Dotgraphic 🐂 ⭕️

@OpenZeppelin @paritytech Thanks for reading this post. x.com/dotgraphic1/st…

You’re Not Building Alone We are entering a new smart contract era on Polkadot. There will be: >New challenges >Unexpected bugs >Learning curves That’s normal. The ecosystem is highly collaborative. You can reach out on: Element - #substratedevs:matrix.org" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">matrix.to/#/#substratede… Telegram- t.me/substratedevs Developer forums - forum.polkadot.network Core engineers and community contributors are active and ready to help. [8/10]

More than 17,000 smart contracts have already been deployed on Polkadot Hub. Over 2,000 of these were deployed through EVM, while 7,000 were deployed through PVM. Smart Contracts officially went live on 27 January, marking an important milestone for the network. We’ve officially entered a new phase for builders. Here is a beginner guide to @Polkadot smart contracts [1/10]

I have some DOT. What can I do with it? A Reddit user asked, I have some DOT. What are the things I can do? You can do a bunch of stuff. Let's take a look ▪️Be a voice in OpenGov Polkadot’s OpenGov puts real power in the hands of the community. By voting with your DOT, you can help decide: 🔹Network upgrades 🔹Treasury spending ▪️Buy cores and deploy your project Polkadot is built for developers. Instead of competing for block space, you can buy cores to deploy your application. Benefits include: 🔹~$7B+ of shared economic security 🔹High-level interoperability across chains 🔹No network downtime 🔹Access to a large and active developer ecosystem. ▪️Get vDOT and earn double rewards On @Bifrost , you can convert DOT into vDOT (Voucher DOT). With vDOT: 🔹You still earn staking rewards 🔹You can use it in DeFi 🔹You can participate in governance ▪️Mint a digital personality or collect NFTs Polkadot is a chain of chains, and its NFT ecosystem is growing fast. Platforms like @KodaDot and @ChaoticApp where: 🔹Buy NFTs from artists 🔹Mint your own digital collectibles 🔹Create personalized NFT trading cards from Chaotic that is generated from your X (Twitter) profile. ▪️Participate in Nomination Pools You don’t need a lot of DOT to start staking. With as little as 1 DOT, you can: 🔹Join a nomination pool 🔹Earn staking rewards 🔹Help secure and decentralize the network ▪️Swap DOT and earn yield @hydration_net , Polkadot’s leading DEX, offers multiple incentive programs. You can: 🔹Swap DOT for Hollar and other assets 🔹Provide liquidity 🔹Earn rewards of up to ~27% APR. Please let me know if you have any additional options for what we can do with DOT in the comment section.

Polkadot will undergo its first forkless upgrade of 2026 on 27th January, bringing EVM Compatibility and 2s block times. A forkless upgrade means Polkadot evolves by updating on-chain code, allowing all nodes to automatically follow the new rules. With this upgrade, the Relay Chain will be upgraded nearly 70 times since the birth of @Polkadot . No forks, No network splits, and Zero downtime.

Polkadot Is Dead It has Zero Transactions. You’ve probably heard this before. Here’s the truth: Polkadot processed over 588.5M transactions in 2025. Dead chains don’t do that. And 2026 isn’t about promises, it’s about products. What Polkadot Already Delivered Before building for the masses, Polkadot had to get the fundamentals right. In 2025, the network shipped: 🔹Hard-capped issuance at 2.1B DOT 🔹Elastic Scaling 🔹Smart contracts went live 🔹PolkaVM launched on Kusama 2026: The Product Era Begins Polkadot is now shifting from “can it scale?” to “can people use it?” This year, expect: 🔹JAM a new execution model for unstoppable apps 🔹The Polkadot App - one interface for the entire ecosystem 🔹Proof of Personhood 🔹Stablecoin supply hitting new all-time highs 🔹Real apps for the Machine Economy @peaq 🔹PolkaVM on mainnet 🔹pUSD - Polkadot’s native stablecoin 🔹Polkadot Hub fully live with smart contracts 🔹Savings, payments, and cards on @hydration_net and many more new products. Polkadot has officially entered its second age. The first phase was about infrastructure and next phase is about products people actually love and use. So roll up your sleeves. @Polkadot isn’t knocking anymore, we’re at your doorstep. The product era has begun. 🐂🔥

Make sure to vote on Referendum #1828 to help execute this upgrade as soon as possible. polkadot.subsquare.io/referenda/1828

DOT faces no real competition after 27 January. 🔴BTC: 1 block every 600sec 🔴LTC: 1 block every 150sec 🔴ETH: 1 block every 15sec 🔴Cardano: 1 block every 20sec 🔴Cosmos: 1 block every 7sec 🔴Polkadot: 1 block every 2sec

Long Live DeFi on @Polkadot 2026 has kicked off strong, with @hydration_net crossing 100,000 account holders. With $211M in TVL, the Hollar stablecoin supply has surpassed 15M, and is now connected across 30 chains. A strong start to the year, let’s see what 2026 brings for Hydration and DeFi on Polkadot.

