Polkadot: Shiden successfully won the third auction on Kusama, Khala won the fourth, Genshiro and Robonomics prepare to the next auctions wave, The Altair crowdloan is now live, polkaBTC becomes interBTC, The 1st Polkadot & Kusama <> BSC bridge is live on the testnet, Dock’s Proof-of-Stake mainnet is live, KILT Protocol shifts to LDPos, and more!
Biweekly update on the Polkadot ecosystem vol. 15, 1st July — 15th July
TL;DR
- The canary project of Polkadot-based, multi-chain DApp hub Astar Network, Shiden wins the third auction on Kusama with over 138k KSM contributed during the Crowdloan. Also, the team announced the technical roadmap before and after the Kusama Parachain Auction.
- On July 13th, the Web3 cloud computing project Khala, by Phala Network, successfully won the auction for the fourth parachain slot on Kusama.
- The Equilibrium team is the first in the crypto world to create and implement a Binance Smart Chain bridge on Kusama. It works with Polkadot too. This bridge will enable bi-directional asset transfers between BSC and Substrate-based networks, Polkadot and Kusama.
- To hedge possible risks of the current contributors, Genshiro team will double the reward for those who contributed to their crowdloan in the first batch. The project offers its supporters twice as many GENS on each KSM if they participate in our crowdloan during the second batch of Kusama parachain auctions.
- Bifrost upgraded to v0.9.8 and successfully produced blocks in Westend. In the past two weeks, the Bifrost team added many product functions on ksm.vtoken.io, which is fully ready for the 5th Auction.
- The Altair Crowdloan is now live: Stake your KSM in the Altair Crowdloan on Kusama and earn AIR. 1 KSM. 25% of the reward will be unlocked, while the remaining amount will be distributed to crowdloan participants over the length of the parachain slot.
- The highly anticipated Basilisk crownloan by HydraDX is here. You can now help the legendary reptile hatch out and make its entry in the Kusama network as a parachain.
- Interlay is expanding product scope and mission, rebranding polkaBTC to interBTC — Bitcoin on any Blockchain. Stay tuned for major announcements over the coming weeks.
- Edgeware has outlined its Kusama parachain strategy, replacing Hedgeware with a community led project called Kabocha. A weekly newsletter discussing progress updates, events, and governance proposals within the Edgeware ecosystem is out.
- Moonbeam announced that Moonriver, its community-led sister network on Kusama, has completed the initial step of its five-phase launch process. Moreover, Moonbeam has completed integrations with Waffle and Mars, two popular Ethereum-based developer tools, and Moonbeam announced a partnership with myNFT.
- Acala Ecosystem Update is here. Watch the panel from Acala’s DeFi & Polkadot Chicago Meetup. Join the Karura team for a Community Call (and launch update) on Discord later today, on July 15th.
- Celer’s layer2.finance v1.0 Budapest testnet launched on Ethereum Goerli testnet as the last step towards the highly anticipated mainnet upgrade.
- The strategic partnership between Zenlink and MathChain was announced. The two parties will cooperate on the DeFi application on Polkadot Layer 2 and cross-chain asset transactions between parachains. New Zenlink Smart Order routing enables Zenlink to effectively act as a unified portal for Polkadot ecological DEX.
- The Dock mainnet has successfully transitioned to Proof of Stake (PoS) network. This is a major milestone for the Dock community which can now play an active role in securing and running the Dock network.
- KILT Protocol aims to secure an initial Kusama parachain slot, planning to bid for slots in the 6–10 range. Furthermore, Kilt has decided to shift from a Nominated Proof of Stake (NPos) network to Limited Delegated Proof of Stake (LDPos), in order to adopt a mechanism that better supports KILT in the long term.
- Robonomics presented “Plan B” to eliminate the “No slot, no reward” effect. For 1 KSM all summer crowdloan campaign all participants will get 3.5 XRT on the Robonomics frontier network.
- Humanode’s rebuilding of the Substrate framework for the needs of the crypto-biometric protocol is ongoing. Check out the details in their dev report. The seventh Fireside took place yesterday, fully devoted to biometric ownership. Recording soon.
- The StaFi 2021Q3 roadmap-robust system for rToken is out.
- Check out Darwinia’s monthly recap. Good news is, Polkapet loaded successfully.
