Gavin speaks to Forbes
Coinbase launch DOT futures, sub0 talks live, Social Recovery coming, and more
🐂 top news
Gavin Wood had a 1-hour interview with Pala Labs talking about why he’s spent over a decade building Web3.
Gavin had an interview with Forbes Argentina where he expanded on the ‘Second Age of Polkadot’
All sub0 presentations have been uploaded.
Polkadot hackathon winners announced: OpenArkiv (mesh networking), ObraClara (document management), Kleo Protocol (DeFi lending/borrowing), and Plata Mia (cross-chain privacy).
Kusama hackathon winners announced: Infinite Conspiracy (detective game) in first, Unblind (transaction risk management) in second, and Chiri App (digital-physical collectibles) in third.
Polkadot Builder Party concluded with 2,750+ participants and 230+ submissions. Community voting is open for the Popular Choice award.
21Shares listed its ADOT ETP on NASDAQ Stockholm, providing Scandinavian investors with DOT exposure.
Coins.ph, the largest licensed crypto platform in the Philippines, launched a Polkadot education and adoption initiative running through Q2 2026, highlighting fast and affordable cross-border payments via Asset Hub stablecoins.
Las Golondrinas, a South American hotel chain, partnered with Polkadot to accept Asset Hub USDT and USDC with a 20% discount for stablecoin bookings.
Polkadot Blockchain Academy and Argentina’s National Technological University (UTN) hosted a Gavin Wood conference on JAM.
Parity is rolling out Elastic Scaling on Asset Hub Kusama and Polkadot, targeting ~2s blocks using 3 cores.
Parity published a step-by-step smart contracts tutorial covering environment setup, contract deployment, and production optimization on Polkadot.
Polkadot is upgrading and deploying the Social Recovery pallet with improved UX for trusted contact-based account recovery.
WhiteBIT added Polkadot Asset Hub support for USDT and USDC.
Coinbase Derivatives is launching DOT futures with 24/7 trading starting December 5th and perpetual-style contracts on December 12th.
⭕️ ecosystem
Aventus incorporated its DAO in the UAE, transitioning to decentralized governance with Council oversight and on-chain voting for AVT holders.
Silencio expanded Voice AI boosted rewards to Malaysian English speakers, offering up to $10 SLC per hour of approved recordings.
Talisman Quests officially closed with all points and levels recorded.
Nova Wallet released v1.5.1 re-enabling crowdloan support migrated to Polkadot Asset Hub.
The Unique Network Council approved a motion to reduce staking rewards to 10% for long-term tokenomic sustainability.
Bifrost’s bbBNC Riders campaign locked over 10M BNC, representing 12.5% of total supply.
XCSCAN added Snowbridge transaction support between Polkadot and Ethereum.
Kusama Shield expanded to support swaps of 60+ assets including Zcash to DOT on Polkadot Asset Hub.
Polkassembly upgraded its AI assistant Klara to v1.5 with improved accuracy and conversational responses.
Energy Web launched EWT bridging to Ethereum ERC-20 at 1:1 conversion with exchanges supporting the transition.
🏛️ governance
For more information on Polkadot governance statistics, check out the Polkadot Dune governance dashboard.
🆕 new
OpenGov.Watch published the Polkadot Treasury report for Q3 2025.
Ref 1796: Funding the completion, stabilization, and auditing of ink! v6 for PolkaVM ($362.5K)
Ref 1797: Upgrading the Asset Hub and Bridge Hub runtimes to 2.0.3
Ref 1798: Retroactively funding Ideal Network randomness infrastructure development completion ($38.76K)
👍🏾 passing
Ref 1783: Funding the Polkadot People Initiative ($3M)
Ref 1786: Topping up the Paseo Bounty (113.22K DOT)
Ref 1790: Ratifying the payment for already-approved Ref 1768, which failed to execute due to a technical error during the Asset Hub migration
Ref 1791: Closing the Polkadot Marketing Bounty
👎🏾 failing
Ref 1793: Funding a 6-month initiative to cultivate a vibrant Polkadot presence in Hungary and Central-Eastern Europe ($88K)
Ref 1794: Funding Treasury Guardian, a tool to promote milestone-based scheduled-payouts for improved Treasury efficiency and oversight ($49.4K)
Ref 1795: Closing the Polkadot Pioneers Prize Bounty and returning the remaining funds to the Treasury
✅ approved
Ref 1788: Funding the final milestone of RegionX development ($36.6K DOT)
❌ rejected
Ref 1779: Funding for ReactiveDOT & related developments (~$25K)
📺 what to watch and listen to
Polkadot Roundtable November - HIC and Its Rising Portfolio: N3MUS × Joinn by PolkaWorld
Making Web3 More Human: Products for People with Parity Technology’s Karim Jedda by The Kus
BIG Announcements at Sub0 last week by The Kus
Weekly Friday DOT News Pump - Polkadot’s Second Age, BIG Scale Truth Deployments, DePin, Gaming by The Kus
📖 what to read
The next decade of Polkadot by Emil Kietzman
Polkadot is quietly switching to a new application engine by PolkaWorld
3 core business activities of 265Dots by PolkaWorld
What does it actually mean to be part of a DAO? By Polkadot X
Thank you for taking the dot leap!
Fantastic roundup of Polkadot's ecosystem momentum. The Social Recovery pallet upgrade you mentioned is particularly noteworthy, it addresses one of Web3's most underappreciated friction points. While everyone talks about scalability and speed, onboarding stumbles when users lose access to their accounts. The trusted contact model adds a layer of human redundancy that doesnt compromise sovereignty the way custodial wallets do. What's interesting here is the timing, with Coinbase launching DOT futures and the Sub0 hackathon winners pushing envelope on real applications, social recovery could become the quiet enabler that keeps new users from churning out after their first seed phrase scare.