Polkadot in 2025: the numbers tell the story. A snapshot of decentralization, cross-chain activity, and real on-chain usage in 2025.

@its_ravii Can governance take any step regarding this behaviour of validators?

The Imaginary Zero-Commission Validators A Polkadot Forum user recently pointed out that a so-called zero-commission validator is earning around 47 DOT per day. This isn’t an isolated case. Similar patterns have been observed where validators earning 78, 98, or even 117 DOT per day and still continue to advertise 0% commission. While this might look attractive at first glance, it sends the wrong signal for building a healthy and sustainable @Polkadot network. TL;DR: what happened At the time of writing, there is a UI issue where around 10 validators appear to have accepted zero commission, but when rewards are calculated, they are actually charging up to 10% commission. This creates confusion for nominators who believe they are supporting zero-commission validators, while in reality, they are paying standard fees. Some argue that these validators are intentionally operating at a loss to grow their business, hoping nominators will stay loyal when commissions increase later. Polkadot is a decentralized and permissionless system, and anyone is free to run a validator as a business; transparency still matters. Ethical and moral clarity is essential for long-term trust in the ecosystem. What’s the Solution? 1. First Do Your Own Research (DYOR) As a nominator, you should always evaluate validators beyond commission rates: > Do they have a verified on-chain identity? > What is their history and contribution to the Polkadot ecosystem? > How consistent is their performance? 2. Use Better Tools Make sure to use the PAPI staking optimizer, built by @Joseptec and his team. It helps nominators: > Select high-performing validators with competitiveAPY > Avoid validators that frequently switch commissions

Polkadot’s Treasury Future Direction Over the past few days, there has been strong discussion in Polkadot around treasury bounties, especially the Marketing Bounty. While this may look like a single issue, it has revealed larger problems in how bounties are funded, managed, and evaluated. Bounties were created so a single vision project could receive treasury funds once and then distribute them through smaller grants. However, recent OpenGov.Watch data showed clear gaps. Some bounties paid higher rewards to the people managing them, while others, such as the Games Bounty and Pioneer Prize, were inactive for months with little visible progress. In today’s market, this kind of spending is hard to justify. As a result, community members started asking how treasury funds were being used and what outcomes they produced. With community support, @Web3foundation stepped in to help reset the system. 3 new initiative has been taken. Let's take a look Resetting Bounties Web3 Foundation has proposed closing several bounties, including Marketing, UX, Legal, and Games. The main concern was not the idea of bounties themselves, but how they were run. A large share of funds went toward managing the bounties instead of supporting teams building real products or tools. Some bounties were also inactive or no longer matched with @Polkadot current focus on shipping products. This reset is meant to fix the structure, not eliminate bounties. Moving to Milestone-Based Funding OpenGov is now reinforcing milestone-based proposals with concrete deliverables. This ensures that funds are released only when progress is delivered. RFC-159 strengthens this approach by proposing an OpenGov track, Spend Canceller, which allows scheduled treasury spends to be cancelled quickly if delivery falls short. With a maximum 15-day timeline. Treasury will not burn 1% of the supply. On September 14, Ref 1710 introduced a hard cap of 2.1 billion DOT, making DOT a scarce resource. In response, the Ref 1781 was proposed to preserve DOT treasury from burning, and now Technical Fellowship merged changes to reduce treasury burns from 1% to 0%, ending the automatic burn that had removed over 20M+ DOT since 2020. Stopping this burn preserves treasury capacity to fund OpenGov proposals, improve security, and support builders who deliver real value. Conclusion Together, these changes indicate a clear shift in Polkadot’s direction: enhanced oversight, clearer expectations, and more effective use of treasury funds.

What Put These Polkadot L2s in the Top 10 Four of the top ten L2 token holders are projects built on Polkadot. Here’s what’s driving their momentum. @EnterTheMythos Pudgy Party recently hit 1 million downloads, showing that fun, frictionless scalability can thrive in Web3 just as it does in Web2. More players mean more on-chain activity, leading to increased creation and circulation of digital assets — ultimately boosting the overall ecosystem. @Unique_NFTchain Last month, Unique Network surpassed 5 million NFTs minted on its chain. From AI to gaming to infrastructure, they continue to innovate. Their latest partnership with Reinforced AI introduces a decentralized, NFT-based proof-of-compute system — a major leap for on-chain artificial intelligence built on Bittensor and powered by Unique. @peaq Peaq is powering the Machine Economy. In just one year since launch, they have onboarded 6 million machines and humans onto their network. With more than 59 applications and over 620K active members, Peaq is rapidly becoming the go-to platform for machine-driven use cases. @AstarNetwork One of the earliest projects born from Polkadot, Astar is gaining momentum through its dApp staking program, which provides developers with passive income while helping them grow organically. With over 30K stakers and around 1B+ ASTR tokens locked, Astar’s ecosystem continues to strengthen.