- Clover monthly was published.
- Crust Project Development update is here.
- Raze Network joined Polkadot DeFi Alliance, a community of the most significant DeFi projects in Polkadot Ecosystem.
- Akropolis Weekly Updates were published.
- OceanDAO Round 7 preliminary results are out.
- Chainlink Labs’ Chief Scientist Ari Juels explains fair sequencing service as a natural extension of decentralized oracle networks.
- Asva Labs partners with Kylin Network. It will make use of the fast and efficient data feeds offered by Kylin Network, while developing in concert what data feeding they can most benefit from via oracle scripting.
- An overview of the current and future structure of the Radicle project.
- On July 8th the Encode Club team hosted the first event of their newest educational series as part of Encode Polkadot Club. This event was an introduction to the programme and introduced students and hackers to the basics of blockchain. Check out the recording and slides in our report below.
- Today at 6:30pm CET, tune in to the second event of the Polkadot Encode Club. This session will introduce students and hackers to Polkadot.
- Web3 Foundation monthly grants roundup is out.
- And more!
Latest News
Nominating and Validator Selection on Polkadot
Polkadot is a decentralized system run by a large number of nodes that cannot be controlled by a single entity. The security of the network relies on nominators active participation in selecting suitable validators and updating their selection frequently.
Kusama
Kusama Parachain Auctions
The first real-world functional parachain, Statemine, began processing permissionless transactions after an on-chain upgrade. After some smooth running, the time is coming to move to the next stage: slot auctions. Here is the recommendation for how Parachain auctions should be rolled out in the coming weeks.
As it was announced, the approximate schedule of Kusama parachain slot auctions will be as follows:
- 2021/06/15, 12:00 GMT: First Kusama Parachain Slot auction commenced.
- 2021/06/17, 09:00 GMT: First Kusama Parachain Slot auction ending period began.
- 2021/06/22, 09:00 GMT: First Kusama Parachain Slot auction bidding ended.
- 2021/06/22, 11:00 GMT: First Kusama Parachain Slot auction winner selected. Karura has won the first parachain auction and has on-boarded as Kusama’s first non-common-good parachain.
- 2021/06/22, 12:00 GMT: Second Kusama Parachain Slot auction commences. Moonriver has won the second parachain slot on Kusama.
- 2021/06/29, 12:00 GMT: Third Kusama Parachain Slot auction commences. Shiden has won the first parachain auction.
- 2021/07/06, 12:00 GMT: Fourth Kusama Parachain Slot auction commences. Khala has won the first parachain auction
- 2021/07/13, 12:00 GMT: Fifth Kusama Parachain Slot auction commences.
Several projects have already started their crowldloan campaigns, offering users various bonuses for early participation.
- Top projects by collected KSM during their crowdloans are:
The next parachain candidate is the Bifrost Network with 91k+ KSM.
Awareness and Events
- Encode Polkadot Club: Intro to Blockchain [Video + Slides]: On Thursday, July 8th the Encode Club team hosted the first event of their newest educational series as part of Encode Polkadot Club. This event was an introduction to the programme and introduced students and hackers to the basics of blockchain.
- The Next Top Blockchain Startup is a global hackathon and startup competition that aims to spotlight the next wave of blockchain entrepreneurs. The Web3 Foundation is awarding the top 3 teams to build a custom blockchain that could one day become a parachain on Polkadot or Kusama. Utilise Substrate and build your specialised chain from the ground up. All teams have to submit their projects by August 8th.
Submissions: June 15th — August 08th.
Finance
Active accounts and the number of transactions (information from Polkascan)
Polkadot markets (information from Coingecko)
Polkadot Ecosystem Market Cap (information from Dotmarketcap)
Roadmap
- Current Phase: Parachain Rollout
The launch of Polkadot began a year ago with the first four phases; the last — a move to complete decentralisation and permissionlessness — happened finally at the end of July last year. Now, phase five, the final phase in the launch of Polkadot is beginning.
Future Upgrades
Polkadot upgrades currently under development include upgrades to XCMP (Cross-Chain Message Passing) and the launch of parathreads. These and any subsequent upgrades can be enabled by Polkadot’s on-chain governance community once development, testing, benchmarking, and auditing are complete.
