Monthly Recap: May 2023
GM Astar Community,
May has been another busy month for the Astar team. While memecoins have, for better and worse, captured attention, we continued building and entering new partnerships to grow the Astar ecosystem.
Read on for a recap of some of our highlights in May.
Network
XCM V3 live on Shiden
During May, the latest version of XCM, Polkadot’s cross-consensus messaging, went live on Shiden Network. XCM facilitates the building of cross-chain dApps, and its latest upgrade V3, enhances bridges to ecosystems such as Kusama and Ethereum. This paves the way for more powerful asset exchange as well as moving NFTs cross-chain. You can learn more about how XCM plays into Astars’ vision here:
Tokenomics are changing
A frequent point of criticism, we’re listening to the community and have decided to revise our tokenomics. Our focus is on rewarding those contributing most to the network and setting Astar up for a sustainable future. Stay tuned for more details to come in the near future.
dApp staking now live on Ledger
Anyone looking to support their favorite Astar builders through our dApp staking from the comfort of a hardware wallet can now do so using a Ledger device. While general support for Astar and Shiden EVM rolled out already last year by enabling dApp staking, users can now more readily engage with the Astar ecosystem without having to move funds to different wallets before.
Learn all you need to know in this post and start staking from your Ledger today.
Portal UI is improving
To accommodate the latest release of XCM v3, our UI team worked hard to enhance the user interface of the Astar Portal. Things that have changed include the wallet modal, and theme colors, among other things. Have a look, and let us know what you think.
NFTs
AI Art Contest
To celebrate NFTs on Astar, we hosted a 4-weeks long AI art contest in collaboration with SubWallet, and the Art Zero Team. During the contest, anyone could submit an AI-generated visual inspired by Subwallet’s NFT collection, the Serpenators.
Thanks to everyone who submitted their artwork. We’re excited to see over 50 submissions and will struggle with picking winners.
If you joined the contest, stay tuned. We’ll reach out to winning participants within 2 weeks after the end of the contest on June 4th.
NFT Twitter Spaces
During May, we hosted 3 Twitter Spaces focused on sharing insights on NFTs, bridging across ecosystems, and encouraging creation.
The first space focused on exploring NFTs in general, as well as learning more about Subwallet, ArtZero, and the AI Art contest we kicked off. You can listen to the recording here.
For our second space, we decided to invite some OGs from the Polkadot ecosystem to go deep on all things NFTs, RMRK, and the potential we see for future Polkadot NFT projects. Check out our Recap to catch up on what we talked about.
The third space was dedicated to AI, Art, NFTs, and their intersections. We had the chance to hear from 3 people who spend significant time using and thinking about AI. They all shared tips, and tools for getting started and highlighted that maybe AI isn’t all that scary people make it out to be.
For a recap including some tips and tools for creating your first image with AI, look no further than this post.
Bluez adds support for ERC-1155
The community-driven Astar NFT marketplace Bluez has added support for ERC-1155 tokens. ERC-1155 was created as a standard combining the best of previous token standards to facilitate representing multiple tokens with just one single contract.
We’re looking forward to more artists and projects using the standard when launching their projects on Bluez.
Paras’ NFT collection
Paras, the first Wasm NFT launchpad, who recently joined the dApp staking program, have announced the release of their first NFT collection. Called Usagii, inspired by the Japanese word for rabbit, the pfps feature cute rabbits.
Head to the Paras Twitter and learn how you can get one of the Usagii as well.
Infrastructure & Tools
Apillon adds Astar
Apillon, a gateway facilitating access to web3 services on top of Polkadot has added Astar to their development platform. This means, builders using Apillon can now choose to launch NFT collections or dApps o top of Astar while benefitting from a simplified developer experience.
FiDi introducing advanced Analytics
FiDi, a mulitchain portfolio tracker for all your Astar assets, has introduced advanced analytics to cover all DeFi traders’ needs. These include providing an overview of dApp activity, as well as a dashboard to track dApp staking easily.
The team has also been approved to join our dApp staking program, so if you enjoy using FiDi, get ready to stake with them.
Astari is live — your personal assistant to all things Astar
AI is all the hype, so we decided we’d leverage AI to answer questions more readily. If you haven’t noticed yet, our website, documentation portal, and Discord server have integrated support for our custom Astar AI, Astari.
You can find all the details on Astari here.
DeFi
Injective and Arthswap integration
INJ, the native token of the Cosmos chain Injective has been integrated into Arthswap, a leading Astar DEX. This integration will enhance ties between the Cosmos and Astar ecosystem, opening up new trading opportunities.
https://twitter.com/Injective_/status/1656124978209730561
Enterprise
JR Kyushu issuing NFTs on Astar
JR Kyushu, part of the biggest train operator in Japan, has announced that they will start distributing NFTs on top of the Astar Network to their riders. NFTs will serve as a proof of visiting, riding and using the system. Eventually, more utility might be attached to these NFTs, such as special offers at other JR Kyushu facilities.
For all the details, read on here.
Events
In May, there were a variety of events we hosted and participated in, online as well as offline.
Here are some of our highlights.
Decentralized Lugano 2.0
In Lugano, our Head of Foundation, Maarten, and our CTO, Hoon, joined sessions with other web3 thought leaders, such as the team from Scytale Digital and Mythical Games, to discuss the future of blockchain, multichain opportunities and the direction Astar is pursuing.
BlockSplit Croatia
Thanks to the BlockSplit team for putting on such an amazing event. We had a great time meeting with founders, projects, and web3 enthusiasts from all around the world and from all ecosystems.
We also had a chance to participate in various meetups from Berlin to Singapore. We hosted a game night with Crust, and had our first Community Call on Discord in a while. Stay tuned for more events online and offline.
If you have suggestions for events you’d like to see us be part of or put on, let us know.
Thanks for being part of the Astar community!
About Astar Network
Astar is Japan’s most popular smart contract blockchain, supporting both EVM and WebAssembly (Wasm) environments, and interoperability between them using a Cross-Virtual Machine. Astar Network is friendly to all kinds of developers, and tools and languages they already know. Backed by the shared security of Polkadot, Astar shines brilliantly on its own within a vibrant and healthy ecosystem, and is a leading star in the blockchain industry overall, driving international corporate adoption, and consumer interest in web3 technologies.
Astar’s Build2Earn program is designed to grow the network in an innovative way, while simultaneously rewarding participants and builders. It allows developers to earn incentives for building and maintaining their decentralized applications, and users to earn incentives for supporting their favorite projects, all while encouraging growth of the ecosystem overall.
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