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Decentralizing a newsletter with Paragraph+GDCM
The post about Dot Leap winding down EOY 2024 caused some confusion and concern, so I will clarify in this one and outline a plan for Dot Leap going forward.
What it really means is that Dot Leap won't be led by me in a centralized fashion because of two main reasons:
1. I don't think the grant has a chance of getting renewed, and
2. I honestly don't feel passion about Polkadot any more after seeing it shoot its own foot for years, and witnessing the loading of more guns pointing downwards.
However, I still feel passion for decentralization, and I feel passion for technical innovation. I will do my best to make sure Dot Leap lives on as a community thing by combining everything I've learned and built so far, and what I still plan to build. To do this, I will heavily leverage Paragraph as a growth and reach platform, Polkadot's Asset Hub as the back end for the website, and GDCM as the DAO's foundation.
How it will work
As per the GDCM post, each subscriber will be able to mint a Dot Leap "account". This will be a modular NFT. This isn't yet set in stone, but it's likely the accounts will be visualized as a dot matrix, probably grayscale - their purpose being similar to the original twitter anon-account eggs.
These account avatars, let's call them Matrices, will gain color over time, dot by dot, depending on the actions and reputations of their users. Each dot is a "category" from GDCM, and its size corresponds to the earned merit. As the merit decays, the dot will shrink.
This will result in a vibrant and diverse set of avatars, constantly shifting and changing their tone and shape, lovely to visualize across time too.
Rune Site is a project I've been working on which uses Polkadot's Asset Hub for storing posts, tutorials, and comments as NFTs in a decentralized way. This is where Matrix holders will be able to propose links to include in the newsletter, Hacker News style, and comment on them. Everyone with a Matrix will also be able to upvote or downvote a link, and the strength of the vote will depend on the voting merit of the holder: the more you vote, the more merit you have in the Voting category.
Rune Site is being built as a free-for-all platform for others to use as their decentralized blogging platform, or website host. Stay tuned for news there.
On the DotLeap Rune Site there will be a "Propose launch" button, which anyone with a certain amount of Launch merit can trigger. At this point, everyone can vote on Launch - whether or not they feel the edition is ready for publication. If this passes, all links submitted into each category that have an upvote count above a DAO-defined minimum will be included in the auto-generated publication.
The newsletter's editorial is a separate entry and similarly voted on, which means each edition will in theory have a different editorial by someone else who wrote the best thing in that edition.
Finally, Paragraph will be used to launch the edition that's been voted in. Since Paragraph supports delivering to both emails and wallets, regular email subscribers will still get the newsletter as generated by the community, while Matrix holders can get it straight in their wallets if they would prefer not to give out their email address.
Over time as Matrix holders participate in different activities, they will grow different types of merit: Config merit, Voting merit, Editor merit, Finder merit (link discoverers), Developer Experience merit (for those capable of submitting and explaining parity repo PRs), Launch merit, Sponsorship merit, Dogfood merit, and more.
Revenue
As holders' merit grows, they get a proportional "stake" in Dot Leap. Over time, Dot Leap is expected to generate some revenue - primarily through sponsorships and job ads, and later through events or podcasts, and then from whatever the community decides.
A meaningful percentage of all income will be given to Matrix holders with sufficient merit. a big chunk will go to $LEAP holders, and a solid % will be reserved for the Treasury so that the protocol can grow with bounties and fees.
Those with sufficient stake in Dot Leap will be able to opt-in to receiving a part of that revenue. How much that will be depends on the config values voted in by the DAO. The opt-in mechanism is important for those under the tyrannical iron grip of the Empire of the World Police, USA, where you're not allowed to earn any money without asking for permission. This way, unless you explicitly request the money earmarked for you, it will remain in the treasury account of the DAO.
