Polkadot: Polkadot and Kusama staking changes, Karura has won the 1st parachain auction & Moonriver has won the 2nd, Plasm rebrands to Astar Network, Dock’s mainnet will transition to a PoS network on July 7, Ocean is now deployed to BSC, The Kylin team introduced DDMOs, KILT announced an integration with Subscan, and more!
Biweekly update on the Polkadot ecosystem vol. 14, 17th June — 1st July
TL;DR
- As nominations on Polkadot continue to increase, there have been some limitations with the current staking parameters. To prevent issues from occurring, some restrictions are being added to the staking system: Max. 20,000 nominators (on both Polkadot and Kusama); min. stake 20 DOT or 0.1 KSM.
- Karura has won the first parachain auction and has on-boarded as Kusama’s first non-common-good parachain.
- With over 200,000 KSM in the crowdloan, Moonriver has won the second parachain slot on Kusama. Also, Moonbeam announced an integration with Automata Network, a decentralized service protocol that provides a privacy middleware layer for dApps across multiple blockchains.
- Reward climbs to 200%, Bifrost launches Parachain Auction Sprint Program: from 1 KSM : 11 BNC to 1 KSM : 22 BNC, and the overall reward is doubled. SALP & DEX will soon deploy Asgard CC4.
- Glitch and Darwinia form a strategic partnership to extend the utility of native assets.
- Dock’s mainnet will transition to a Proof of Stake (PoS) network on July 7th, 2021 at 1pm GMT.
- Crust Network has made some adjustments to the rules of the Profit Data event to ensure fairness and prevent network congestion. Check out the article in its official blog to learn more.
- Robonomics Developers published the KSM crowdloan module on June 28th: Meet final parameters, increased rewards, Robonomics development plans after auction. What’s more, together with their colleagues from MerkleBot they presented an educational program based on the Boston Dynamics SDK.
- Plasm rebrands to Astar Network in pursuit of becoming a Polkadot-native DApp Hub. Moreover, Oraichain, the world’s first AI-powered oracle and ecosystem for blockchains, has partnered with Astar to integrate key products, data and services.
- The Kylin team announced an entirely new vehicle/concept to help kickstart their DeData vision: ’DeData Market Offerings (DDMOs)’.
- As part of Ocean’s multi-chain strategy, the team has deployed Ocean’s technology to Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Furthermore, OceanDAO’s 7th round is still open for submissions.
- The Clover mobile wallet app has just become more Kusama compatible.
- Catch up on all things Centrifuge with the latest episode of ‘Epicenter’, featuring Cassidy Daly & Lucas Vogelsang.
- In this episode of ‘The Unstoppable Podcast’ the hosts are talking to Alex Melikhov, CEO of Equilibrium.
- At SWIFT’s Smarter Securities, Chainlink Co-Founder Sergey Nazarov discussed how institutions can prepare to interface with many different blockchains.
- A weekly newsletter discussing progress updates, events, and governance proposals within the Edgeware ecosystem is out.
- Humanode’s latest blog post discusses Substrate, which happens to be a great platform to build Humanode network on. Check it out.
- No vulnerability found in the initial and in the Final Audit of Celer’s layer2.finance v1 contract conducted by Certik.
- First batch of ZenlinkDAO initial governance board members announced. In June, the Zenlink team focused on product development, and after Zenlink DEX Protocol successfully implemented three different versions of Module, WASM and EVM, they optimized and upgraded the features of each version, and Zenlink DEX Procotol will soon enter the external code audit stage.
- Phala Network improved their crowdloan rewards. The project announced a collaboration with Bit.Country platform which allows users to build their own metaverse with NFTs, timeline views, 3D virtual worlds, and other functions.
- KILT Protocol announced an integration with Subscan, a blockchain explorer built for Substrate-based networks.
- The Encode Polkadot Club introduced. It is a nine-month programme in partnership with the Encode club funded by the Polkadot Treasury. The programme consists of a series of educational events about Polkadot, a hackathon, and a dedicated accelerator.
