A little bit of chit chat
The Moonbeam Foundation has successfully recovered improperly moved funds after a smart contract issue was reported that allowed a user to withdraw an improper amount of USDC from Moonbeam. The vulnerable contracts have been paused to prevent further exploitation. MultichainOrg and EquilibriumDeFi teams have been recognized for identifying the incident and working together to resolve it. The owners of the affected smart contracts are working on upgrades to unpause and resume normal operation.
Data Availability on Polkadot
Robert Habermeier, Polkadot founder, has suggested the addition of a Data-Availability-as-a-Service feature to the blockchain network. This would enable rollups, a scaling solution for blockchains, to post data to a shared data availability layer on Polkadot, while settling on top of a parachain. Habermeir proposed the use of Data Cores alongside execution cores, which would act like execution cores, but without any state transition to verify. This would allow a blob of data to be made available to the broader network.
Initially, the allocation of “blobspace” would use the same mechanism as on-demand parachains, where a claim on a core could list nodes from which data can be fetched, or it could commit to the data in a way that any node with the data can prove it stores the full data. While the approach might introduce certain risks, such as denial-of-service attacks for specific blobs, it could be mitigated by adjusting the way data is committed to ensure its full storage. The data availability layer could eventually be spun out into a parachain secured by relay-chain stake with restaking. The new feature could offer further vertical scaling mechanisms for rollups living on top of parachains, making Polkadot a more versatile and efficient blockchain network.
Tweet of the Week
Decentralisation at best
Last week, Kusama governance witnessed a remarkable example of decentralised decision-making when Referendum 110 was passed. Kusama, a canary network for Polkadot, allows for upgrades without the need for a fork, as the blockchain runtime code is stored on the blockchain itself. DOT or KSM holders can vote on whether new code should be put on-chain.
Referendum 106 proposed to upgrade Kusama to Parity’s latest runtime, v9380, but some community members had concerns about the timing of the upgrade. These members believed that more testing was necessary for XCM v3, which introduced some breaking changes, before it was launched. Instead of trying to convince the developers or validators not to upgrade, KSM holders used on-chain governance to cancel the referendum via Referendum 110.
With the result of Referendum 110, the original upgrade (Ref 106) was automatically and trustlessly cancelled. This gave Parachain developers enough time to perform testing, which was deemed necessary by the community. Kusama’s Polkadot OpenGov was responsible for this decision-making process, providing a decentralised, trustless, and secure way for the community to direct the protocol’s evolution. This event marks a significant moment for decentralised decision-making in the blockchain industry, emphasising the strength and importance of community-driven governance in the advancement of blockchain technology.
This week’s crowdloans
Weekly Spot: A recently spotted Polkadot /Kusama native NFT
The communicator: Even tho he looks like he is evil, he is not. He is just trapped. This is emotion of sending positivity towards our community.
Wrap Up
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