footage into a series of films that could help explain Polkadot to the general public. The result was Polkadot: Behind the Code, a three-part series that, with over 300k views, has the highest engagement out of all Polkadot content on YouTube.
In January of this year, with Referendum 415, Hipkins successfully proposed the sequel to Behind the Code to tell the Polkadot 2.0 story. This time with four episodes released between April and December 2024……
Check out our full newsletter for the full story
Special Report - Behind Apillon
Written by Sanchez
Polkadot’s decentralized economy is set to welcome an era of decentralized funding, where ordinary users can effectively become venture capitalists. The first project to be put through the Polimec protocol is Apillon.
Those within the ecosystem may have already heard the name, met with the team at events, or even worked with them and their products. Originally set to launch on Moonbeam and partnered with Kilt, Apillon was known as Authtrail and focused on data integrity services for enterprises looking to onboard in Web3.
They raised USD $3.6M in private funding at the end of 2021 and followed up with a community sale in early 2022. Despite the looming bear market, following Polkadot decoded 2022, the team announced a pivot to focus on providing Web3 tooling and services based on feedback received at the event. This was followed by the rebrand approximately a month later.
Apillon can now be widely recognised as a Web3 development platform for developers and businesses. By abstracting away the complexities of building on Polkadot and its parachains, Apillon provides Web2 developers the ability to build on Web3 with familiar tools. Developers can use tools like Typescript, Python, React, Javascript, and more to build products on top of Polkadot.…….
General News
Written by Dodow
With a self-funded bid of 1K DOT, Integritee wins the latest Polkadot auction slot to secure blockspace for another 2 years.
Frank McCourt, the founder of Project Liberty, which focuses on decentralized social data and leverages the Frequency parachain has been identified to be looking to buy TikTok. You may have seen his recent interviews featured on The Kusamarian.
There's some things tokens cannot buy. For DePINs, there's now Mastercard. Peaq joins Mastercard's Start Path Program, a move that potentially opens up traditional financial infrastructure as well as a vast user base to DePINs.
PoKe, a new Business Development unit, is the latest recipient of a Web3 Foundation Decentralized Futures grant.
Peaq secures funding of $20M, becoming the largest CoinList token sale in the last 2 years. The public sale was oversubscribed, with over 14.5K participants pledging $36M.
TraceLabs, the team behind OriginTrail, joins NVIDIA's Inception program. They look to build on their work on Verifiable Internet for Artificial Intelligence.
NFT & DEFI News
Written by Dodow
Get ready as Evrloot revamps its marketplace!
NeuroWebAI have concluded its knowledge mining beta, which results in artwork being maintained as knowledge assets using OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph. Participants will be rewarded with NEURO tokens.
Karura, Acala's canary network, has a proposal to fund a marketing campaign on Telegram.
Anemoy Capital has made a Centrifuge governance proposal for onboarding DeFi Yield Fund.
A good amount of ASTR and BNC pours into HydraDX's omnipool.
Governance & Events News
Written by Dodow
OpenGov proposal 762 aims to sponsor an esports team with the view of establishing the Polkadot brand in the rapidly growing world of esports gaming.
Polkadot Head Ambassador Irina Karagyar has signed a MOU with the Founder Institute who is seeking a formal partnership with Polkadot via Referendum #755 on the OpenGov Wish for Change track.
As part of a feature to cover Forbes list of those shaping web3, Ferrum Network hosted Tanssi for a discussion on May 15th.
LAOS Network were involved with a spaces session on May 16th, with the topic on “Which Reward Systems Will Disrupt the Gaming Industry”.
Join the On Chain Art Day as part of Berlin Blockchain Week on May 24th, where the KodaDot team will be available to provide support.
Extras
Did you catch the awesome Raoul Pal interview?
Awesome cover art created by Dodow.
Wag Challenge on May 15th, the competition is to literally look for treasure and uncover the Easter eggs.
For all you budding creators out there, don't hesitate any longer – join us now! There are plenty of rewards awaiting your creativity.