🐂 top news
Gavin Wood shared pending changes to the JAM Prize.
Hydration crossed $160M in TVL.
Mythos (Mythical) set a new record with a marketplace net flow of 3.8M MYTH.
The University of Miami now accepts donations in DOT.
The Defiant released its video recap of Polkadot Sub0.
The Polkadot Blockchain Academy released a video recap of its recently concluded IRL campus in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Web3 Foundation launched Wave 25 of its EcoDev program with an emphasis on forming strategic partnerships with selected teams to facilitate a shared vision and help tackle Polkadot ecosystem challenges.
The UX Bounty published its Q1 2025 report.
Polkadot Deploy published its April report. Apply now to become a beta tester of the one-click deployment portal.
The Polkadot Marketing Bounty published a spending breakdown for the past 5 months.
⭕️ ecosystem
Rémy Le Berre (product engineer at Parity) teased a Polkadot sidebar extension. Let him know if you would find it useful.
The Polkadot 2.0 roadmap looks set to complete with the deployment of Elastic Scaling via runtime release 1.5.0. This depends on the approval of Polkadot Referendum 1546 and Kusama Referendum 519.
Integritee won first prize for Best Startup in Zurich, along with several strong placements in other categories at the Hackernoon Awards.
Astar published an ecosystem report for April.
The first ERC-20 token transfer has landed on Kusama AssetHub via Snowbridge.
Hyperbridge looks set to provide trustless bridging for Cere Network, a Substrate cousin chain (i.e. not connected to Polkadot).
peaq launches an updated roadmap, which includes a DePIN launchpad, machine economy DEX, native yield-bearing stablecoin, machine RWAs, and a machine money market.
Moonbeam celebrated Earth Day with a giveaway of Carbify’s NFTrees, each representing a real Amazon tree in an effort to support carbon emissions reduction.
Cross-chain swaps are now live on Turtle v3—you can now get the tokens you need from Hydration to supported parachains in one click.
The Pop CLI team has completed all four milestones of its Web3 Foundation grant.
💰 opportunities
The Polkadot Fast Grants bounty program is offering up to $10K in funding to early-stage builders with a 3-day approval window.
Web3 Foundation is hiring for several positions, including Technical Educator, Senior Investor Relations Manager, and Senior Software Engineer.
Gavun Wud’s birthday celebrations include a meme contest in conjunction with Wide Worlds to win 20M WUD.
The Polkadot scalability hackathon is still ongoing. Participate to win part of the $30,000 prize.
WebZero will host a Polkadot hackathon at Consensus 2025 with $20,000 in prizes on 13-16 May.
🏛️ governance
For more information on Polkadot governance statistics, check out the Polkadot Dune governance dashboard.
🕓 confirming
Ref 1513: Ratify payout for Talisman Mobile Wallet approved by Ref 1390
Ref 1516: Further funding for the Infrastructure Builders Program
Ref 1518: Retroactively funding Integritee for developing Incognitee
👍🏾 passing
Ref 1529: Setting Snowbridge-wrapped USDC & USDT as sufficient assets, their ED to $0.01, and their metadata on Asset Hub
Ref 1530: Rewarding Amfroc for their work on The Spammening
Ref 1538: Giving Bifrost a 1-year loan of 1M DOT for vDOT liquidity
Ref 1539: Funding the JAM China academy educational roadshow
Ref 1546: Upgrading the Polkadot relay chain to runtime 1.5.0
Ref 1549: Funding the development of KAGOME, the C++ implementation of the Polkadot host
Ref 519: Upgrading the Kusama relay chain to runtime 1.5.0
👎🏾 failing
Ref 1535: Funding a 6 months extension for the PoKe Berlin team
Ref 1517: Funding the production of Guestlist+1 live panel podcast series
Ref 1523: Funding development of the Polkadot Humanoid SDK at Cyberpunk Labs
Ref 1526: Retroactively funding Subsquid for indexing infrastructure
Ref 1531: Funding the Polkadot Ecology Research Institute
Ref 1533: Funding a meta-proposal combining 7 initiatives to strengthen the Polkadot Hivemind and enhance outward-facing projects
Ref 1540: Funding the continuous operations of the Spanish BD Team (now IBERLABS) for one year
Ref 1541: Funding Eiger for phase 3 development of the Polkadot-native storage solution
Ref 1542: Funding the Polkadot GIGAHydration campaign
Ref 1543: Funding the development of a Substrate Asset Game Engine
Ref 1544: Retroactively funding Polkabiz’s BD/Mentorship efforts
Ref 1545: Funding the operations of AIWeb3 Chinese Unit
✅ approved
Ref 1522: Funding the operation and maintenance of Polkaworld
Ref 1528: Upgrading the Polkadot Bridge Hub runtime to 1.4.3
Ref 1536: Assigning Coretime to Xcavate and Mythical
Ref 518: Proposing to upgrade Kusama Asset Hub to runtime 1.4.3
❌ rejected
Ref 1514: Polkadot x MotoGP Partnership & Integration Proposal
📺 what to watch and listen to
Attempts at Governance #227 and #228 discussing recent OpenGov proposals and hearing from the proposers.
How to earn 20%+ APR farming stables on Hydration by lolmcshizz.
DAO governance hosted by Polkaworld with representatives from Permanence DAO, Polkadot Hungary, and JAM DAO.
Insights into the Polkadot Africa Ecosystem & its Opportunitiesby Polkadot Africa.
📖 what to read
The rise of AI agents in crypto: how DeFAI is reshaping finance and From play-to-earn to play-to-own: Lessons for building the next generation of Web3 games by the Polkadot Blog.
Scaling Polkadot: Does it come at a price? by Parity.
The Anatomy of JAM by JAMman.
How would the Futarchy + Polkadot’s OpenGov + DV stack work? by goku.
📅 events
WebZero will be hosting a Polkadot hackathon as an official side event at Consensus 2025, 13 - 16 May, including a round-the-clock private chef.
Gavin Wood is taking JAM to Protocol Berg in Berlin (June 12-13).
Erin from Parity will lead a workshop on building test infrastructure from the ground up at Protocol Berg in Berlin.
Polkadot is hosting a mini-summit in New York on April 25.
OriginTrail’s DKGcon kicks off on May 6 in New York.
JAM Experience - Testnet Launch Party is happening in Portugal in May.
Polkadot is sponsoring the Third Annual Blockchain Technology Conference at the University of Miami from 30-31 May.
Thank you for taking the DOT leap!
