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Where Innovation Goes To Die

Polkadot's friendly neighborhood whale Giotto had another idea recently - why not make a system chain called OpenEVM (now PolkadotEVM) with EVM which would use DOT for gas, have permanent presence without buying coretime, and allow what people have been clamoring for: unfettered experimentation.

No doubt this suggestion is in large part driven by the build-paralysis teams experience when evaluating Polkadot and Giotto's own experience while spearheading the DED airdrop. After all, Polkadot is a different wallet ecosystem, the assets/coins are not programmable, and an existential deposit is required to be able to even accept random tokens.

This means launching memecoins and other currently popular web3 experiments is incredibly difficult as it presents a significant cost barrier - after all, having to send thousands of DOT to thousands of accounts just to do a drop is suboptimal. One could argue that the better approach is a pull mechanic rather than push (i.e. make people bridge dot and claim tokens manually vs just dropping them), but this opens another can of worms (centralized claim process due to AssetHub not being programmable, more infra work) and is beside the point - airdrops are just one aspect of web3 suffering within Polkadot's current paradigm.

I read a lot of feedback regarding this proposal, and the public is torn on it. There are valid concerns that it would compete with existing chains like Astar and Moonbeam. The advantage of being able to use Metamask out of the box (however horrible that wallet is for UX) is big, but this is already possible on other Polkadot EVM chains and even some Substrate accounts with unified accounts, or even with the Metamask Substrate snap. The advantage of being able to use DOT for gas is also quite significant, but even this is already possible on Astar, or even any existing EVM chain if they just make a minor change to their runtime.

The advantage of permanence in that it would be a system chain is, I think, the biggest selling point. I firmly believe you cannot list more than 10 protocols or products in the web3 eco since the whole saga started in 2009 which have survived for more than 3 years with a centralized team behind them. And, truth be told, neither Moonbeam nor Astar can survive without their teams. The bus factor is 1. Not just because of development, but also because there would be no one to renew their parachain lease (or coretime in the future). A system chain has a clear advantage here.

Then, how is this chain in any way better than something like Base? Base also uses the ecosystem's native token for gas (Ether), it has high economic security (inherited from Ethereum), and is very cheap and fast to use, with an arguably much more positive brand attached to it. And... it's already permanent.

Mainly, though, I personally feel like this is a bad idea because government services are where innovation goes to die, and system chains are a government service.

Bruno Skvorc 🦞 | (ѱ,ѱ)

@bitfalls

Government service is where innovation goes to die.

System chains are government service.

Giotto De Filippi

@giottodf

Astar...

29

21:13 • 14 Feb 2024

Years ago at RMRK, we came up with the Nestable NFT concept and applied it further to get equippables, cross collection compatibility, and other NFT 2.0 features working. Projects and companies were lining up to build with us. The interest was palpable, and despite the limitations of launching "inscription-style" on Kusama, projects were willing to suffer through the DX and UX disadvantages just to utilize advanced tech that leapfrogs whatever was available on EVMs.

Then, almost overnight and without even trying to consult with the NFT working group that was active at the time in Polkadot's Matrix servers, Parity launched the Uniques pallet, a very basic, rudimentary NFT-minting capability for AssetHub, then known as Statemine / Statemint.

It was written on a whim as a response by Gav himself - because he got tired of being pestered about that chain needing NFTs. And NFTs it got. NFTs 1.0, hardcoded in their limitation on the chain's very runtime. Without programmability, there was no way to add NFT 2.0 functionality on top, and suddenly, instead of most projects asking "how do we build with you" we started getting the question: "why would we build with you, when there is an official way to mint NFTs".

Key word: official. OFFICIAL.

Just because something was launched on a system chain by the powers that be, it was considered official. That was the end of our ecosystem growth.

This is not a RMRK success sob story, it's a lesson. And I don't want to see the ecosystem repeat the mistake and once again refuse advanced tech just to limp after what other ecosystems already have. Yet this is exactly what would happen with OpenEVM / PolkadotEVM.

Launching an "official" EVM chain would:

1. Signal capitulation after Gav expressed disdain for EVM many, many times, and insisted on building ink! and wasm instead. This would effectively kill ink!, which even at version 5.0 is still struggling to find a single production deployment.

2. Syphon funds and interest from Moonbeam, Astar, and other EVMs, effectively vampire attacking them for users and developers, because of course launching on a chain which might go away if their team disappears and their lease expires is more risky than launching on a "system chain" with EVM.

