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Chasing Utility

In an industry often overshadowed by speculative tokens and fleeting trends, the Polkadot ecosystem uniquely distinguishes itself through genuine innovation and practical application. The latest stride in this direction is the ambitious LiteSend project by Electrocoin, a groundbreaking remittance platform.

LiteSend is a transformative solution reshaping the landscape of international money transfers. By leveraging Polkadot's AssetHub chain, LiteSend introduces a remittance process that is not just faster and more secure but also significantly more cost-effective than traditional methods. This use of blockchain to convert funds into stablecoins and back into local currency at the destination addresses the pain points of high fees and slow transaction speeds that have long plagued the remittance sector - as anyone who ever even tried to use Western Union can attest.

LiteSend's vision extends beyond mere transactional efficiency. It's about inclusivity and global reach. With a user-friendly interface, the platform invites individuals worldwide to experience a seamless transfer process, starting from a simple visit to the website - no wallets, no web3 complexities. LiteSend, like Electrocoin’s ramp offering, will be a testament to how blockchain can transcend technical jargon and become a practical tool in everyday life.

The proposal for LiteSend is not just seeking funds; it's inviting the community to be a part of a movement. A movement that champions the real-world utility of blockchain, showcases the capabilities of the Polkadot network, and most importantly, offers a lifeline to those burdened by the inefficiencies of traditional remittance services. The initiative to integrate stablecoin transactions, launch a comprehensive marketing campaign, and expand the network of partner institutions is a bold step towards a future where technology serves the masses, not just the niche.

With LiteSend, Electrocoin is not just proposing a service; it's championing a future where blockchain is synonymous with efficiency, security, and inclusivity. It's an invitation to the community to look beyond the horizon of speculative trading and embrace a future where technology makes a tangible difference in everyday life.

Got feedback? Know about remittance? Please chime in on the discussion before the proposal is put on chain this week!

Polkadot and Kusama Updates

• Parachain to parachain XCM transfers remain broken. Issue was first noticed when people tried to bridge RMRK from Kusama Assethub to Moonriver in January. Fix has been merged and then some.

• Paseo, a new testnet for Polkadot is asking for funding to survive 2024. Its aim is to be closer in code to Polkadot than Kusama, and to fill the gap left behind by Parity decentralizing. The testnet can already be used.

• Total Issuance is off by 20k right now. A fix has been merged.

• The People Chain is coming. A migration of the data from the Identities pallet will be migrated over. Additionally, the People Chain will be able to act like ENS in that it will allow for unique usernames to be registered. Ready, set, cybersquat!

• Elastic Scaling on the roadmap. This will “enable chains to use multiple cores simultaneously. With Agile Coretime, that means that chains will be able to dynamically scale up and down depending on need.”

• Polkadot - Kusama bridge is progressing.

• A discussion about the pricing of coretime on Polkadot and Kusama.

Development

• The ability to transfer Coretime regions via XCM has been merged. Time has become an actually tradable commodity. Machine time, sure, but still.

• Ink v5 docs have a migration guide now from 4.x.

• An NFT’s deposit will soon be moved with that NFT. This is an interesting mechanic because it kind of turns NFTs into a fungibles OTC market, in a way, and sets the floor value of the NFT to the network’s asset deposit value 🤔

• Initial support for building RISC-V runtimes targeting PolkaV is underway.

Governance

• Referendum 443 is being voted on. It’s an upgrade to runtime patch v1.1.1. and also reduces the existential deposit to 0.01 DOT. The submitters are urging a REJECT vote due to new issues being discovered and the aforementioned XCM delivery fee problem.

• Kusama Asset Hub patch 1.1.1 has been implemented.

• Here is a visual demo of OpenGov in action on the Nova mobile wallet.

• The proposal to add Brale and Glo Dollar to AssetHub on Kusama is failing.

• The proposal to open an HRMP channel between Kusama Asset Hub and Integritee is passing.

• Referendum to burn coretime sales revenue is currently passing unanimously. Think of it as EIP1559 on steroids!

• Encointer’s retroactive funding proposal is currently live and not doing super well.

• A proposal to acquire USDT and USDT for the Polkadot Treasury is underway and passing.

• Subwallet’s retroactive funding proposal is passing.

• Friendly neighbourhood whale Giotto has submitted two new bounties:

  • Games Bounty

  • BD Bounty

For additional info, I recommend reading January’s Referendum Roundup!

Dogfood of the Day

In this edition we dogfood Invarch’s Tinkernet. Unfortunately, we were unable to make a Dot Leap DAO at this time, so no LEAP drop for those who follow along, but once it’s up, we will revisit this UI and add a LEAP drop campaign 🔥

⛓ Connected Parachains, dApps, and others

projects connected to the DOT and KSM relay chains

• Zeitgeist’s Superbowl Trading Campaign is live until Feb 11th.

