Polkadot Weekly｜Gavin releases the first OpenGov proposal, launching a large-scale user onboarding plan! USDC surpasses $200 millions in the Polkadot ecosystem!

Polkadot

Breaking! The Polkadot v2.0.0 upgrade proposal has been officially approved, marking the full launch of the 2.0 era!

Key updates in this proposal include:

1. Asset Hub migration officially scheduled

At block #28,490,502 (expected November 4, 16:00 (UTC+8)), the migration will begin. Polkadot’s assets, governance, and treasury functions will gradually converge on the Assets Hub. (As of publication, the migration has been successfully completed.)

2. Comprehensive completion of core performance optimization

Three major modules have been launched simultaneously, providing a strong foundational support for a high-performance, scalable Polkadot network.

• Asynchronous Backing

• Agile Coretime

• Elastic Scaling

3. Smart contract prerequisites ready

This upgrade has completed all technical preparations for smart contracts to run on the Polkadot mainnet, laying the foundation for the upcoming high-throughput REVM/PolkaVM application ecosystem.

Please note, for node operators, tests show that some relay nodes may experience performance degradation if the --db-cache parameter is not set. It is recommended to temporarily add: --db-cache 8000 to ensure stable operation during the migration phase.

This upgrade means that Polkadot’s new architecture is now fully formed—possessing the basic capabilities of parallel execution, high-speed communication, and contract support. Future DeFi, RWA, AI, and governance applications will all be built on this new framework.

Polkadot 2.0 is no longer just a concept. It is being realized through technical implementation, truly uniting the multi-chain network.

As mentioned above, Polkadot successfully completed the migration from the relay chain to the Asset Hub this week!

• 1,526,324 accounts migrated successfully

• 1.63 billions DOT transferred

• 53,407 stakers

• 283 MB of data

• The entire process took only 8 hours and 39 minutes (UTC+8)

The whole process was forkless, with zero downtime, and 100% executed on-chain. Polkadot completed a self-reconstruction “in flight.” Salute to all participants—this is a true technological miracle! Learn more in the latest article from PolkaWorld.

Please note, after the Polkadot AssetHub migration, the current network-wide DOT staking yield has temporarily dropped abnormally, with overall returns about 60% lower than expected. The Polkadot technical team has submitted a fix, which is currently awaiting review and deployment in the OpenGov governance process. Once the fix is complete, yields will automatically return to normal levels. DOT users do not need to take any action, and the final actual returns will not be reduced!

This week, Gavin Wood hosted a livestream on Polkadot’s official Twitter, sharing the Polkadot People Initiative! Check out the key points compiled by PolkaWorld below to understand the important information and why Ref #1783 could become a turning point for Polkadot:

1. Core concept: Polkadot is launching its first large-scale on-chain plan for the general public—the “Polkadot People Initiative.” The goal is to onboard millions of real users, with all incentives paid in Hollar—a stablecoin supported by Polkadot’s own economic logic, not custodial trust.

2. Operation: The Polkadot treasury will use a DCA approach to exchange about $3 million in USDT/USDC for Hollar. Thereafter, all rewards will be distributed by on-chain autonomous logic—no Parity, no manual intervention from the Web3 Foundation.

3. Incentive mechanism

• $200 / $100 / $50 one-time registration rewards 
• About $10 per week to reward verified valid contributions 
• About 140 $250 prizes per week + a $2,500 “Star Prize” each month 

Everything is designed for real users, not bots or airdrop hunters.

4. Technical foundation

The project runs on the brand-new Polkadot People Chain, powered by Project Individuality—a decentralized proof-of-personhood protocol based on zero-knowledge cryptography. It includes two core mechanisms:

• POI (Proof of Ink)
• PAVI (Proof of Video Interaction)—a global “proof of attention” mini-game held synchronously for 5 minutes (UTC+8) each week. 

5. Significance and impact

This is not just an airdrop, but the starting point for Polkadot to redefine identity, governance, and fairness:

→ One-person-one-vote

→ Decentralized participation mechanism resistant to Sybil attacks

→ Deep integration with Polkadot Hub and mobile

→ A new economic model free from inflation dependence

6. Gavin’s memorable quotes from the livestream

“This is not a citizenship project, this is a Polkadot user growth plan—let’s be clear.”

“We don’t want to build identity, we want to build individuality—with privacy built in from the start.”

“Proof of personhood is not about proving who you are, but proving you are real—and that’s all Web3 needs.”

“We’re not making passports, we’re building presence.”

“Funds should empower logic, not people.”

“Governance should not only be open but also economically sound—that’s the power of individuality.”

“Polkadot must break its dependence on inflation—start rewarding true security, not just staked tokens.”

