Polkadot News
Daniel Cukier has written a great, in-depth thread on PolkaVM and how it differs from EVM. x.com
Referendum 1427, proposing to upgrade the Polkadot relay chain runtime to v1.4.0, has been approved. It will execute at block 24_899_075 (approx 08.00 UTC on 26 Feb). [Whitelisted Caller] Upgrade Polkadot to v1.4
Jonas Gehrlein, researcher at W3F, has released a paper showing that parachain slot auctions (using the candle auction mechanism) for Polkadot parachains achieved high levels of efficiency and relative revenue for 97.4% efficiency and 89.9% for Kusama.
You can find the forum post describing it in more detail here: Research Digest: A Recap on Candle Auctions and the paper itself here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5109856
Kusama News
Kusama has successfully upgrades to runtime 1.4.0, following the passage and execution of Referendum 494. https://kusama.subscan.io/extrinsic/27155296-2?event=27155296-34
Kusama nomination pool members may now vote with their pooled KSM in OpenGov. This requires user intervention first; see this article for instructions. Polkadot Support