Ecosystem Updates
Bridges
Bifrost
Bifrost has developed an EOS network bridge that enables trustless cross-chain asset transfer by implementing on-chain light nodes with merkle tree verification.
- Bifrost upgraded to v0.9.8 and successfully produced blocks in Westend | Weekly Report 60: In the past two weeks, Kusama Parachain Auction has entered the fierce stage of the 4th slot auction. Bifrost team mainly focused on the development and marketing of the official auction page vsKSM Mint Drop (ksm.vtoken.io), through the 200% reward sprint activity, the invitation code reward promotion/generation mechanism restart, the leading reward bonus, and the Asgard hero plan, four aspects were used to empower the Bifrost parachain auction and obtained 35,000 visits in 14 days, and successfully attracted more than 50,000 KSM votes, currently ranking the first candidate in the 5th slot of Kusama.
- Bifrost’s leading reward plan adjusted, becoming Asgard Hero and winning thousands of BNC rewards: Bifrost has launched a gradient leading reward strategy, with rewards up to 250%. When Bifrost is the first candidate in the 4th Auction and is ahead of the second candidate by a certain KSM amount, all contributors can receive additional bonuses. The address that achieves the leading goal will become the Asgard hero. When Bifrost loses leading, the leading goal will fall back, and the Asgard hero will be reset. The Asgard hero who remains after the auction will receive additional BNC rewards. Dashboard.
- How to vote for Bifrost on Newland
- AMA Recap (Jul 8th)
- A Brief History of Cross-Chain: From Asset Bridge to Interoperability: A brief reflection on crosschain.
Centrifuge
The ChainBridge allows Centrifuge to move fungible and NFTs between chains, enabling the financing of real-world assets in a variety of DeFi products.
- The Altair Crowdloan is now live: Stake your KSM in the Altair Crowdloan on Kusama and earn AIR. 1 KSM. 25% of the reward will be unlocked, while the remaining amount will be distributed to crowdloan participants over the length of the parachain slot.
- JUNE DROP💧Altair PLO, Community Call #14, Tinlake Round-Up and more: June was an eventful month for Centrifuge. The team has launched their Kusama parachain and their crowdloan is now live, Tinlake hit over $25M and is rapidly growing as always, catching up on the last community call and AMA with Parity Tech, and of course real-life events are officially back. Read on to find out more.
ChainX
ChainX, a crypto assets gateway, is planning bridges to several networks and has implemented a BTC to Substrate bridge.
- Bitcoin’s Fully Decentralized Cross-chain will Detonate Layer 2: ChainX as a Bitcoin‘s layer 2, will design a New Cross-chain Solution with the taproot upgrade, which will bring a Technical Revolution to BTC, and detonate its layer 2.
- Meet Coming app:
Darwinia
Darwinia is building a permissionless non-custodial bridge protocol featuring efficient, low cost decentralization of cross-chain tokens and Non-Fungible Token (NFT) transfers, as well as other cross-chain operations.
- Darwinia Hight June| Monthly Recap: Key takeaways from last month.
- Polkapet loaded successfully: As the entrance to a multi-chain Metaverse, Evolution Land has been accessed to ERC 721 assets such as CryptoKitties and GEGO, and can directly participate in the gameplay of Evolution Land. The access of Polkadot’s pet is the first ERC 1155 asset introduced into Evolution Land. Three kinds of pets are currently connected to Evolution Land — Terra Turtle, Darwinia Network — Leaping Monkey, and Crab Network — Burst Crab.
- Most Powerful Mining Tool — Drill launched: The first Gamefi gameplay is coming to the Dawning Continent now.
- The Darwinia Crab Crowdloan | Tutorial Update: Newland
Interlay
Interlay is building a trustless bridge from Bitcoin to Polkadot.
- Interlay Expands Mission: polkaBTC becomes interBTC — Bitcoin on any Blockchain: Interlay is expanding product scope and mission, rebranding polkaBTC to interBTC — Bitcoin on any Blockchain. Stay tuned for major announcements over the coming weeks.