“DOT should become the cryptocurrency that realizes Satoshi’s vision—a system where individuals fairly share a limited pie.”

“Polkadot People aims to build a society of individuals—not accounts, not wallets, but people.”

“This experience should be joyous and delightful.”

“This is the first treasury proposal I’ve written—I hope it shows what good treasury logic should look like.”

Learn more:

Additionally, PolkaWorld released the Chinese version of Gavin Wood’s latest interview this week. In this in-depth half-hour (UTC+8) conversation, he discussed his “philosopher and warrior” self-split, the “mental prison” left by the industrial age, the true meaning of decentralization, and why Polkadot must establish its own economic strategy.

He raised a core proposition—decentralization is not a slogan, but about making the system itself verifiable and self-healing, without relying on the trust of any individual. Whether it’s turning Parity into a product-oriented company, designing a stablecoin collateralized by DOT, or reshaping OpenGov’s treasury and voting logic, Gavin’s ambition is no longer just to build a “blockchain network,” but to create a prototype of an information age society.

This conversation is both a technical review and a personal confession about fate and freedom. It reveals a new Gavin Wood—no longer hiding behind code, but stepping forward to rewrite the future with products and actions.

See the full content here

Polkadot’s new capital narrative starts from New York!

Former BlackRock financial professional and current Parity Head of Financial Strategy, Dave Soudaka, is driving a new transformation—helping traditional capital truly understand Polkadot. In the latest episode of Space Monkeys Special, host Jay and Dave have an in-depth discussion on the following topics👇

• New opportunities for ETF, structured products, and Digital Asset Trusts (DAT) 
• How Polkadot is reshaping its image in the US market 
• Connecting traditional capital and Web3 with real data and new narratives 

This is not just an interview, but the prelude to Polkadot entering Wall Street. Read the full story

USDC surpasses $200 million in the Polkadot ecosystem!

Latest data shows that over $200 million in USDC has been migrated into Polkadot, mainly concentrated on the Asset Hub, laying a liquidity foundation for the upcoming smart contract era!

Once smart contract functions like REVM and PolkaVM go live, developers will be able to use on-chain stablecoins directly as payment, DeFi, and dApp settlement assets, building a truly usable on-chain economic system!

As of November 2025, the total amount of USDC in the Polkadot ecosystem has reached $223 million, a significant increase. This is not just a migration of liquidity, but a key step for the Polkadot ecosystem toward becoming a “functional economic layer.”

During the two days of HKFTW2025, we once again witnessed Polkadot’s strong presence in Hong Kong!

Whether in fintech or Web3 innovation, Polkadot is demonstrating through real action how an “open network” can integrate with the real economy. In this vibrant city, we see more and more traditional finance and Web3 teams starting to have serious conversations and explore collaborations.

This is exactly where Polkadot’s value lies—enabling real innovation to take root.

We’re very happy that PolkaWorld, as a representative of the Polkadot community, joined this event to show more people how Polkadot is building a true Web3 infrastructure!

PBA-X Wave 05 online course starts on November 10 (UTC+8)!

Want to learn about Polkadot rollup scaling, the JAM protocol, and hands-on details of cross-chain design? This is an opportunity to interact with global builders, share ideas, and practice decentralized projects. The PBA-X Wave 05 online course will focus on Polkadot’s core technology!

You can learn directly from ecosystem builders and master the core technologies truly driving the decentralized future. Whether you’re a developer, product manager, or ecosystem contributor, this online course will be a rapid growth experience.

Sign up now:

Ecosystem Projects

Bifrost officially launches the DeFi “dividend era”: protocol revenue flows from the treasury to the community!

In the brand-new Tokenomics 2.0, Bifrost introduces a groundbreaking mechanism: 100% of protocol revenue will be distributed directly or indirectly to the community! This is not a short-term stimulus, but a long-term consensus written into the contract layer.

The core mechanism is bbBNC (BuyBack BNC)—a brand-new “revenue certificate.” The amount of bbBNC you can get depends on two factors:

🔹 The amount of $vBNC you lock

🔹 The length of the lock-up period

The more and longer you lock, the higher your share of the revenue. As the lock-up period approaches expiration, your bbBNC value will gradually decay. To maintain the highest yield, simply manually extend the lock-up period.

Bifrost’s dividend model combines “buyback and burn + buyback and distribution”:

🔥 10% of buyback $BNC is burned, creating deflation;

💰 90% is distributed to users who lock long-term and hold bbBNC.

This is a system that rewards conviction, not speculation. Future growth directions include:

1️⃣ Expanding the LST landscape—extending liquid staking to more ecosystems and issuing new vTokens to enhance returns;

2️⃣ Strengthening cross-chain circulation—leveraging Hyperbridge, vTokens now have multi-chain composability.