- Parity & Friends meetup on July 8th.
- And more!
Latest News
Polkadot and Kusama Staking Changes
Since the launch of NPoS on Polkadot and Kusama, the team has seen a significant increase in demand for participating in staking on both networks. With the increase in the number of accounts nominating on Polkadot and Kusama, they have seen some limitations of the current staking parameters. Specifically, as the size of the election solution set grows, more memory is used, up to the limits of what the runtime WebAssembly is configured to permit. In order to prevent issues from occurring when these limits are reached, some restrictions are being added to the staking system on both networks. Max. 20,000 nominators (on both Polkadot and Kusama); min. stake 20 DOT or 0.1 KSM.
How to Stake DOT/KSM with Polkadot-JS Apps
This video explains how to stake DOT/KSM with Polkadot-JS Apps:
Learn how to choose validators and what are the best practices for nominating.
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.
Announcing the Encode Polkadot Club
The Encode Polkadot Club is a nine-month programme in partnership with Encode club funded by the Polkadot Treasury. The programme consists of a series of educational events about Polkadot, a hackathon, and a dedicated accelerator.
Kusama
Kusama Parachain Auctions
The first real-world functional parachain, Statemine, began processing permissionless transactions after an on-chain upgrade. 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 is 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.
- 2021/07/06, 12:00 GMT: Fourth Kusama Parachain Slot auction commences.
- 2021/07/13, 12:00 GMT: Fifth Kusama Parachain Slot auction commences.
Top projects by collected KSM during their crowdloans are:
Awareness and Events
- 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.
- July 8th: Parity & Friends meetup:
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 Finance
Bifrost has developed an EOS network bridge that enables trustless cross-chain asset transfer by implementing on-chain light nodes with merkle tree verification.
- Reward Climbs to 200%, Bifrost Launches Parachain Auction Sprint Program: From 1 KSM : 11 BNC to 1 KSM : 22 BNC, and the overall reward is doubled.
- Bifrost Partners with NFT Protocol RMRK to Facilitate Bifrost Parachain Bidding by Distributing Limited NFTs.
- Bifrost Risk Control Series III: Multi-level risk prevention and control measures for capital security.
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.
- Centrifuge — Introducing Real-World DeFi with Cassidy Daly & Lucas Vogelsang: The ‘Epicenter’ hosts were joined by Lucas Vogelsang, CEO & Centrifuge Co-founder, and Cassidy Daly, Token Design & Research at Centrifuge. They explained why they built the protocol and how it works, the first application built on top, Tinlake, its integration with other DeFi platforms such as Maker, and their vision for the future.
- [AMA] Learn about Centrifuge and Tinlake With Lea, Lucas, and Martin.
- Community Call #14 is this Thursday July 1st at 18:00 CEST. Details on the agenda & how to join:
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.
- Kusama Parachain Auction Live AMA Recap
- How to contribute to The Darwinia Crab Crowdloan｜Tutorials
- Glitch and Darwinia form a strategic partnership to extend the utility of native assets: Darwinia and Glitch announced that Glitch will be partnering with layer-0 metaprotocol Darwinia, a Parachain candidate for Polkadot and bridge for heterogeneous blockchain networks, to bring their interoperable cross-chain bridge technology to the GLITCH protocol.
- Are you ready for “The Gold Rush”?: The first Gold Rush event of Evolution Land will officially start on 28th, June, 2021. The registration time for the event will last for 7 days. Players who own lands on Atlantis(Ethereum) and Byzantine(Tron) can participate in this event.
Interlay
Interlay is building a trustless bridge from Bitcoin to Polkadot.
- These weeks, there was no essential news on Interlay.
Smart Contracts
Clover
- The Clover mobile wallet app has just become more Kusama compatible. The KSM node has been updated, and you should see your KSM tokens on the Clover wallet accurately.
- Clover AMA | TGE, SKU Airdrop, Roadmap
- Sakura, Clover’s Sister Network, a Platform built for cross-chain DeFi on Kusama is now in the running to secure a parachain slot.
