Polkadot: The second batch of Kusama auctions is well underway, Kilt has been onboarded as Kusama’s seventh parachain and went live, Gavin Wood has written up a primer on XCM, Khala rolled out Para-2 testnet, The Crust mainnet launched, Zenlink partners with the Manta Network, Microsoft Japan announces support in building the Astar & Shiden ecosystem, Humanode testnet soon, and more!
Biweekly update on the Polkadot ecosystem vol. 19, 26th August — 9th September
TL;DR
- The second batch of parachain slot auction began on September 1st. Teams are competing to get a slot on the Kusama relay chain to start their own individual parachains.
- After winning the sixth parachain auction, Kilt is now being onboarded as Kusama’s seventh parachain (6-auction winning parachains, plus Statemine). Approximately 8,000 network stakeholders locked up KSM in favor. The momentous day is finally here: KILT Protocol is live.
- Bifrost Runtime has been upgraded to the new v0.8.3 release, which opens the Democracy, Council, Treasury, Bounty and Tech.comm. modules. What’s more, Bifrost will support Basilisk, Altair and Calamari with its SALP protocol in the second batch of the Kusama slot auctions and releasing its contributors’ bonding liquidity.
- The Altair crowdloan has now officially launched, and it is ready to receive your KSM.
- Interlay is aiming to win a slot with their Kintsugi canary network — bringing BTC liquidity via a trustless bridge to the entire Kusama ecosystem.
- Sakura Finance is giving away 15 million SKU to be awarded if the Parachain Auction slot is secured, with an upper limit of 100,000 KSM to be raised.
- Genshiro crowdloan is live, users can stake their KSM here in support of Genshiro.
- Basilisk crowdloan #2 has been launched.
- Moonbeam announced an integration with Magic, a plug and play auth and key management solution. Moreover, C.R.E.A.M. Finance expands to Polkadot via Moonbeam.
- Zenlink SlotVault launched. It is a solution to parachains candidates that will help them collaborate while performing crowdloan campaigns and will airdrop ZLK to all users who lock KSM/DOT through Zenlink SlotVault. Forby, Zenlink partners with the Manta Network to provide privacy protection for DEX. Also, Zenlink completes series A funding led by Alameda Research.
- SDN token transfers have been enabled on the Shiden Network. Good news is, Microsoft Japan has announced that the company will provide a wide range of support in the areas of marketing and infrastructure for projects that are building on the Aster Network or Shiden Network. Star projects and influencers announce to join Darwinia’s Metaverse Evolution Land. Furthermore, the Fifth Continent of Evolution Land: Eden Continent is officially launched.
- Khala, Kusama’s fourth auction winner, rolled out Para-2 (testnet for new token economics & TEE mining), updated their launch roadmap, and began deploying governance features along with their first democratic council member elections.
- The Crust mainnet was officially launched at the 217th Era. Less than one week after launch, Crust Mainnet has reached over 1,400 PB in storage capacity. Additionally, Crust Network implements a decentralized distributed storage protocol utilizing Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX).
- Robonomics participates in the 2nd wave of auctions in the Kusama network. Furthermore, Robonomics is now on Subscan explorer.
- The $30M mark is behind for Celer. Non-custodial, open-source and trust-free bridge is available at cbridge.celer.network, 9 different chains and layer-2s supported, more on the way.
- Tree from the NUTS Finance team has been accepted as the inaugural Acala Ecosystem Grant recipient.
- Raze Network has shared the full version of its code.
- ‘EDG Dev Digest’ highlighting Edgeware Community’s technical contributions and achieved milestones is out.
- StaFi rMATIC App has been launched after completing community testing and security audit. Also, StaFi has launched the governance platform in partnership with Commonwealth, which is the crypto native, all-in-one community & governance tool used by many of the top DeFi projects.
- The Humanode team gives you an opportunity to apply for the first-ever Humanode testnet that is going live in the upcoming month. Find the application form in our report below.
- Kylin Network collaborates with Shyft Network.
- ChainX governance forum on Commonwealth is open.
- Amara has completed the deployment on the Moonbase Alpha network and will launch AmaraLend Beta soon.
- In his keynote at SmartCon #1, Chainlink Co-founder Sergey Nazarov outlined a grand vision for the transition to a world of cryptographic truth.
- Akropolis weekly updates were published.
- Referendum 32, to increase the number of validators from 297 to 299, is currently failing with eight days left to vote.
- Gavin Wood has written up a primer on XCM, the cross-consensus messaging format.
- Former Diem Association director Bertrand Perez has joined Polkadot builder Web3 Foundation as chief operating officer.
- Sub0, the Substrate Developer Conference, is taking place on 13–14 October this year
- The Polkadot Encode Club Hackathon starts today.
- And more!
Latest Polkadot News
- Following the passing and execution of Referendum 33, Polkadot has been upgraded to runtime 9090.
- Referendum 32, to increase the number of validators from 297 to 299, is currently failing with eight days left to vote.
- AMA: Polkadot for Beginners with Bill Laboon.
Kusama
Kusama Parachain Auctions: Second Batch
It is Parity’s recommendation to the Kusama Council that the next parachain auctions commence with the following schedule:
- Auctions commence back to back with a two day period of initial bidding followed by a five day ending period (in the same manner as to the first five auctions)
- Five auctions happen over five weeks with a pause for evaluation of overall network performance before a third batch of five auctions begins in a similar schedule
The following is the case assuming that no significant and unexpected issues are found with the relay-chain logic (in such a case all options should remain on the table for network governance including pausing or postponing any scheduled or on-going auctions.)
If these recommendations are observed then the schedule will look as follows:
Participating in Crowdloans on Kusama and Polkadot
Information on how crowdloans work and how to safely participate has been posted on the Polkadot blog:
Kusama’s First Batch of Parachains: An Interview with the Teams
An intense period of activity followed the announcement of Kusama’s first parachain auctions. Projects geared up to participate, the auctions played out and all 5 slot winner onboarded to the network. Since then, each has been working through their relative launch phases, network performance monitoring has taken place, and the second round of slot auctions proposed already. With the next wave of parachains auctions incoming, it’s high time for an update on the first batch of auction winners and what they’ve accomplished since winning a parachain slot.
This blog contains information provided by the projects Karura, Moonriver, Shiden, Khala, and Bifrost, in order of when they won their parachain slot*. Discover what each network does, their achievements so far, and the phases ahead on their respective roadmaps.
7th Slot Auction Progress:
Awareness and Events
XCM: The Cross-Consensus Message Format
Gavin Wood has written up a primer on XCM, the cross-consensus messaging format.
As the final Polkadot 1.0 release, complete with Parachains draws close, the Cross-Consensus Messaging format, XCM for short, is approaching its first production-ready release. This is an introduction to the format, its goals, how it works and can be used to achieve typical cross-chain tasks.
- On September 23–24 join Unfinished Live to hear from Gavin Wood, founder of Polkadot, Web3 foundation, and Parity, discuss a decentralized future and how new technologies can fulfill the promise of a decentralized web. To register and for details:
- Polkadot Encode Club Hackathon is open for your submissions! Register by September 9th and get to build new solutions for the Polkadot ecosystem and answer Parachain challenges in the hackathon with over $30,000 in prizes. To learn more and to sign up here.
- Sub0, the Substrate Developer Conference, is taking place on 13–14 October this year:
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.
Before being enabled by Polkadot’s network governance, parachains will be tested and optimized both on parachain testnets and on Kusama. Once the code has been fully tested, audited and benchmarked, and parachains are running smoothly on Kusama, Polkadot governance can enable parachains and begin parachain slot lease auctions.
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.
- Kusama proposal #129 Passes, Bifrost SALP to Decentralize Slot Bidding Contribution | Weekly Report 66: Bifrost Runtime has been upgraded to the new v0.8.3 release, which opens the Democracy, Council, Treasury, Bounty and Tech.comm. modules. At this stage, BNC holders can participate in governance but cannot run for committee candidates for the time being. In advance of the removal of the Sudo (Super Administrator) module, and with the passage of Kusama #129, Bifrost SALP decentralized slot bidding contributions via XCM ump transact will become a case for interoperability by parachains calling the relay chain Crowdloan Contribute across chains.
- Bifrost will support Basilisk, Altair and Calamari with its SALP protocol in the second batch of the Kusama slot auctions and releasing its contributors’ bonding liquidity. Contributors who contribute through SALP protocol will be able to join the derivative mining with vsKSM, and receive Bifrost native token (BNC) as reward. Once a supported project wins the auction, the vsKSM will be tradable for swap between KSM and other assets effortlessly.
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.
- Get ready to rumble — Altair Crowdloan is now LIVE: The Altair crowdloan has now officially launched, and it is ready to receive your KSM.
- FAQ: Altair Crowdloan: Here are some answers to the most common questions about Altair’s Kusama parachain bid and crowdloan.
- Your Wildest Assets Competition: It’s time to unleash your creativity and tell us what could you imagine with asset financing on Altair.
ChainX
ChainX, a crypto assets gateway, is planning bridges to several networks and has implemented a BTC to Substrate bridge.
- ChainX governance forum on Commonwealth is open: The ChainX forum on Commonwealth is open for business. Now you can create, discuss and fund community projects on the Commonwealth platform. It’s all on-chain so the forum and on-chain mechanisms are fully integrated. Check it out here.
- ChainX Dev Update August 2021: The summary of the work the PolkaX team has completed and get an insight into the various things they are working on.
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 Highlight August | Monthly Recap
- Star projects and influencers announce to join the Metaverse Evolution Land
- Eden has arrived: Eden is the name of the fifth Evolution Land Continent based on the Polygon Network.
- Eden Continent Land auction and Apostle auction: The Fifth Continent of Evolution Land: Eden Continent is officially launched.
- Evolution Land Metaverse Experience Officer Program.
Interlay
Interlay is building a trustless bridge from Bitcoin to Polkadot.
- Brace Yourself: Whales are coming for Kusama Crowdloans: Fresh Alpha brought to you from the Kusama relay chain
- Kintsugi BTC Crowdloan Takes Off: The Kintsugi Crowdloan has opened
Smart Contracts
Clover
- How to Participate in the Sakura Parachain Auction: Sakura Finance is giving away 15 million SKU to be awarded if the Parachain Auction slot is secured, with an upper limit of 100,000 KSM to be raised. This means despite the amount of KSM contributed to the crowdloan, there will be a minimum of 15 million SKU distributed to all crowdloan contributors if Sakura secures a parachain slot.
- Clover Finance to Integrate with 0Chain, Connecting dApp Builders to Censorship-Resistant Data Storage: Clover Finance announced its integration with 0Chain, a high-performance decentralized cloud storage network. Clover will leverage 0Chain to distribute dApp files across the distributed web to bring the first fully censorship-resistant DeFi experience.
- SKU Airdrop & Parachain Auctions
Edgeware
- EDG Dev Digest: Aug 29 — Sep 4 2021: Status updates
- The Cutting Edge: Week of August 30th: A weekly newsletter discussing progress updates, events, and governance proposals within the Edgeware ecosystem.
Moonbeam
- Magic and Moonbeam Team Up To Bring Scalable Passwordless Authentication to DApp Builders on Polkadot: Moonbeam announced an integration with Magic, a plug and play auth and key management solution.
- C.R.E.A.M. Finance Expands to Polkadot via Moonbeam: Moonbeam announced an integration with C.R.E.A.M. Finance, a decentralized lending protocol for individuals and institutions to access financial services.
- Moonriver is live on the Kusama. Crowdloan contributors can claim their rewards. MOVR token holders can now nominate and stake in the staking application. More in their post.
- How to Stake MOVR Tokens on Moonriver and Earn Staking Rewards
Scaling
Astar Network (previously Plasm Network)
- Microsoft Japan announces support in building Astar&Shiden ecosystem: Stake Technologies has been working with Microsoft Japan under the Microsoft for Startups program. They announced that they will collaborate with Microsoft Japan to provide a wide range of marketing and infrastructure support to ecosystem projects and developers on Astar Network/Shiden Network.
- Announcing the $30M Astar/Shiden Ecosystem Growth Fund
- SDN token transfers have been enabled on Shiden Network. The smart contract features will be enabled soon, allowing developers to deploy both Ethereum smart contracts (EVM) and WASM on Shiden Network.
- Astar has created an open community program where every community member can join and support the Astar ecosystem. The community program consists of two tracks: Community rewards (help the growth of the Astar ecosystem and get rewarded for your contributions) and Ambassador program. Find here all the details.
