Polkadot Ecosystem Weekly Digest. January 31–February 6

Polkadot / Kusama

• The Kusama Network and Polkadot treasuries are eager to fund teams working on UI/UX development for a more user-friendly experience: Litentry is doing just that, on the governance side. Check this thread to see more.
• “XCM-over-bridges PR is nearly ready, meaning parachains under Polkadot will be able to send XCM effortlessly not just to each other, but also to parachains on Kusama Network, trivialising the transfer of tokens/NFTs, the use of certificates and much more” — Gavin Wood
• The next parachain slot auction has started at block 8_868_510. Calendar.
• Congrats to Polkascan with their new, rather slick, UI.
• Introducing The Polkadot Pioneers Prize: compete to solve some of the biggest challenges facing Polkadot and Web3 and win up to 993286.08 DOT. The first two challenges will be announced later this year and will cover zero-knowledge research & infrastructure improvements.
• What is Polkadot and how does it work? Check out the latest technical explainer from Web3 Foundation’s Bill Laboon for a quick introduction to Polkadot, Substrate, XCMP, governance, and more.
• SORA Network has won the 24th parachain slot on Kusama.

ETHDenver

ETHDenver is a member-owned community innovation festival and one of the largest Web3 hackathons for blockchain protocol enthusiasts, designers, and developers. You can apply to attend the event here.

Astar / Shiden

• Shiden Network ecosystem overview by @ShidenGrowth:
  - Build2Earn,
  - Builders Program,
  - DAppStaking,
• Polygon and BSC are now connected to Astar Network. It means that you can bring MATIC and BNB to Astar and fully use it.

Litentry / Litmus

Litmus won the #23 slot in the Kusama parachain auction. They have raised 10,821 KSM from 849 contributors.

Evanesco

Evanesco will launch the Web3 decentralized EVA computing platform based on the unique Layer0 Network infrastructure, which provides stable, safe, timely and cost-effective computing power services for GameFi, NFT, and Privacy Computing.

Manta / Calamari

• Subspace supports Calamari Network by archiving its full history with their Kusama Relayer. Over 2.7 GiB of Calamari’s blockchain history is stored permanently on Subspace.
• 10,000+ transactions on Dolphin Testnet. Congratulations to Manta and Calamari with this amazing milestone!

Moonbeam / Moonriver

• Treasureland now supports the Moonbeam chain, which will allow Moonbeam Network users to utilize Treasureland’s unique frictionless trading platform to buy, sell, auction, and mine NFTs.
• In this talk you will hear everything you need to know about staking in Moonbeam and Moonriver networks. Watch this replay to understand how to select a collator to stake with, and how to optimize your rewards.
• Meter.io has reported a hack in their bridge protocol. It is not recommended to trade unbacked Meter BNB on Moonriver at the moment.

Interlay / Kintsugi

Kintsugi Dapp just went live. You can now easily transfer tokens on Kintsugi. More features to be released as per the latest update.

Robonomics

• Soon you can hire a robotic telescope in the Atacama desert and mint NFT of a galaxy, nebula or star cluster with RMRK.app. Details.
• Next month Robonomics will start to distribute an open source implementation of Zigbee hub with a 1-year subscription to use Kusama parachain

Acala / Karura

• Early next week Acala will begin by enabling a 1-way bridge to invite DOT transfers from the Polkadot Relay Chain to Acala. This will allow anyone to transfer their DOT in anticipation of DeFi operations and liquidity mining incentives (also launching next week).
• Crowdloan rewards distributed, ACA and LCDOT now transferable, DeFi protocols nearing launch: check out Acala’s Recap of Jan 2022.

Subsocial

Did you know that you can sign transactions of Subsocial dapp on mobile phone if you use the dapp from Nova Wallet or Math Wallet? Here is a tutorial on how to use Subsocial dapp from Nova Wallet.

SORA

Contributors to the SORA crowdloan can receive NFT rewards while helping SORA achieve new superpowers & interoperability for Polkaswap. Check out the SORA Wiki to see the wallets and exchanges that are supporting the SORA crowdloan.

Unique / Quartz

Quartz is excited to announce that QTZ will be listed on MEXC on the 8th Feb, 2022. Hop over to the blog to know all about it and how you can participate.

Crust

New Diamond Reward (Crust Files Premium Membership) event with CoinMarketCap is coming. Join the Web 3.0 File Storage revolution to get Premium access. More details.

Clover

Clover announced a new official partnership: now you can trade Clover’s Lucky NFT on tofuNFT.

Composable Finance / Picasso

• Want to know more about Composable Finance? Here is a guide that helps non-DeFi natives easily grasp the concepts and Composable’s vision for the growing ecosystem.
• Following the end of an eventful start to 2022, Composable Finance has published Composer notes, their monthly newsletter including the latest news at Composable Finance: partnerships, announcements, and raising 6 million DOT to secure a parachain on Polkadot.
• Introducing Picasso’s Canvas: the monthly newsletter consisting of Picasso’s latest updates and development.

Efinity / Enjin

Interested in NFTs but don’t own any yet? Enjin proposes to get your first one for free.

Parallel / Heiko

• After Feb 11th, Parallel’s recontribute bonus will not apply for Batch 1, any remaining DOT will be usable on Parallel’s AMM and Auction Loan. Also withdrawal will be unavailable until XCM v2 is released.
• PARA rewards distributions for batch 1 projects (Acala, Astar, Clover, Moonbeam) has already started.