Welcome to Decrypt’s Week in Polkadot, our new regular round-up of the latest developments in the Polkadot ecosystem.
It’s been a busy week for Polkadot, as activity on the network surged, while the network’s community voted overwhelmingly in favor of sending a crypto-branded car to the Indy 500.
Active addresses hit all-time high
March saw Polkadot hit a new all-time high in active addresses on its network, with over 605,000 active addresses on-chain by the end of the month.
Per data from DotLake, the majority of those addresses are linked to cross-chain smart contract platform Moonbeam, whose 248,286 active addresses accounted for over 41% of the total. The next largest share were 191,861 addresses created directly on Polkadot.
Unique accounts also grew month-on-month, with a total of 5,595,829 accounts with non-zero balances at the end of March, versus 5,534,246 the previous month, an increase of 1.11%, and up over 13% from the start of the year.
Transactions on the network were up slightly in March, with 11,584,262 recorded against 10,808,653 the previous month. They’re still down significantly from their peak of 31,788,349 recorded in December 2023.
Polkadot will be taking its place on the Indy 500 starting grid in May, after community members this week voted to select IndyCar racing star Conor Daly as a brand ambassador.
Following a community proposal to sponsor Daly that passed with 95.8% approval, the partnership will see 290,000 DOT, worth around $2.1 million, allocated to cover the $1.7 million commercial sponsorship fee for the race team, plus other expenses.
"The fact that thousands of individuals in the Polkadot community—not a corporate marketing team—used their voices to vote and select me as their ambassador is an incredible honor,” Daly said in a statement. He added that it was “reflective of the power of what a more free and open internet can look like in the future."
Exiled Racers launches Base Racing League
NFT-based racing and prediction management game Exiled Racers this week announced Base Racing League, a hybrid cross-chain racing experience built atop Polkadot ecosystem project Moonbeam Network.
Buckle up 🏁 @exiledracers just announced their new Base Racing League for low-touch gaming and the first hybrid cross-chain racing experience leveraging @MoonbeamNetwork!
Base Racing League will offer weekly Havoc Race Reveals and Battles, with players competing for rewards and partner prize pools. The league is free-to-play for all with an allowlist race pass.
Exiled Racers makes use of Moonbeam Network, an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform on Polkadot that enables decentralized applications (dapps) to access users, assets, and services on multiple chains.