Celer
- The $30M mark is behind. Non-custodial, open-source and trust-free bridge is available at cbridge.celer.network, 9 different chains and layer-2s supported, more on the way.
DeFi
Acala
- ‘Tree’ from NUTS Finance Receives First Acala Grant, Bringing a Stable Asset Protocol to Acala’s Multi-Chain DeFi Hub on Polkadot: Tree from the NUTS Finance team has been accepted as the inaugural Acala Ecosystem Grant recipient (see Grant proposal). Tree is a synthetic asset protocol designed for optimizing liquidity fragmentation to increase asset usability in the Polkadot ecosystem.
- Liquid Staking for KSM has launched, users can now mint LKSM on up to 3k KSM. LKSM allows users to stake KSM to receive a liquid ‘receipt’ token in LKSM at a 1:1 ratio. LKSM continues to earn staking returns, while being free to use across Karura & Kusama-based DeFi for earning additional yield.
Equilibrium
- Genshiro Has Launched The Second Round Of Its Crowdloan Campaign: There’s no time like the present to show your support for Genshiro.
- How To Send Free Transactions In Polkadot
- Equilibrium’s Ninth Community Call recap
HydraDX
- The Snek is Back: Announcing Basilisk Crowdloan #2.
- Road to Hydration (part 2): Liberating the Tribe.
StaFi
- Introduce The StaFi Governance Platform with Cooperation of Commonwealth: StaFi has launched the governance platform in partnership with Commonwealth, which is the crypto native, all-in-one community & governance tool used by many of the top DeFi projects.
- StaFi Launches rMATIC StakingDrop Campaign: StaFi rMATIC App has been launched after completing community testing and security audit. In order to incentivize MATIC stakers to participate in rMATIC App, StaFi officially launch a StakingDrop campaign with 150,000 USDT valued FIS token Pool. Anyone who stakes MATIC before 12PM UTC, 1 March, 2022 through rMATIC App could have the chance to get the FIS token rewards.
- Research on Leveraged Staking
- StaFi Protocol Monthly-August Community Updates
- StaFi Mainnet Chain 1st Anniversary:
Zenlink
- Zenlink SlotVault launched, participate in the parachain Crowdloan to win double incentive: Zenlink SlotVault is a solution to parachains candidates that will help them collaborate while performing crowdloan campaigns and will airdrop ZLK (and other tokens) to all users who lock KSM/DOT through Zenlink SlotVault. Contributors can participate in crowdloan of Altais, Kintsugi, Calamari, Crust, SherpaX and Sakura, earn all the relevant projects’ bonuses and ZLK tokens as well.
- Zenlink reaches strategic partnership with Manta Network: Zenlink partners with the Manta Network to provide privacy protection for DEX.
- Zenlink Completes Series A Funding Led by Alameda Research: The funds raised will continue to be invested in expanding development resources, driving integration, developer incentives, etc.
- Zenlink SlotVault has integrated Kintsugi BTC, interBTC’s canary network: Visit Zenlink SlotVault to contribute to Kintsugi crowdloan and win extra $ZLK rewards.
- Zenlink SlotVault has integrated Centrifuge and offers up to 100,000 ZLK to support its parachain: Visit Zenlink SlotVault to support Altair crowdloan, help it bid on slot, and win extra $ZLK rewards
Privacy
Phala Network
- #1 Khala Runtime Upgrade — Enable Secure Worker Mining and Token Staking
- ANN | Phala Joins Grazing Range Pool of Alpaca Finance, Gets 2.5x APYs!
- ANN | PHA has officially Launched on Binance Bridge, Opening a PHA/USDT Liquidity Pool
- DAO | Khala Democratic Council Candidates
- DAO | Khala Governance Guidance Overview
- Fixed multiple testnet issues, launched on PancakeSwap | Phala Weekly Vol.49
- Reading | Phala TEE Mining Staking Design
- Para-2 testnet is now live:
RAZE Network
- Raze Network Monthly Review #6
- Raze Network Testnet Bounty Program Update
- Raze Network’s Current Production Code Release: Raze Network has shared the full version of its code.
