A little bit of chit chat
The Electric Capital annual report highlights that Polkadot continues to add full-time developers at a higher rate than any other blockchain at an equivalent time in its history. The report adds that it took just 2.2 years for Polkadot to grow to more than 200 full-time developers, which is faster than the typical 4+ years for an ecosystem to reach that number. Despite a slowdown across many networks in the final quarter of 2022, Polkadot still added full-time developers at the same rate year-on-year. Since January 2018, the full-time developer count at Polkadot has grown exponentially. The total number of Polkadot developers, including those contributing part-time, is 10 times the benchmark established at the start of 2018.
Fusion
Darwinia has announced its plan to merge its solo Substrate-based chain and its Polkadot chain while preserving the paraId of the parachain. Before the merge, Darwinia had two separate chains: the solo Darwinia Chain and the Darwinia Parachain, which run on the Polkadot Relay Chain. The virtual chain Darwinia Smart Chain, a EVM module, is not considered in this scenario.
After the merge, Darwinia will have a single chain called Darwinia 2.0. The solo blockchain Darwinia Chain had launched before the Polkadot Relay Chain launch. However, running a solo chain and a parachain simultaneously has caused user confusion and a burden for the development team. As a result, the team has decided to merge the 2 chains. The process of merging involves exporting the data from the Darwinia Chain and the Darwinia Parachain, merging the data, and then migrating the merged data and new code into the Darwinia Parachain.
Polkadot for dummies
A new XCM
Gavin Wood made public the release of XCM v3, including a set of new features to improve the UX on Polkadot. Reverse Checking has been added to the features, which allows checking account bookkeeping to work bi-directionally. Previously, only assets minted locally were checked (and the checking account stored assets that have been teleported out and are yet to be received back). Now this works for assets minted remotely. In this case, the checking account stores the assets which have been teleported in but not yet teleported back out, which should equal the total amount in all other accounts. This is an initial implementation of this feature. A better implementation that does not result in an incorrect total issuance of checked assets is planned in update #6125.
The UnpaidExecution instruction has also been added, which makes it clear when unpaid execution is to be allowed via the AllowUnpaidExecution barrier.
In addition to these new features, several other improvements have been made in XCM v3. Minor fixes to barriers have been made to the AllowKnownQueryResponses, which now requires its message to have only a single instruction. Additionally, the SendXcm API has been refactored into a two-stage process, with the first stage yielding a ticket and a price for the operation, allowing for payment to be determined and happen before the delivery. Other new features include a topic, context, remote locking, exchange asset API, universal location, and context. These new features will help improve the user experience on Polkadot and make the platform more efficient and user-friendly.
This week’s crowdloans
Weekly Spot: A recently spotted Polkadot /Kusama native NFT
A collection of lab experiments given life by a toxic ‘goop’. Warning, may be highly addictive! Numbers 1-30 are ‘rare’ Goopz and have multiple extra resources. Numbers 31-66 are ‘Common’ Goopz and have 1 additional resource.
Wrap Up
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