3. Stop any and all EVM innovation in Polkadot because right now, the Polkadot side of web3 is being built by people who do not use web3. This skateboard is being designed by cyclists. It makes no sense, and those leading development paradoxically have no experience with building within or for the environment they are building. Thus, it is my opinion that the people in charge of OpenEVM would undoubtedly cause stagnation and possibly exodus across the board.

So, what is the solution?

Well, let's consider what we actually WANT here. Or, more accurately, what Giotto is after here. Giotto wants there to be a Turing-complete execution environment which encourages experimentation. A litmus test can be "how easy is it to launch a memecoin". Well, that's not a very high bar, honestly.

And one of the commenters says he wants to be able to say he "Launched on Polkadot":

Giotto De Filippi

@giottodf

OpenEVM

What is the plan? Create a parachain combining AssetHub fork + Frontier, this is better than EVM alone because it also integrates DOT native tokens to EVM without requiring bridges

What is the business case? Builders look for chains where they can both airdrop and build…

163

10:27 • 13 Feb 2024

If we look at it solely from that perspective, I would say the solution is obvious: OpenInk, not OpenEVM.

The ecosystem needs a system chain that uses the Contracts pallet and finally enables a production environment in which to launch ink! contracts.

This passes the litmus test, adds programmability, and possibly kickstarts an entire industry the way it was always intended - programming ON Polkadot.

What do you think about this? The comments form is open.

Polkadot and Kusama Updates

• Polkadot 1.7 released. Changes in link, but some notable ones:

  • XCM v4 with Transactional Processing

  • NonFungibleAdapter added for manipulating NFTs through XCM

  • Allow Fellowship members to swap their AccountIDs

  • Enable cross-chain Coretime region transfers on Rococo Coretime chain

• Initial Coretime pricing discussion on the Polkadot Forum has garnered some interest.

• Coretime added to Westend.

Development

• A blueprint for making Polkadot-SDK's State Trie blazing fast on SSDs.

  

  asynchronous rob

  @rphmeier

  

  A blueprint for making Polkadot-SDK's State Trie blazing fast on SSDs.
  
  Building on previous work from @sovereign_labs @prestonevans__ , we can adapt this architecture to support extension nodes and variable-length keys as used in Polkadot-SDK runtimes.
  
  rob.tech/blog/nearly-op…

  139

  23:35 • 11 Feb 2024

• Joe Petrowski proposes changing the address format to be consensus-based, or based on the relay chain in charge, rather than per-parachain.

• Polkadot-SDK's dev docs on XCM were clarified a bit.

• Kusama parachains slowed down / got stuck for a bit the other day. Post-mortem and bugfix underway, preventing this from reoccurring.

• Contract cargo crate v4 rc2 has been merged. v4 final soon!

• Ink! v5 RC1 is out - final soon!!

• Coretime vouchers are coming in the form of tradable NFTs.

• Polkadot-SDK users can now define a % staking reward cap from inflation in a single era. If an era produces too many tokens as a result of inflation, this amount can be capped for distribution to validators, and the rest would be minted directly to treasury instead.

• Pallet-scheduler now has retry mechanics. Users can now set a retry configuration for a task so that, in case its scheduled run fails, it will be retried after a number of blocks, for a specified number of times or until it succeeds.

• The Polkadot-SDK RPC server now has a rate-limiting flag.

Governance

The Web3 Foundation released the Decentralized Voices Program, delegating 180,000 KSM and 42 M DOT of voting power to active voters to ensure a fair decision-making process.

• 469: An absolute lol of a proposal to obtain hundreds of thousands of USD in value to register two Swiss foundations: one for Mythical, which already has a foundation, has shipped virtually nothing, and has coasted along on "pumpanouncements" and "partnerships", to be able to legally launch a new Polkadot native shitcoin, and the DED foundation, a foundation for a memecoin. This misses the spirit of web3 entirely and I encourage you to vote against.

• The Fellowship's RFC10 has passed, and all initial coretime profits will be burned.

• Vibrant discussion about a "public good" storage chain Polkadot. I am against it for the same reason I am against OpenEVM (see editorial above) or my explanation below:

  

• The proposal to build up an "inscription ecosystem" on Polkadot is, luckily, failing. Inscriptions were done on Polkadot 3 years ago, and have been proven not to scale. Simulating execution and state change by consolidating off chain messages when stateful execution environments are available on chain is silly, and doing it just for the network spam and to generate activity where there is none is an indicator of a failed ecosystem, not a successful one.

• Giotto decides to reform the ambassador program. Pushback is severe, from many sides.

• The referendum to acquire USDT and USDC for the Polkadot treasury is passing unanimously.