Data
Crust Network
- Crust Weekly Stats. | Sept. 6th 2021
- Crust Project Development — August 30 — September 5
- DCF (Decentralized Cloud Foundation) to launch “Node 100” Program: The Crust mainnet was officially launched at the 217th Era. Within 48 hours, there were about 260 validators and candidate nodes. In the Crust network, validators and candidate nodes take responsibility for maintaining network security. The more nodes, the more secure the network. In the early stages of mainnet launch, when the number of nodes is still slightly insufficient, it is crucial to improve the quality of nodes. Therefore, the DCF has decided to launch the “Node 100” program to improve the quality of nodes and strengthen the Crust network security.
- A New Breakthrough in Distributed Storage, Powered by Intel SGX: Crust Network implements a decentralized distributed storage protocol utilizing Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX)
- The Importance of Decentralization in DeFi: Socbay is the Europe dev team of Crust, granted by Decentralized Cloud Foundation.
KILT Protocol
- KILT Wins Kusama Parachain Auction Slot #6, Launches Mainnet: KILT was announced as the winner of the 6th Kusama parachain auction. The momentous day is finally here: KILT Protocol is live.
Chainlink
- Chainlink Joins Gitcoin Grants Round 11 as Matching Partner to Support Ethereum Infrastructure Development
- Showcasing the Chainlink Prize Winners From the Layer 2 Hackathon
- How Chainlink Accelerates the Global Transition to Cryptographic Truth: In his keynote at SmartCon #1, Chainlink Co-founder Sergey Nazarov outlined a grand vision for the transition to a world of cryptographic truth.
- Access the Smart Contract Developer Bootcamp On-Demand
- August 2021 Recap: Chainlink Announces CCIP And Keepers Mainnet Launch At SmartCon #1, Plus A Record 76 New Integrations
Kylin Network
- Shyft Network Partners with Kylin Network: Shyft Network is a public blockchain protocol designed to aggregate and embed trust and validation into data stored on public and private ecosystems, and permissioned and permissionless networks. By facilitating bridging across siloed datasets, Shyft allows for layering of context on top of data, ultimately turning raw data into meaningful information.
- Kylin Human Capital Announcement
Other
Humanode
- The Humanode team gives you an opportunity to apply for the first-ever Humanode testnet that is going live in the upcoming month. The participants will be able to go through a special biometric enrollment process and become human nodes, validate blocks, send transactions and take part in the 100 000 $ anti-spoofing bounty program by their partner FaceTec. Applications will be reviewed by the Humanode core and you will be invited in batches. The invitation will be sent out to the emails that you state in the application. The Link to the form.
- Humanode Dev Report 5:The Humanode teams shared some bullet points to shine some light on the exciting advancements that they have been working on.
- [Humanode Special Interview Series]: Dato, co-founder of Humanode: Dato discusses the project’s journey, the challenges that he faced in starting it, and Humanode’s greatest challenges now, he shares his vision for Humanode, and describes ideas behind the Humanode concept.
- Humanode, unity within — EthBuilders NYC special event: On September 2nd, 2021, the Humanode team attended EthBuilders NYC special virtual event fully devoted to Humanode. They were speaking about Fath monetary algorithm, The Humanode DAO named Vortex, gave a presentation on crypto-biometrics, described Humanode tech stack, and discussed some of the Humanode use cases.
- The Humanode Fireside took place last week. The team was talking about the place of Humanode in crypto. The recording is up on Humanode Podcast and YouTube channel.
- Ethereum compatibility: Learn about the benefits of Humanode’s compatibility with Ethereum in our new article.
- Biometric-based Marketplaces
- Biometric-based Credit Scoring
Robonomics
- Polkadot For The IoTt Market: Robonomics Is Ready For Real World Use Cases On Kusama: The Robonomics team wants to impact the Kusama network development with four scenarios from the real world. These use cases describe unique opportunities for the crypto audience and all participants of the IoT market.
- Robonomics is now on Subscan explorer.
MISC
- Former Diem Association director Bertrand Perez has joined Polkadot builder Web3 Foundation as chief operating officer.
- Subscan introduced its new multi-signature wallet tool that is designed to help others in the Polkadot ecosystem create and manage multi-signature accounts and transactions. It is supported by the Web3 Foundation Grants Program and provides convenient multi-signature wallet management services for multiple networks based in Polkadot.
- Sub.ID has been updated:
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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