- You can invest in Sakura Crowdloan in a fully decentralized way via:
Edgeware
- The Cutting Edge: Week of June 14th: A weekly newsletter discussing progress updates, events, and governance proposals within the Edgeware ecosystem.
- The community’s favourite internal AMA: Date & Time: 25th June 2021, 4 pm ET
Moonbeam
- Moonriver Won a Parachain Slot and Is Now Producing Blocks on the Kusama Network: With over 200,000 KSM in the crowdloan, Moonriver has won the 2nd parachain slot on Kusama:
- Automata Network Integrates with Moonbeam to Bring Private, Off-chain Governance to the Polkadot Ecosystem: Moonbeam announced an integration with Automata Network, a decentralized service protocol that provides a privacy middleware layer for dApps across multiple blockchains. Powered by Automata Network, the integration with Witness serves to provide Moonbeam dApp developers additional protocol governance options by allowing them to measure and enforce community consensus in a decentralized and private manner.
- Next AMA is on July 1st, 2021:
Scaling
Celer
- The project recently released a revolutionary product, layer2.finance. The platform allows you to access DeFi projects like Compound, Aave and Curve while staying in Celer’s unique layer-two solution. The system “brings L2 to DeFi” and thus doesn’t require them to deploy new versions on its chain. You just need to pay the deposit fee once, and then benefit from nearly free transactions.
- No vulnerability found in the initial and in this Final Audit of layer2.finance v1 contract conducted by Certik. Uploaded on GitHub here.
- AMA with Celer Network’s Co-founder, Dr. Mo Dong took place.
- Check out latest Celer Improvement Proposals (CIPs) here.
Astar Network (previously Plasm Network)
- Plasm rebrands to Astar Network in pursuit of becoming a Polkadot-native DApp Hub. Astar Network is a Polkadot-native, multi-chain dApp hub that supports both Ethereum Virtual Machine and WebAssembly.
- Oraichain enters Polkadot through Plasm ecosystem: Oraichain, the world’s first AI-powered oracle and ecosystem for blockchains, has partnered with Plasm Network to integrate key products, data and services.
- Weekly Update #19.
DeFi
Acala
- Karura Wins First-Ever Parachain Slot Auction in Kusama & Polkadot Ecosystem, Brings DeFi Platform and Apps to Kusama: Karura wins auction with over 500k KSM contributed in the community-backed crowdloan — launch rollout process has begun.
- Karura Parachain Auction Celebration & Build Acala: Ready the Treasury Details:
- Acala team has shared their plans to hold Build Acala#2 event (ACA token sale). The event aims to distribute ACA tokens to the community and support Acala Treasury with funds. Acala Treasury has various important functions and one of them is the future self-funding of future parachain slot auctions. Build Acala #2 event will be held in 2 rounds, exclusive and public. To participate in exclusive round users must be verified and hold Acala Old Friend NFT or be Build Acala #1 verified user, but not participate. Public round is open for every verified community member.
Equilibrium
- Announcing Improved Rewards For Genshiro Crowdloan Participants: Genshiro offers now improved rewards for their crowdloan participants. Where there used to be a 1,000 GENS reward for every KSM contributed, smaller contributions under 50 KSM will now get 2,000 GENS per KSM. Those who lock 50 KSM or more will receive a 20% bonus on top of that. After Genshiro wins a Kusama parachain slot, 10% of the contribution will be unlocked immediately. The rest GENS will be claimed by way of linear vesting during the parachain lease period (48 weeks).
- Here’s What Happened During Genshiro’s Seventh Community Call. If you want to watch the recording, it’s available right here.
- Transforming DeFi with Interoperable Money Markets with Alex Melikhov from Equilibrium | Ep #56: In this episode of The Unstoppable Podcast, the hosts are talking to Alex Melikhov, CEO of Equilibrium. Equilibrium is an interoperable or cross-chain money market where users can earn, borrow, lend, raise liquidity and do all kinds of exciting and different things with stable coins. Alex explains how Equilibrium works differently to similar services in traditional finance and we dive into how interoperability (operating across chains) works with Equilibrium, and why it’s so important.
- Equilibrium on Chainlink Live | Dynamic NFT Cats on Genshiro for Kusama Launch: A Polkadot Chainlink Live video Q&A with Equilibrium CEO Alex Melikhov. They’re discussing how Equilibrium’s DeFi parachain Genshiro is using Chainlink Price Oracles to create dynamic NFTs as part of their Kusama parachain auction.
- GENS Is Live On BKEX
- GENS Listed On Kucoin
HydraDX
- Website Bounties: Announcing Winners
- AMA#25 Recap || PolkaWarriors x Basilisk — HydraDX’s Canary Network
- Is HydraDX the king of DeFi in the future?
StaFi
- StaFi Protocol Monthly- June Community Updates: In June, the team updated rETH App to V2.0 and released the rToken Analytics dashboard. Also, they evaluated the new rToken development, including rSOL, rMATIC. In July, they will keep optimizing the UI/UX of rToken App and expanding the rToken TVL and adoptions
- StaFi Will Work with Coinswap to Introduce rATOM into Cosmos Ecosystem: StaFi and Coinswap have teamed up to make their networks and assets more fully compatible with each other. StaFi and Coinswap will work together to introduce the brand-new asset rATOM token, the staking derivative of ATOM, into Coinswap, and launch related co-incentive programs for the liquidity providers.
- The Recap of AMA with Unmarshal
Zenlink
- Zenlink DEX Protocol Coming to External Code Audit | Zenlink Monthly Update (June 2021): Zenlink is approaching a critical period for product launch.
- New Beginnings in Governance: First Batch of ZenlinkDAO Initial Governance Board Members Announced: Start a new journey of Zenlink governance with all members.
- Zenlink Community Idea Competition Top Winners Announced: Congratulations to all the winning community members.
Privacy
Phala Network
- Phala Network improved their crowdloan rewards: $KSM: $PHA is now 1:120. After the amount of crowdloaned KSM breaks 30k, KSM: PHA ratio will turn to 1:150.
- Privacy ✖️Metaverse: Phala Partners with Bit.Country: Phala Network announced a collaboration with Bit.Country. Bit.Country, based on its blockchain platform and protocol, allows users to build their own metaverse with NFTs, timeline views, 3D virtual worlds, and other functions. Phala will provide privacy infrastructure services to Bit.Country’s Metaverse, allowing the addition of privacy features to Virtual worlds, NFTs, and secret messages.
- Multiple Industry Experts Join Phala’s R&D Company in Executive Capacities
- Bigger Rewards Coming — up to 150 PHA per KSM
Data
Crust Network
- Crust hopes that more and more people can understand and use Crust for file storage through the “Profit Data” activity. During this activity, users that store files and stake CSM can earn corresponding CRU rewards. The rules.
- Profit Data | Data Power Rules Adjustments and Upgrades: Since the “Profit Data” activity launched on June 25th, 2021, Crust Maxwell storage market orders have surged by more than 20,000, and the uploaded files have exceeded 1,500 TB within 3 days.
- Crust is providing free storage space.
- Crust distributes the third batch of Kusama crowdloan rewards.
- Crust Project Development — June 21–June 27.
Dock
- Dock’s mainnet will transition to a PoS network on July 7th, 2021 at 1pm GMT.: The upgrade to PoS will involve stopping the block production on the existing PoA mainnet, exporting the state of the PoA network, and starting the new PoS chain that preserves the PoA network’s state. This process will begin at 10am GMT on July 7th, and will take around 3 hours, during which transactions will not be possible.
- Nominating Validators on Dock’s Proof of Stake Network.
- Last week’s progress at Dock:
KILT Protocol
- KILT Protocol announced an integration with Subscan, a blockchain explorer built for Substrate-based networks. Subscan can be used to search, analyse and visualise various types of blockchain data. In addition, Subscan’s responsive design supports desktop and mobile users.
- The Price of Gas: Why KILT Chose Polkadot Over Ethereum
- KILT June newsletter was published.
Ocean Protocol
- Ocean’s on Binance Smart Chain: Ocean Protocol smart contracts and Ocean Market are running on Binance’s finance-centric chain.
- Ocean Market will introduce ratings & reviews thanks to UTU’s trust infrastructure: UTU’s AI-driven trust infrastructure to build comprehensive profiles on data providers, data consumers and data sets in Ocean Market.
- Ocean dives into Quantitative Finance with Battle of the Quants: Engagement with asset allocators, quantitative-focused hedge funds and academia to learn more about Ocean’s core technologies.
- How NFTs are disrupting the Gaming industry in developing nations: Jeff Zirlin, Head of Growth at Sky Mavis, on democratizing play-to-earn in the Gaming industry.
- OceanDAO’s 7th round is still open for submissions:
Oracle
Chainlink
- At SWIFT’s Smarter Securities, Chainlink Co-Founder Sergey Nazarov Discussed How Institutions Can Prepare To Interface With Many Different Blockchains: At last week’s Smarter Securities hosted by SWIFT, the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services, Chainlink Co-founder Sergey Nazarov sat down with SWIFT’s Director of Capital Markets Strategy, Matthieu de Heering, for a one-on-one conversation about the post-trade industry’s future and how firms can embrace digital transformation in a shared approach to delivering smarter securities solutions.
- What It Takes To Fulfill The Vision Of Chainlink 2.0
- Chainlink Labs Ranked Number One On FlexJobs’ List Of Top 25 Companies Hiring For Remote Work
- An Introduction To The Broad Diversity Of Chainlink’s Decentralized Services
- How Chainlink VRF Nurtures ApeSwap’s Community-Driven Ecosystem
- 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 collabs:
Kylin Network
- Kylin Network has joined the KSM Starter (the primary launchpad on Kusama network) Ecosystem Council. As an Ecosystem Council member Kylin Network is set to provide due diligence and feedback to the emerging Substrate projects applying for IDO (Initial DEX Offering) on KSM Starter.
- Cudos Partners with Kylin Network: Cudos is a scalable computing network for both blockchains and consumers of cloud services. It connects blockchain developers and buyers of cloud services (consumers) with sellers (suppliers), who can monetise their idle computing resources.
- Pinknode Partners with Kylin Network: The goal of Pinknode is to serve as the “Infura for Polkadot” by providing developers with web API access to the Polkadot Relay Chain, as well as future parachains to be deployed by project teams.
Other
Humanode
- Humanode’s latest blog post discusses Substrate, which happens to be a great platform to build Humanode network on. Check it out:
- The fifth Humanode Fireside conversation was fully devoted to human-centric decentralization. ICYMI here is the recording.
- The Sixth Fireside took place yesterday. The team was talking about cryptography and biometric identification. Recording soon!
- Humanode in Simple Terms : What is Humanode?: In this video Shannon — Humanode Core member — goes over the most basic question of all. What is Humanode?
- A quick Humanode survey: Give the team your feedback.
Radicle
- For those who missed the stream, the recording of this month’s Radicle Community Call is up on the Radicle YouTube channel:
Robonomics
- Robonomics Crowdloan final parameters and 48 weeks roadmap: Robonomics Developers published the KSM crowdloan module on June 28th. Meet final parameters, increased rewards, Robonomics development plans after auction.
- Robonomics Crowdloan and further steps, June 2021: Take a look at the Cowdloan module in details, parachain update plan after launching, and FAQ regarding auction.
- Letter from Robonomics co-founder: Robonomics network architect Sergey Lonshakov welcomes you to join their Polkadot ecosystem journey.
- Robonomics and their colleagues from MerkleBot presented an educational program based on the Boston Dynamics SDK. The team has prepared a set of lessons on Spot’s SDK to get developers familiar with the platform. At the end of the course you can physically or virtually rent a real robot in MerkleBot’s lab to test your software and receive a certificate of completion.
MISC
Latest Polkadot Digest:
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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