Polkadot (DOT) saw several key updates and developments in July. Let’s look at some of the latest insights in OpenGov activity, developer engagement, and discussions from the Polkadot ecosystem. 

These metrics and data will help gauge the growth and progress of the Polkadot ecosystem. 

OpenGov Activity 

The number of OpenGov Referenda hit its highest level this year in July, demonstrating why Polkadot is regarded as the world’s biggest decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). OpenGov is Polkadot’s governance mechanism and allows any DOT holder to participate in governance and have their opinion taken into account on-chain. DOT holders can stake their tokens and participate in governance on the Polkadot network. 

July saw 1,134 unique voters and 118 referenda, 65 of which were approved and 29 rejected. Twenty-two of the 118 referenda were timed out, and two were canceled. 

GitHub Activity 

Polkdot also saw considerable activity on its GigHub. The total number of repositories within the Polkadot ecosystem now stands at 29,917. Weekly commits have registered an increase of almost 1000 commits and currently stand at 5.500+ weekly commits. Weekly commits help gauge the strength and rate of development that occurs within the Polkadot ecosystem and are a good metric to measure ecosystem activity. Meanwhile, weekly developers are sitting at a steady 900 weekly devs through July. 

Forum Activity And Stack Exchange 

The Polkadot forum is where all discussions regarding the Polkadot ecosystem take place. Developers and community members can engage, exchange ideas, and work on queries and proposals. July registered a significant uptick in some key metrics related to forum activity. First, the forum saw 161 new joiners and the creation of 89 new topics and 676 new posts. The forum also registered 300,000 page views, 5,800 user visits, and 1,500 likes.

Stack exchange also saw notable activity in July with a total of 63 questions asked, 39 questions answered, and 23 questions left unanswered. 

New Products 

Agile Coretime 

Let’s begin with Agile Coretime. Cores on Kusama were completely sold out, with one address purchasing 51 cores at once. While core prices registered a considerable decline in August, July still saw a significant number of coretime sales, with 62 cores sold to 7 unique addresses. 

The Polkadot Mobile App 

In partnership with Raise, teams at Parity and Novasama are also working on a new product, the Polkadot mobile app. Parity CEO Bjorn Wagner teased the app last month at Polkadot Decoded and will be available for select users via the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store in September 2024. The full rollout of the app is scheduled for September 2024. The Polkadot app will provide users with a seamless onboarding experience while providing a real-world experience for new users and more real-world utility for existing DOT holders. 

Some of the new features of the upcoming Polkadot app are listed below: 

  • Seamless onboarding

  • Fund your wallet

  • Staking

  • Real-world shopping 

New APIs 

July also saw the introduction of two new APIs for Polkadot: the XCMFee Payment Runtime API and the XCMDryRunApi. The XCMFee Payment Runtime API streamlines the process of paying XCM fees by eliminating the guesswork of how much to pay for execution and contributes to greater XCM efficiency. On the other hand, the XCMDryRunApi creates a better overall DevEx through the following:

  • Execution Result

  • Local XCM

  • Forwarded XCM

  • List of events

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.