Polkadot (DOT)

I saw several Chinese-speaking KOLs share their takeaways from @consensus2026 in Hong Kong. A lot of them were basically saying, “Crypto is over, everyone’s moving into AI.” 😭😭😭 It is a difficult moment. From the perspective of a typical retail user, there’s no more DeFi summer, no more airdrops, no meme mania, and no fantasy of 100× overnight gains. For retail participants, this really does feel like a devastating phase. But Web3 was never meant to deliver those things in the first place. It wasn’t designed as a bundle of financial products, it was meant to be infrastructure for rethinking how society coordinates and collaborates. That’s something @Polkadot has consistently tried to stay true to. I’m also looking forward to the Polkadot products @paritytech is building, hoping they can gradually turn those abstract ideas into something tangible — something that lets ordinary users do normal, everyday, non-speculative things.

When the “Giotto phenomenon” happened, I remember discussing it offline with some community members. At the time, my personal view was that perhaps the implementation of OpenGov was @gavofyork's large-scale experiment in decentralized governance — I may even have shared that opinion publicly. Governance has always seemed to be an area Gavin was particularly passionate about, and this has been very evident over @Polkadot ’s past five years. PolkaWorld has been involved since the first-generation governance model, through OpenGov, and into the DV phase. The first generation of governance was indeed centralized—you mainly needed to convince a few council members. With OpenGov, the level of centralization was somewhat reduced, but in practice you still needed to persuade large holders or DVs. The decentralization at this stage was reflected in the referendum discussion space: anyone, regardless of whether they held DOT, whether they were a new address or an old one, whether their opinion was right or wrong, could comment on a proposal. Yet ultimately, it was still the large holders and DVs who decided whether a proposal passed. So compared to the first-generation model, OpenGov was indeed less centralized, but it still carried centralized influences. So if you ask how I see it, my first reaction is that OpenGov has not yet reached a state of “full decentralization.” It remains an ongoing process of experimentation, optimization, experimentation, and further optimization. That said, in the blockchain world it is already one of the more forward-leaning forms of on-chain governance. Compared with governance in other ecosystems, @Polkadot has accumulated significant experience in this area. Speaking of change, this reminds me of a recent tweet by @alice_und_bob, who noted that over the past two years, about $250 million was spent through OpenGov, yet the outcomes did not match the scale of that expenditure. If you were @gavofyork, what would you do? Continue pouring resources into optimizing OpenGov and extending this experiment? Or pause and reflect: after creating so many technologies over the past decade, why are people still not choosing to build on Polkadot? Why has no standout product emerged? Market cap is declining, users are leaving, and the noise generated by OpenGov has begun to outweigh the tangible results—how would you respond? I cannot speculate on Gavin’s thinking, but based on what we have seen over the past few months, the current direction seems to be about making the organization leaner and the objectives more focused. From publicly available information, we can see that the Foundation, Parity, and PBA have all undergone restructuring. So this is not just about the community, nor can it be framed as suppression of it. Rather, it appears to be a collective decision made in response to multiple pressures and considerations. There is an old Chinese saying: “Place yourself in desperate circumstances, and you will find a way to survive.” If after so much effort we still have not brought Polkadot the kind of success measured in users, adoption, and real development, perhaps it is time to try a different approach—concentrate resources and build products ourselves. At this point, all I hope is that these products arrive sooner rather than later.

There is no other project that is close to deploying a suite of web3 products than @Polkadot. We are in for a lot of surprises. With regards to $DOT price... its hated by almost everyone. True signs of a gem. Strong fundamentals hated token.

Just listened to this interview. So many insights and depth. The interviewer did a great job asking the right questions. One question close to the end was regarding whether fund 2 will invest directly into $DOT. Max's response was no. They invest into the polkadot ecosystem. This is disappointing as @Web3foundation is one of the funder here and the capital should have a higher allocation into $DOT token itself.

💥 PBA unveils its 2026 roadmap: more focused on @paritytech talent + a product-driven direction! Polkadot Blockchain Academy (PBA) shared a major 2026 update yesterday. After PBA7 wrapped in Bali, the team completed an internal restructuring and redesigned Polkadot’s education programs for 2026. Since 2022, PBA has run 7 in-person Campus cohorts (Cambridge, Buenos Aires, Berkeley, Hong Kong, Singapore, Lucerne, Bali), building a 500+ alumni community. Its foundational online course PBA-X launched in 2025 and has been completed by 1,000+ learners. PBA also hosted Governance For New Leadership in Lucerne and Bali, bringing together nearly 100 policymakers. Aligned with Polkadot’s leaner, more focused “second age,” PBA is shifting priorities and highlighting three key initiatives for 2026: 1) Launching a new in-person program —— Protocol Builders Program Designed to better match Parity’s Core Dev hiring needs — hands‑on, highly interactive, but with a lighter production format. - Lisbon: Apr 12–25, 2026 -