Bifrost and Hyperbridge have jointly submitted a proposal to the Polkadot treasury for 795,000 DOT incentives to accelerate vDOT liquidity and multi-chain adoption.

From “revenue buyback” to “dividend co-construction,” Bifrost is bringing DeFi back to its community-driven roots.

The first batch of teams selected for the Polkadot DeFi Builders Program has been announced!

To help more high-potential teams truly land on Polkadot Hub, Velocity Labs, together with Web3 Foundation, Parity Technologies, and other partners, launched a 12-week DeFi Builders Program—a systematic incubation plan integrating technical guidance, funding support, liquidity cooperation, and market strategy.

This program received over 75 applications from around the world, with fierce competition. In the end, five elite teams stood out to form the first cohort:

• Joinn—A comprehensive wealth management platform for the financially underserved in Latin America, combining consumption and investment through a yield wallet, allowing users to earn tokenized bonds and ETF real-time returns while using their funds.
• SigilSafe—A privacy-protecting digital inheritance management platform, connecting traditional wealth inheritance and crypto assets to ensure value is transferred securely and transparently.
• WinCoins—A creator-friendly prediction market protocol, allowing anyone to launch markets based on real-time events, turning “attention” into tradable assets via AI-powered oracles.
• Koni Finance—A native trading and token issuance ecosystem built by the SubWallet team, connecting Ethereum, Arbitrum, Bitcoin, and Polkadot for a one-stop issuance and trading experience.
• TidalX—A new generation decentralized perpetual contract platform (Perp DEX), featuring simplicity, zero gas, and ultra-fast experience, targeting mass-market leveraged trading scenarios.

Next, these five teams will embark on a 12-week intensive acceleration program, working closely with core developers and partners to prepare for mainnet launch. They will also showcase their results to investors at Demo Day, ushering in a new era of DeFi on Polkadot Hub.

As summarized above, Gavin suggested through proposal 1783 to exchange $3 million in USDC and USDT in batches for Hydration’s stablecoin Hollar! This will be used for long-term incentives to reward real users inside and outside the Polkadot ecosystem! For details on distribution, see this proposal. PolkaWorld will also publish a dedicated article on this topic later.

But what we can see is that the HOLLAR stablecoin is being used more and more; additionally, team members stated in a PolkaWorld livestream that HOLLAR will soon complete integration with Hyperbridge, bringing HOLLAR outside the Polkadot ecosystem! This will increase use cases, not just “printing” more HOLLAR.

For more information, see the video below!

This week’s recommendation from PolkaWorld—OpenShore!

This is a recently launched OpenGov data analysis platform by Pala labs, designed to provide governance visualization reports specifically for Polkadot OpenGov. It not only displays data, but also transforms on-chain behavior into understandable and actionable information, linking the entire process of proposal submission, discussion, voting, execution, and result analysis.

This allows community members to see the complete governance picture on a single page, with standardized entities, categories, timelines, and historical precedents all easily accessible. This means every community decision can be based on clear context and comparable references!

The core purpose is simple: let the community know where the funds are spent, why they are spent this way, what the results are, and what direction to take next! See the video below!

Traditional cross-chain bridges are like ticking time bombs in the crypto world. They carry billions in assets but are built on the most fragile trust structures: a few multisig addresses, a few private keys, a few seemingly “secure” signers—if any link is compromised, the whole bridge collapses instantly.

The multiple hacking incidents in 2021 have sounded the alarm: Nomad, Multichain, Ronin, Poly Network... These once “great attempts” at cross-chain channels have now become painful cautionary tales.

In this seemingly tech-driven but actually trust-out-of-control chaos, the birth of HyperBridge is like a rebellion: it rejects hot wallets, multisigs, and any form of “black box trust,” aiming to rewrite cross-chain bridge security logic with pure on-chain verification and cryptographic mechanisms.

This week, PolkaWorld compiled the latest Hyperbridge interview for the Chinese community. You can learn more here

Snowbridge V2 is officially live! The trust-minimized cross-chain bridge between Polkadot and Ethereum has received a major upgrade:

• Supports cross-chain contract execution: XCM messages can be sent from Ethereum to AssetHub, or Polkadot can call Ethereum contracts;
• Significantly reduced fees: single cross-chain cost drops to about $0.5–$1;
• Speed improvement: Polkadot → Ethereum transfer time reduced from 1 hour (UTC+8) to 35 minutes (UTC+8);
• After parachains upgrade to XCM V5, all new features can be fully enabled.

Detailed documentation: