Polkadot News
The maximum number of validators in the active set has started to increase by 1 each era for 44 eras, leading to a new maximum of 296 (currently 252). https://polkadot.js.org/apps/?rpc=wss%3A%2F%2Frpc.polkadot.io#/democracy/dispatch
There was a slash in era 188 of 383.7001 DOT for equivocation. https://polkadot.js.org/apps/?rpc=wss%3A%2F%2Frpc.polkadot.io#/staking/slashes
The Acala Team is asking the Polkadot Treasury to fund scholarships for their new Substrate Developers Academy. https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/post/199
The Polkadot DeFi Alliance has submitted a Treasury Proposal for startup costs. https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/post/196
Patract has submitted a Treasury Proposal for Europa 0.2 (a sandbox for Substrate runtimes and the Contracts pallet) - https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/post/189
Note that in the near future, in preparation for parachains, all validators will have to rotate their session keys to add approval assignment and approval vote keys. https://w3f.github.io/parachain-implementers-guide/protocol-approval.html
Over 2.5 million weighted DOT voted "Aye" for Referendum 12 in 24 hours, apparently due to linking the referendum with information on the proposal the previous day. https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referendum/12
Barring any last-minute surprises, it appears that Proposal 7 will be the next Referendum. https://polkadot.js.org/apps/#/democracy
Voting has begun on Referendum 13, to reimburse some council members who were slashed due to a bug in the phragmen-elections pallet. https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referendum/13
Releasing a new Polkadot version is an involved process. You can see what kind of things were verified for the current Polkadot version here. https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot/issues/1858
A section on Bounties has been added to the Treasury section of the Polkadot Wiki. https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/en/learn-treasury#bounties-spending
Motion 44 (Treasury Proposal funding LocalCoinSwap) has been approved by the Council. https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/motion/44
Motion 45 (Treasury Proposal funding the DoraHacks Substrate Hackathon) has been approved by the Council. https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/motion/45
Tips and Tricks
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Did you know that Polkadot-JS allows you to interact with networks other than Polkadot and Kusama? Besides testnets and dev nets, you can also use it to interact with Centrifuge, Darwinia, Kulupu, and more. https://polkadot.js.org/apps
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