Polkadot News
The Kusamarian has released “Gavin Wood: The Gray Paper Interview” on JAM and the future of Polkadot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3kRAVBTkfs
LAOS has won the most recent parachain lease auction. https://parachains.info/auctions
There is a proposal to create the Polkadot Community Foundation, a Cayman Islands entity to represent DOT holders. Polkassembly - Proposal: Establish the Polkadot Community Foundation to represent DOT holders IRL #2278
Referendum 680, proposing to initialize SnowBridge on BridgeHub and AssetHub, is passing nearly unanimously. Polkassembly - Referendum #680
Referendum 682, proposing ratifying JAM as the path forward for the Polkadot relay chain, is passing nearly unanimously. Polkassembly - Referendum #682
Referendum 688, proposing to enable asynchronous backing on Polkadot, is passing nearly unanimously. Polkassembly - Referendum #688
Asynchronous backing provides an 8x increase in parachain throughput, by increasing computing time and decreasing block time to 6s. For details, see Asynchronous Backing (Pipelining) - Polkadot Wiki
The staking rate on Polkadot continues to increase and is now at 53.13%. Polkadot Staking Dashboard
Kusama News
Referendum 382, proposing to test out a multi-stage payout from the Treasury, is currently passing with almost 100% in favor. Polkassembly - Referendum #382
The staking rate on Kusama is now at 51.64%. Polkadot Staking Dashboard