• The referendum to start BEEFY on Kusama is passing unanimously.

• A referendum for a DOT Code School. Absolutely needed, and I encourage you to support this effort. We need more trained devs, and we need them now. Without tinkerers and experimenters, Polkadot is nothing. Let's train them!

• The proposal to open a Polkadot-centric coworking space in NYC is failing. Honestly, it should. It is absurd to look for an office worth 2m USD in one of the world's most expensive cities, just for most of the world to continue working remotely. Rent a floor in an existing coworking building instead.

• Zeitgeist proposes adding futarchy to Polkadot's opengov, submits treasury prop. Giotto is against, for now. I do wish teams would just get to the point when submitting. The value of your proposal is not in how much of your readers' time you can waste, but in how well you can get to the point quickly. Just say "We want to do X by Y through Z because Q" and many more people will start caring.

Dogfood of the Day

• This time, we're dogfooding Astar's dapp staking v3.

  

This is an incentivized bowl of dogfood.

Stake at least 5000 ASTR on Singular before the next Dot Leap is out and show us your TX of doing this (twitter, comment here, telegram, or any other method is fine), and get 100 $LEAP per 5000 ASTR staked (so no point in Sybiling your ASTR bag across hundreds of addresses.

⛓ Connected Parachains, dApps, and others

• Talisman suffers Discord hack. Problem was quickly resolved, with preventative measures for other teams posted promptly

• Polkassembly's delegation functionality revamped

• Starlay.fi on Acala suffers breach. Community says another nail in the Acala coffin?

• Integritee's January wrap-up, including a new SDK release, and the public testnet of Incognitee — their Privacy Sidechain for Polkadot

• Exiled Racers week 1 results are out

• ApeXChimpz v3 migrating to Astar from RMRK KSM version

• $PINK powered play in Evrl00t

• Interlay introduces co-mining with Bitcoin via "Optimine".

• You can now view and copy pool addresses in the Polkadot Staking Dashboard.

• Astar dapp staking v3 is live. We dogfooded it!

• Unique Network's January update!

• Moonbeam January update - including ecosystem growth, runtime update functionality, educational efforts and more.

• Don't forget to claim your CFG crowdloan rewards if you haven't. Deadline is in April.

• Casinos neck-to-neck. As HydraDX increases rewards, so does Bifrost.

• Manta expands token support to $STONE and $wUSDM.

🌎 Community & Ecosystem

• Contribute to Community PRs on the Polkadot Wiki repo and get rewarded!

• The next Polkadot Blockchain Academy wave is taking place in Singapore from 20th May to 20th June 2024

• Stakenode's awesome support-the-builders message to Dymension, who do not shy away from shouting out their inspirations in their docs (spoiler: it's Substrate).

• Polkadot Decoded 2024 goes to Brussels in July.

• Dot is DED's roadmap and new game (breakout with roguelike perks, and NFT mints behind the scenes). Bit country joins the DED legion too.
  

  

• Paradox starts public good initiative to provide deposits for General Admin and Whitelisted Caller tracks in OpenGov, allowing teams who aren't DOT-rich to propose important changes to Polkadot. A referendum similar to this effort, to fund a decision deposit sponsor, has failed.

• ETF network gets a Decentralized Futures grant, funding this effort to bring "a substrate-based blockchain leveraging a unique consensus mechanism focused on publicly verifiable on-chain randomness and timelock encryption." 🤷‍♂

• WAG Media's call for content creation. Bounties to be claimed!

• Nova Wallet's video guide on Proxy accounts

• Event-maker Decentered Studio wins latest Decentralized Futures grant.

🔧 Tools and Releases

• Substrate API Sidecar v17.5.0-1, changes in link, notably:

  • add at query param for staking-payouts

  • add endpoint /accounts/{accountId}/proxy-info

  • add asset conversion pallet to Kusama Asset Hub

• Asset Transfer API 0.1.7. No breaking or significant changes.

• DED releases pretty cool snapshot tool for Substrate-based chains.

• Scale-decode 0.11.0 and 0.11.1 are out, with some breaking changes you should know about. Check the chagelog.

🌠 NFT Review

• Playtesting Mighty Action Heroes.

• DED mining game, a breakout clone with roguelike perks, taking Polkadot by storm.

• Disney aims to make the metaverse woke.

Read more in the online edition.

🗣 Incentivized Feedback

• Feedback test #2: would you listen to a Dot Leap podcast? If so, what kind of format would you like it to be?

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

  Requirements for LEAP drop:

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  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.