All the above is still heavily under heavy development, and it's being done by just one person - me. To build and grow this faster with a team, I will be raising funds with $LEAP this summer. The target will be $1m USD total with $10k per entity buy-in (also grants "founder" merit which has visual and functional perks), and if the $1m minimum is not reached, the full amounts will be refunded. Get in touch if you're interested.
And in case you don't believe I can pull this off, put your money where your mouth is.
Polkadot and Kusama Updates
Hyperbridge - the protocol to enable trustless bridging to and from Polkadot's ecosystem and other chains - explained in depth.
Polkadot updated to runtime 1.2.0, and promptly experienced some stalled blocks. The issue has been addressed and all is running smoothly.
A new Polkadot RFC has been raised. As proposed by ltfschoen, if implemented, deposits for buying coretime would be slashable, and purchasers would build up reputation of coretime use over time. This seems necessary to establish a healthy coretime utilitization. At the same time, I can't help but feel like it's all converging on Gamified Decaying Categorial Meritocracy.
Async backing is about to pass on Polkadot. Once enacted, Polkadot should enjoy a significant performance boost to its block time. More about async backing here.
Snowbridge activation on BridgeHub and AssetHub is about to pass.
Ratification of JAM seems to be passing unanimously. Turns out most of DOT wants better tech 🙃. If passed, this will make Polkadot Fellows "responsible" for finalizing and implementing this specification.
The Polkadot-Kusama bridge broke briefly, but was fixed with runtime 1.2.2.
Development
The Web3 Foundation announces a $10M USD fund for implementers of JAM, Polkadot's new architecture. Learn more about JAM in the wiki. Token2049 talk here, and Kusamarian's Gray Paper interview with Gav is also a great resource:
Play Video [Bill] Due to a recent API change in the latest Polkadot runtime upgrade, some wallets/interfaces may be showing no active nominations. This appears to be just a UI issue, NOT an actual problem with nominations, due to the move to paged reward payouts. This update however also brought a big improvement - oversubscribed nominators are no longer a thing.
The Wish for Change "track" is a signaling mechanism for DOT holders which uses on-chain remarks to indicate support of an idea without turning it into an actual proposal. In theory, it can tell Parity and the others in charge of Polkadot about the direction the community wants the ecosystem to take. The most interesting and most controversial one right now is Giotto's proposal to reduce Polkadot's inflation. Accordingly, a nice discussion about it is happening on X, courtesy of Alice_und_bob.
A DX refactor of the XCM Simulator example from the codebase. This PR breaks down the XCM Simulator Example in a way that Shawn Tabrizi believes is more approachable by a new developer who is looking to navigate the various components of the end to end example, and modify it themselves.
XCM integration has landed in ink. You should now be able to, in theory, send XCM messages from ink smart contracts.
There's a new validator disabling strategy implemented which you might be interested in if you're validating. This applies in particular to validators who miss their slots or otherwise do offences.
txwrapper-core now has support for the AssetConversion pallet, making it possible to DEX through txwrapper.
Dynamic HRMP channel size resizing has been merged, so that configuration changes in this scope don't have to be runtime upgrades any more.
XCM calls will support custom function calls on destination. This means you will be able to send assets and then also trigger another message, which can be any operation. This will allow for auto-conversions of funds or other rich scenarios. If RMRK was still building in Polkadot, I could see it mean that we could buy NFT 1 on chain 2 via a transfer from chain 3 and then immediately have it equipped, or even listed for sale elsewhere.
The ability to trigger tasks with unsigned transactions is coming. Similar to "I'm online" which requires no TX fee, this will now be applicable to a wider variety of tasks.
It should be easier to debug stuck or slow jobs with a new metric for tracking how long they've been in the queue.
The parachain template has been improved, brought up to date, and now has async backing enabled too.
The XCM cookbook is coming, aiming to improve DX on XCM significantly.
The Treasury pallet will soon be able to rely on relay chain blocks as units of time, rather than a chain's own blocks. This is useful for chains that do not produce blocks on a regular basis but on demand.
Dogfood of the Day
We set up a prediction market on ZTG about the decentralization of Dot Leap.
⛓ Connected Parachains, dApps, and others
Web3 game Evrloot published interesting stats from their latest launch.
PAPI Teleporter app lets you move DOT/KSM to-from either relay chain's asset hub, among other things. Uses smoldot, the light client. The app is open source and a good example of using polkadot-api and smoldot. Careful though, TXs currently break Nova.
Lastic's cool new visualization of coretime price over time and other stats. Just in time for Kusama Coretime sales to be active, too.
22
🌎 Community & Ecosystem
Embarrassingly, Polkadot ads are now plastered over Zurich airport.
Polkadot Goes Live at Airport Zurich
6 Month Campaign
22 Digital Screens with Polkadot Animation (Split Time)
1 Static Board with 100% Share of Time
International Arrivals - Terminal 2 Exit
Placement Beside the Famous Bitcoin Suisse Ad
(Professional Photos Soon)
$DOT
Polkadot Prodigy hackathon, online hackathon with $58k in prizes, is open for registration and lasts from May 7th to May 28th.
Web3 Summit is taking place in Berlin this Aug 19-21.
[Bill] Decentralized Futures has funded the KYC Credential Ecosystem, including subsidized KYC credentials in collaboration with Polimec and Deloitte, powered by the technology of Kilt Protocol.
There is a proposal to create a Polkadot Community Foundation in the Cayman Islands, to "represent DOT holders off-chain". Some of the hypothetical activities this entity would handle are listed as: Retail marketing activities, e.g. social ad campaigns targeting developers, Educational programs, e.g. Polkadot Blockchain Academy, Complex grants programs, e.g. tranched or actively managed awards tied to milestones, Community events, e.g. contracting with venues and service providers for physical gatherings, Code management, e.g. maintain the polkadot-js GitHub repo.
I think this is unnecessary. For one, the 175k requested to last 12 months can already be spent on a social ad campaign targeting developers. Polkadot Blockchain Academy already exists, and if a new entity is needed it can be formed with this exact purpose, requesting funds separately. Complex grants programs are unnecessary and can be funded via bounties, DF, or any other method available right now. Community events should be done by expert community planning teams with interest and experience in this - just because someone is paid to do thing X, it doesn't mean thing X will be done well if that entity has zero experience in it. If you want to make an event planning foundation, make one. And maintaining the Github repos can easily be funded via the current treasury mechanism.
In general, I think it's pretty silly that we keep adding middlemen to an ecosystem envisioned to fight middlemanism and parasitic entities. If you need a bridge between the fiat world and the on-chain world for payments and agreements, it is trivial to use an established entity as a fiscal proxy host (someone who does fiat for you) - literally any company can do this, and it's legal.Leemo publishes a new shitcoin-publishing tutorial, this time launching it on Moonbeam, while also addressing some bugs from last time.
Research paper on DePIN devices being more eco friendly or something. Basically an Acurast shill on arxiv.
PolkaBotAI - decentralizing AI with OriginTrail and Polkadot. Hey whatever hypes the boat, right?
Franklin Templeton Enables Peer-to-Peer Trades of Blockchain Fund shares.
🗣 Question of the Day
This weekend I asked a question:
Without looking, do you know the difference between Hyperbridge, Snowbridge, and BEEFY?
The results are discouraging. What causes this information assymmetry? Can we help this by someone being less techno-elitist and dumbing the terminology down, or is there another, better path to take? What are your thoughts?
That's it for this week - I hope this was as useful for you to read as it was for us to write!
Many thanks to Bill Laboon for his daily digest which helps us not miss some important updates!
DotLeap is put together by Bruno Škvorc.
Got any links for the next edition? Reach out on X, or via email at editor@dotleap.com. or through our ingestion bot on Telegram.
Gamified Decaying Categorial Meritocracy makes me very curious :) looking forward to seeing how it turns out once you raised the funds!