• The LAOS team issued a call for comments on standardizing a universal location format for assets across different blockchains - even outside dotsama. Chime in if you care about this cross-chain address-space.

• Subsocial sees massive growth and new features in their January review. Sub.id even tracks TX history now and is turning into a legit debank/zerion competitor for the dot ecosystem!

• Evrl00t expeditions alpha is here! Explore, fight, loot!

• Huge progress with the Zondax app for Ledger compatibility with Substrate chains! Soon enough there will be no more need for painful app updates after every runtime upgrade!

• Celer Network and XCM in tandem allow Manta to establish a bridge between its Ethereum and Polkadot counterpart.

• Unique Network’s customizable NFTs arrive on Subscan

🌎 Community & Ecosystem

• The PINKpaper is out with full token distribution details.

• The DED drop is quick approaching. No date is known, but do keep an eye on the announcement group for info! Best to unstake on CEXes already, I think, and send to a self-custodial wallet asap.

• The Sub0 Asia agenda is out.

• There is a common repository (portal) of metadata of all the chains and parachains. Super useful for Polkadot Vault which needs up to date metadata all the time to sign extrinsics!

• USDC withdrawals and deposits on the Polkadot Assethub are now available on Binance. This is the cheapest way to get USDC on and off a CEX to date. Given that USDC is sufficient on AssetHub - meaning it can pay for its own TX fees with USDC - this makes integrating the currency exponentially easier for onramps and payment and remittance providers of all kinds, like LiteSend (see editorial at the top).

• Ocelloids, an XCM monitor with which you can subscribe to track XCM calls based on certain params, got a Decentralized Futures grant.

• Evan Thomas wins W3F Decentralized Futures grant for social media.

• ICMY, here is a set of great starter guides and tutorials about Polkadot.

• W3F’s Tech Ed lead Radha was inducted into the Technical Fellowship via a governance process. Congrats!

• A Decentralized Futures discussion about providing G6 devices running Substrate chain clients (?), for institutions and governments. Other Decentralized Futures proposals can be seen in the forum.

• Polkabot - a GPT bot to chat about Polkadot with.

• Alistair Stewart, Polkadot lead researcher, on Space Monkeys podcast

• The KSM Society has a new challenge period. Will I be getting a tattoo in 2024?

• Wave 4 of Polkadot Blockchain Academy ended.

🔧 Tools and Releases

Catching up, so in this release we’re listing the last released version of each tool. Going forward, they will be listed only if a new release happens since this edition.

• Sidecar - v17.4.0

  • Decoded XCM data was added in the blocks endpoint

• Txwrapper - v7.2.0

  • added support for large tip

  • modified types to support new ChargeAssetTxPayment

• PolkadotJS - v10.11.2

  • Add chainIsEthereum key to Registry interface

  • Adjust types for ChargeAssetTxPayment

  • Support [8a;32] types in known keys

• AssetTransferApi - v0.1.6

  • added browser compat for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox

• Polkadot Vault 6.3.1 for Android has been released with some security improvements, no notable feature changes.

• Contract Wizard is a tool for faster onboarding into the ink-development ecosystem with contract templates and more!

• Tuxedo is a UTXO-based Substrate template for building Substrate chains with a UTXO model instead of Accounts model.

🌠 NFT Review

A weekly newsletter keeping up with the evolution of NFTs in the Dotsama ecosystem and beyond.

• RMRK releases rmrk-js, a set of utilities for easily rendering and interacting with modular NFTs, making integration into custom apps and marketplaces much easier.

• DeStore sells a phygital pendant on TV’s Opal Hunters, bringing mainstream adoption to real world assets and their digital twins.

• The Promises and Perils of NFTs: An Excerpt From 'The Everything Token': in their new book, Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers discuss the ongoing challenges (and potential solutions) around diversity, regulation and decentralization facing the NFT ecosystem.

This and more in the latest edition!

👷‍♂️ Jobs in Web 3.0

Want your ad here? Reach out to DotLeap on Twitter or via email through editor@dotleap.com.

• We (Dot Leap) need a paid intern whom we want to train into a leading role from zero. All you need is ambition and interest in the broader Web3 ecosystem, we’ll take care of the rest. This position is only open to people in the CET+/- 3 timezone.

🗣️ Incentivized Feedback

Feedback test #1: open question - tell us what you liked or disliked, what you would like to see more or less of, and how we’re doing with attention to detail. Should future editions post fewer links but go into more detail about them, or more links and let users curate the detail they care about?

Drop us feedback as replies on X, or in this form, to get 5 LEAP tokens.

Requirements for LEAP drop:

• provide your DOT address in feedback. On X, provide it in the reply. In the form, fill out the field. Address MUST have a verified identity.

• if providing feedback via form, the providing email address MUST be subscribed to Dot Leap.

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• You can get 2x the LEAP drop if you provide feedback through both methods. The feedback can be identical.

Also, to help us decide what to dogfood next, please comment!

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.