Polkadot News
Integritee has won the most recent parachain lease auction. https://parachains.info/auctions
This is despite being only in the lead for 36% of the blocks in the Ending Period. This is by design of the candle auction. For details, see Web3 and Polkadot - Polkadot Wiki
The staking rate on Polkadot continues to increase and is now at 55.5%. Polkadot Staking Dashboard
I will be part of a panel on the topic of Open Governance at Decentralized Lugano this Thursday, 16 May. Decentralized Lugano 2025 | Scytale Digital
Eskimor, one of the Parity engineers working on the Polkadot Node software, has published an in-depth article on Grill explaining what is happening “under the hood” in developing Polkadot. https://grillapp.net/12935/98722?ref=8779
Grill is an application running on the Subsocial parachain allowing for decentralized publishing. For details, see https://grillapp.net/
Kusama News
The staking rate on Kusama is also increasing, albeit more slowly, and is now at 52.12%. Polkadot Staking Dashboard
Referendum 393, assigning a core to the People Chain immediately, is passing and barring any major changes, should start confirming shortly. Polkassembly - Referendum #393
Referendum 388, enabling identity again on Kusama on the People Chain, is passing with 82.3% in favor. Polkassembly - Referendum #388
Referendum 387, upgrading the relay chain runtime for People launch (allowing anyone to call reap_identity), is passing with 95% in favor. Polkassembly - Referendum #387
This will allow users to migrate their identity to the People Chain, which has a 1/100th deposit amount for identities. For details, see People Chain Launch and Identity Migration Plan