- Interlay Dev & Ecosystem Update #2
Smart Contracts
Clover
- Clover Monthly | June 2021
- Sakura 1 KSM will bring 200 SKU+1 sKSMLP token. New Users get up to 20% SKU bonus. 5% referral bonus. 28% of the SKU will be unlocked for the crowdloan participants to utilize right away with the Sakura platform. The remaining 72% of the supply will be unlocked linearly for 12 months. Details.
Edgeware
- The Cutting Edge: Week of July 5th: A weekly newsletter discussing progress updates, events, and governance proposals within the Edgeware ecosystem.
- Edgeware has outlined their Kusama parachain strategy, replacing Hedgeware with a community led project called Kabocha (KAB) — a reference to Kusama’s favourite thing ‘pumpkins’. Read the community discussion.
- AMA on July 16th:
Moonbeam
- Moonriver Completes First Phase of the Parachain Launch Process on Kusama: Moonbeam, the Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform on Polkadot, announced that Moonriver, its community-led sister network on Kusama, has completed the initial step of its five-phase launch process. Phase Zero began last week when Moonriver started producing blocks on Kusama, though governance and infrastructure operations were limited to the Moonbeam Team. Phase Zero has now been completed, and Moonriver has now entered Phase One, during which the network will begin to decentralize and add community-led collators to the active set. During Phase One a collator election will happen, and the active collator set will expand to 32 active slots.
- While performing a runtime upgrade, Moonriver stopped producing blocks. This was due to an issue between Kusama and Moonriver parachain, where the Relay Chain attempted to validate a block using the old runtime, while collators were producing blocks using the new runtime. A technical analysis of what happened, what was the bug, and what all parachain teams need to be aware of by Bryan Chen.
- Moonbeam Adds myNFT Integration to Bridge Ethereum-based NFTs: Moonbeam announced a partnership with myNFT, the upcoming NFT creative workshop, trading platform, and discovery engine poised to become one of Polkadot’s flagship NFT platforms.
- Moonbeam Adds Waffle and Mars Integrations: Moonbeam has completed integrations with Waffle and Mars, two popular Ethereum-based developer tools created by Ethworks. The addition of these tools to Moonbeam’s already-lengthy list of developer integrations will make it even easier to create, test, compile, and deploy new projects to the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems.
Scaling
Astar Network (previously Plasm Network)
- Shiden, a sister network of Astar becomes a Parachain: Shiden wins the third auction on Kusama with over 138k KSM contributed during the Crowdloan! Over 4300 enthusiasts joined the Crowdloan and will be rewarded with Shiden native token $SDN.
- Shiden announced the technical roadmap before and after the Kusama Parachain Auction.
- The team will migrate the testnet from PoA to Nominated PoS shortly. The internal test was successfully completed.
- Recently, Plasm rebrands to Astar Network in pursuit of becoming a Polkadot-native DApp Hub: Plasm rebrands to Astar Network in pursuit of becoming a Polkadot-native dApp Hub.
- Astar Receives a Web3 Grant to Implement ZK Plonk on Polkadot:
Celer
- layer2.finance v1.0 Testnet Launches with $20,000 Reward: layer2.finance v1.0 Budapest testnet launched on Ethereum Goerli testnet as the last step towards the highly anticipated mainnet upgrade. The team hopes to use this testnet as a chance to test the system under real-world usage patterns to ensure there is no issue that is not discovered during the development, review, and audit process. To incentivize community testing efforts, they are hosting a $20,000 testnet reward campaign. Join now to get started.
- Celer’s monthly AMA recap.
DeFi
Acala
‣ Karura wins first-ever Kusama parachain slot auction with 501k KSM from 20k+ accounts
‣ Karura launch underway
‣ Gauntlet Network providing automated financial risk mgmt
‣ Meetups in Chicago & Shanghai
- Watch the panel from Acala’s DeFi & Polkadot Chicago Meetup:
- Join the Karura team for a Community Call (and launch update) on Discord on July 15th:
Equilibrium
- The First-Ever Polkadot & Kusama <> BSC Bridge Is Live On The Testnet: The Equilibrium team is the first in the crypto world to create and implement a Binance Smart Chain bridge on Kusama. It works with Polkadot too. This bridge will enable bi-directional asset transfers between BSC and Substrate-based networks, Polkadot and Kusama. You can play with BUSD tokens on the testnet.
- Equilibrium In Review: June 2021: June has been a packed and productive month for the team, go through their updates and achievements.
- Genshiro Crowdloan Rewards Are Doubled For Early Supporters: To hedge possible risks of the current contributors, Genshiro team will double the reward for those who contributed to their crowdloan in the first batch. The project offers its supporters twice as many GENS on each KSM if they participate in our crowdloan during the second batch of Kusama parachain auctions. For example, if you contribute 50 KSM or more right now, you’ll receive 4,800 GENS on each KSM during the second campaign (as opposed to 2,400 GENS).
HydraDX
- Basilisk Crowdloan Kick Off: Basilisk by HydraDX crowdloan details: Target slot 4 (06–13 July), Total BSX rewards: 15.000.000.000 BSX, Max $HDX rewards: 56.873.469 HDX. How to calculate rewards.
Zenlink
- Announcing the strategic partnership between Zenlink and MathChain: The two parties will cooperate on the DeFi application on Polkadot Layer 2 and cross-chain asset transactions between parachains.
- New Feature: Introduction of Zenlink Smart Order Routing Design Solution: Zenlink Smart Order routing enables Zenlink to effectively act as a unified portal for Polkadot ecological DEX.
- Short about: Zenlink. Review of the Polkadot-based cross-chain DEX network.
Privacy
Phala Network
- Khala Network Kusama Slot Auction Recap: At 16:42 on July 13th (SGT), the Web3 cloud computing project Khala, by Phala Network, successfully won the auction for the fourth parachain slot on Kusama. The winning bid was 132,280 KSM, which was nearly the same as the winner of the previous slot auction.
- Reading | Phala Network Economic Paper Preview
- Democracy’s Path From Ancient Greece to Web 3.0: Phala On-Chain Assembly due to Launch
- Phala Weekly Vol.42
- New Achievement: Over 50,000 KSM backing Khala | Phala Weekly Vol.41
RAZE Network
- Raze Network Coming to Polkadot DeFi Alliance: Raze Network joined Polkadot DeFi Alliance, a community of the most significant DeFi projects in Polkadot Ecosystem.
- Raze Network Monthly Review — June
- Raze Network Partners With Reef Finance
- Raze Network Partners With BRING.FINANCE
- RAZE Available on THORswap & Liquidity Instructions
- Pre-Testnet Raze Network Meme Contest
Data
Crust Network
- Crust Project Development — June 28 — July 4
- On July 7th, 2021 14:30 (GMT+8), Crust distributed the fourth batch of rewards for Kusama crowdloan participants.
- What can I do after receiving CSM?: With the completion of our airdrop with CoinMarketCap, you may have some CSM in your Maxwell account. So, what can you do with your CSM?
- Decoo supports “Profit Data” Platform: Decoo is a revolutionary, commercial-grade distributed cloud storage service that utilizes IPFS and Crust Network technologies for global users.
Dock
- Dock’s Proof of Stake Mainnet Is Live: The Dock mainnet has successfully transitioned to Proof of Stake (PoS) network. This is a major milestone for the Dock community which can now play an active role in securing and running the Dock network.
- How Validation Works in Dock’s Proof of Stake
- Last week’s progress at Dock:
KILT Protocol
- The Continuing Evolution of KILT Protocol: Limited Delegated Proof of Stake: Kilt has decided to shift from a Nominated Proof of Stake (NPos) network to Limited Delegated Proof of Stake (LDPos), in order to adopt a mechanism that better supports KILT in the long term.
- KILT’s Parachain Plans: An Update: KILT Protocol aims to secure an initial Kusama parachain slot, planning to bid for slots in the 6–10 range. KILT’s team has been hard at work building and testing the technology so that they can launch with significant functionality, rather than adding core elements later. Here’s an update on KILT’s strategies towards network launch.
Ocean Protocol
- The week at Ocean:
- OceanDAO Round 7 Preliminary Results are out:
Oracle
Chainlink
- June 2021 Recap: Chainlink Announces 52 New Integrations, Chainlink Keepers In Open Beta, Social Impact Grant Expansion.
