Polkadot is inevitable ⭕️
PBA course for politicians, nomination poolers can now vote, Polkadot Discord airdrop, and others
🐂 boolish - top news
Kusama nomination pool participants can now vote with staked KSM in OpenGov after completing a one-time activation process.
Talisman 2.5 now supports the Polkadot Unified Address Format. As parachain integrations complete, users will be able to use a single Substrate address across all parachains, with Bifrost among the first to roll out.
The UX Bounty posted a guide to how to use DOT as a fee on parachains.
The Polkadot Blockchain Academy launched its first policymaker-focused program for politicians in Switzerland. A delegation of UK Parliament members will attend the inaugural course.
Web3 Foundation awarded SatoshiPay a grant to enhance its Vortex fiat ramp on Pendulum. Development focuses include Polkadot offramp creation, expanded stablecoin availability via XCM, LATAM market deployment, and Stellar-Polkadot Spacewalk bridge upgrades.
Ref 1424 has mobilized 300M DOT in voting power as the community attempts to recover 200K DOT from the compromised Parallel parachain.
Jakub Panik (Hydration cofounder) posted his reaction to the audience’s reception of Polkadot at Consensus Hong Kong.
⭕️ ecosystem
Zeitgeist co-founder David Perry assumes CEO role as Logan Saether steps down, signaling increased focus on futarchy-based governance.
A new prediction market launched for HDX reaching $0.015 by April 1st.
Robonomics released its 2025 roadmap emphasizing physical infrastructure and hardware development.
Polimec integrates Sumsub verification platform for streamlined user onboarding.
Hydration reduced minimum swapping fees for Omnipool (now 0.2% from 0.25%) and Stableswap (now 0.02% from 0.04%).
Three new referenda propose changes to DOT incentives for CFG, INTR, KILT, and vASTR, plus new farms for tBTC and AAVE.
LAOS token makes its DEX debut on Hydration.
Polkadex partners with Australian tech studio Mindevolved for new orderbook development.
Stellaswap extends V4 farms' 25% rewards boost by one week.
Nova Wallet adds Ledger support for BNC on both Polkadot and Kusama.
Teneo, Peaq's data scraping DePIN, secured $3M in seed funding led by RockawayX, Borderless Capital, and Generative Ventures.
KodaDot partnered with ETH Bratislava for an NFT exhibition of Polkadot art on May 23-24.
Acala reached 8M blocks produced since its launch as Polkadot's first parachain.
Crust Network partnered with AIxBlock to provide decentralized storage for AI training and deployment.
Boomerang, a new memepad and AMM DEX, announces upcoming launch on Acala.
Phala and Subsocial have been added to the Polkadot ecosystem dashboard on Token Terminal.
Jonas Gehrlein, researcher at W3F, has released a paper showing that parachain slot auctions (using the candle auction mechanism) for Polkadot parachains achieved high levels of efficiency.
💰 opportunities
The Social Media Editorial Board, a team of community members responsible for managing the Polkadot Twitter account, opened applications for its 3rd cohort.
Entropretty opened an algorithmic tattoo design contest for DIM 1 Proof-of-Ink. $3000 DOT prize pool available for submissions by February 22nd.
peaq launched Season 1 of Get Real campaign with $100M incentive pool. Users can claim upgradable Peaqonaut NFTs and earn rewards through Peaqosystem DePIN interactions.
PBA announced December in-person JAM technical course. JAM builders will train selected technologists and academics from Polkadot, Ethereum, and Web2 ecosystems.
Kaito x Polkadot launched the Polkadot Yapper Leaderboard with $100K monthly rewards. Top 50 Yappers will receive distributions starting March 31st.
Flappy Wud announced a special Polkadot Discord airdrop campaign. Top 20 players by February 26th will receive up to 10M WUD tokens.
PBA-X began enrollment for its second online cohort.
🏛️ governance
For more information on Polkadot governance statistics, check out the Polkadot Dune governance dashboard.
🕓 confirming
Ref 1407: Setting 4 curators for the Legal Bounty (86.1% in favor)
🙌🏾 unanimous support
Ref 1424: Force upgrade of Parallel parachain to address hack
Ref 1436: Increasing schedulerParams.lookahead to 3
Ref 1439: Funding Hyperbridge/Bifrost 795k DOT liquidity campaign
Ref 1440: Funding LimeChain for Giant Squid phase 2
Ref 1447: Funding Subsquid indexing infrastructure
Ref 491: Deregistering parathread 3390 🦅
👍🏾 passing
Ref 1413: Retroactive JAM graypaper reader funding (99.1% in favor)
Ref 1417: Closing technical support bounty (99.5% in favor)
Ref 1416: Marketing Bounty contract execution via PCF (99.9% in favor)
👎🏾 failing
Ref 1410: RegionX Coretime marketplace (39.4% against)
Ref 1411: Spanish Bounty V3 (80.2% against)
Ref 1412: Brave Wallet integration (99.9% against)
Ref 1425: Peer3 SDK development (70.6% against)
Ref 1426: Decentered retroactive funding (100% against)
Ref 1433: WAGOI development (80.5% against)
Ref 492: Kusama brand evolution (45.2% against) 🦅
✅ approved
Ref 1390: Talisman mobile wallet funding
Ref 1399: WebZero retroactive Consensus funding
Ref 1427: Runtime upgrade to 1.4.0 (enables pool voting and ETH asset transfer)
Ref 494: Kusama runtime upgrade to 1.4.0 🦅
❌ rejected
Ref 1388: G2 Esports sponsorship and onboarding strategy
📺 what to watch and listen to
Regulatory Rewind #003 by The Kusamarian x Polkadot.
📖 what to read
Polkadot is Inevitable: My Bull Thesis in 9 Points by gbaci.
PVM vs. SVM – Why JAM Leaves Solana in the Dust and EVM vs PVM – Why JAM Is A Game Changer by Daniel Cukier (building one of the JAM implementations).
How Polkadot Removed Gas Fees and Why Paying Gas Fees is an Outdated Economic Model by JAMman.
How Polkadot Rollups (parachains) Compare to Ethereum Rollups by Bill Laboon (dir. Of Edu & Gov at W3F).
FAQ for native smart contracts on Polkadot. Great resource for ecosystem agents.
Top picks from the Kaito x Polkadot collab (only covers content by Polkadot outsiders):
I Just Realized How Much I Overlooked Polkadot and Why It’s a Mistake to Fade $DOT in 2025 by Zaimiri.
The Best DeFi Platform by MookieNFT.
Your Magic Polkadot Wallets Guide by Fabsverse.
📅 events
Polkadot will be showing up big for ETHDenver. If you are attending, read this so you don’t miss out.
Web3 Summit 2025 opens speaker applications for its July 16-18 event at Funkhaus Berlin.
Thank you for taking the Dot Leap!