- Alpaca Finance Integrates Chainlink To Secure Growing $1.2 Billion TVL
- Chainlink Labs’ Chief Scientist Ari Juels Explains Fair Sequencing Service As A Natural Extension Of Decentralized Oracle Networks
- OTONOMI Integrates Chainlink To Fix Opaque, Fragmented Insurance Industry
- Nifty Royale Integrates Chainlink To Create Battle Royale-Style NFT Experience
- Smart Contract Summit #1: This August 5–7, discover how market-leading blockchain projects are using Chainlink’s expansive collection of off-chain services to accelerate smart contract innovation at SmartCon. Sign up below today to save your spot for this blockchain event.
- Chainlink latest collab with KSM Starter:
Kylin Network
- Kylin Network Monthly Report #6: Some highlights:
-New partners
-Parachain deployed to rococo testnet
-Entirely new conceptual framework (DDMOs)
-Mainstream news interview
- Asva Labs Partners with Kylin Network: Asva Labs will make use of the fast and efficient data feeds offered by Kylin Network, while developing in concert what data feeding they can most benefit from via oracle scripting. The teams will work together to understand all aspects of further operationalization and monetization of whatever data they may need or can provide within the network of DeData Ecosystem partners.
Other
Humanode
The rebuilding of the Substrate framework for the needs of the crypto-biometric protocol is ongoing. These weeks, the development team set up Humanode Peer rebuilding multiple pieces of the original lib, added Substrate-based RPC system, developed simple cryptographic primitives to process required cryptographic checks on different sides of the components, as well as developed custom pallet-bioauth for biometric authentication logic and integrated into Humanode Peer. Furthermore, they integrated Polkascan explorer that now shows the result of biometric authentication, and implemented Aura consensus. What’s more, they set up the infrastructure to connect all the pieces of the Humanode Network and applications on top of it.
Currently, the team is creating a consensus scalable among thousands of nodes ready for EVM-compatibility. Over the last two weeks, we saw a great progress in this field as the team implemented Snow family consensus protocols which work with blockchains (Slush, Snowflake and Snowball), modeled several attacks, developed two types of simulations (single thread vs. multiple threads), visualized interaction of nodes, and started building a general testing framework.
While the Humanode dev team was busy working on the aforementioned tasks, the bio-authentication team entered the experimentation stage of cryptographically secure search and matching and liveness algorithm schemes created in-house.
- An Interview with Humanode Lead Dev: MOZGIII
- Fath: A monetary system to mitigate currency devaluation and deflation
- Vortex, an overview: In this blog post, the team discusses Humanode DAO, and how its governance will be decentralized from the start. Vortex is based on 1 human = 1 node = 1 vote, no matter how much money or power a person has, his vote only has equal power to his peers.
- The sixth Humanode Fireside conversation was fully devoted to cryptography and biometric identification. ICYMI here is the recording.
- The seventh Fireside took place yesterday. The team was talking about biometric ownership. Recording soon.
- Humanode in Simple Terms : What is Humanode? In this video, Shannon Higgins — Humanode Core member — goes over the most basic question of all. What is Humanode?
Robonomics
- Robonomics Crowdloan Unveils Plan B To Win With Plan A: Robonomics presented “Plan B” to eliminate the “No slot, no reward” effect. For 1 KSM all summer crowdloan campaign all participants will get 3.5 XRT on the Robonomics frontier network. Within a month following the conclusion of the first 5 auctions, staking on the frontier network will be activated with an APR of 50% until a Kusama network slot is obtained + every participant of the summer crowdloan campaign will receive an NFT Robonomics Pioneer card, which will provide additional bonuses, details will be shared closer to the next wave of auctions. Details on crowdloan and Plan B.
- Robonomics Network X Ocean Protocol P. 2: Monetizing Data From Robots And Iot Devices: This article expands the integration between Robonomics Network and Ocean Protocol. There will be described specifically how to connect robotic devices to the protocol, as well as possible use-cases where such integration will add value to the operation of the autonomous system.
MISC
- Web3 Foundation Monthly Grants Roundup — June 2021:
- Web3 Foundation has removed the maximum funding limit for general grants (previously 100k) as part of the commitment to promoting the Web3 ecosystem.
Social Media Metrics
Social media activity:
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Polkadot Twitter followers and Reddit subscribers. The information is taken from Coingecko.com
Polkadot Social Channels:
Polkadot Digest by Bill Laboon
This is not financial advice.
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