Overview

This WFC proposes changes to the Polkadot protocol as part of the first phase of the DAP roadmap. The goal is to transition towards a fully functional DAP and to lay the foundation for an integration of Proof-of-Personhood. By accepting this WFC, the Polkadot community expresses approval of:

• General
  • Implement a basic version of the DAP pallet with a permanent account that can hold DOT.
  • Stop the burning of all DOT in the system.
    • DOT from transaction fees (on the Relay Chain and all system chains) and from coretime sales will be collected in their respective system parachains and, in a later phase, transferred to the DAP main account.
    • Treasury burns will be stopped, and the corresponding DOT will instead remain in the Treasury.
  • Redirect DOT acquired from slashes to the DAP.
• Validators
  • Minimum self-stake: 10'000 DOT
  • Minimum commission: 10%
• Nominators
  • Nominator's stake is exempt from slashes.
  • Drastic reduction of unbonding time. Nominator's stake can unbond as soon as they are not backing any active validators anymore. Depending on when the unbonding extrinsic was cast, this takes between a minimum of 24 and a maximum of 48 hours.

The enactment of these changes is scheduled to happen on or before 14th March 2026 and completes Phase 1. Upcoming changes will further build out the functionality of the DAP with updates to follow in due time.

This is a ReferendumV2 post. It can only be edited by the proposer of the post 5HR61BYzcNreezRSA8hGkSFCDF3ZTPhnTCMPr9dMG1P5WYzB.

Squidsway Governance Report and Tool

Actionable governance insights, from a rich data chain indexer

The proposal for Squidsway funds two things on an ongoing basis.

The Squidsway tool:

A chain indexer with rich data ingestion modules,
for testing and quickly iterating hypotheses and generating actionable insights about user behaviour.

The Squidsway project:

Publishing governance insight reports roughly every 3 months (and on shorter timescales case-by-case).
Continually adding modules to the tool, to support investigation through the tool, for the purpose of generating insights.

The tool will be open source, for any dev (eg, ecosystem product teams) to use, and future work includes an LLM-based frontend for non-devs to query it.
The project will be funded by the community on an ongoing basis, so will be focused on live, open questions that the community is discussing at any given time. There will be a mechanism for the community to request data on issues of interest.

This proposal funds only the first three months. If the community likes what it sees, then subsequent proposals will fund ongoing work.

This ref, #1825, replaces ref #1823. Nay #1823, Aye #1825 ;D

GOVERNANCE FAILURES ARE A TREASURY ISSUE.

SQUIDSWAY WILL SOLVE THOSE FAILURES FASTER.

I want to improve Polkadot governance because I'm a cypherpunk and I think Polkadot can lead the world, not in just governance of blockchains, but in blockchain-based governance of the offchain world.
Governance is a product on Polkadot, its a field we are leading in, and we should invest in growing the lead we have - make it something to showcase.

But you, dear tokenholder, should fund improving Polkadot governance because

GOVERNANCE FAILURES ARE A TREASURY ISSUE

We are iterating our processes based on assumption, hunches and louder voices, instead of evidence.
That wastes time and costs money.

The alternative to iterating based on vibes is data.
Squidsway is a proposal to collect and compile specific bespoke data, targeted at objectively assessing how OpenGov users respond to everything we do in OpenGov - and to generate insights from these assessments, in order to inform how we continue to iterate OpenGov.

Deliverables

This first proposal is for $8k USDT, to fund 80 (=40+40) hours over around 3 months,
being the development of an MVP, followed by the first half of the validation phase.

At the end of the work funded by this proposal, the tool should consist of:

modules to:

. ingest relevant governance events from chain data

. ingest structured/quantitative offchain data (e.g. from Polkassembly)

. curate data (using queries to assign tags, e.g. "whale", "shrimp")

and

. an indexer capable of reindexing based on these types of data.

At the end of the work funded by this proposal, I expect that the outputs I will report to be sufficient to demonstrate that the tool is functioning - concrete, but probably boring and uncontentious, observations.
Don't worry- the plan is for the insights to become more insightful over time as the tool grows to be able to ingest and compile more awkwardly structured data!

The second proposal would fund the second half of the validation phase.
By the end of that work, I intend that the tool will be ingesting qualitative (natural language) data and outputs would begin to demonstrate what is possible with the tool. I should also have some basic benchmarking to flag up any feasibility questions and potential non-labour costs for the future.

At the end of each funded period, I will report the hours spent on each sprint or other labour.
Overspends in each funding period will be added on to the next proposal for retrospective funding.
Underspends will be subtracted from the next proposal or, in the case of the project winding down (i.e. if a referendum fails), returned to treasury.

Funding

I am proposing to work via sprints, each being 20-80 hours, at $100/hr.

I am proposing to, initially, submit individual treasury referenda to fund upfront around 2 months of work (40-160 hours) each, initially with their own proposals which will be updates to this original proposal.

When the work and delivered outputs settle into a more steady rhythm (i.e. timing, expectations and amount to request become predictable), I plan to switch to the Treasury Guardian model (scheduled funding).

After about a year, the need to code modules to ingest new data sources should have reduced significantly, leaving the compilation of data (ie reindexing and querying) as the largest labour cost (which would also reduce if the LLM frontend becomes popular).

I would hope that, a year after the validation phase, that multiple people in the community will be proficient in using the tool, so that compiling the governance report would be less about the project generating insights and more like curating insights generated by the community using the tool.

Methodology

The methodology is intended to be very, very agile.
The idea of generating insights is to tell us something we didn't know, rather than setting out to prove or disprove a pre-defined set of hypotheses.
Central to that is the ability to, in investigative terms, 'pull on threads' - or, in software terms, to 'rapidly iterate'. This means that the treasury will, for each sprint/for each proposal, be funding something that it does not know what it will be.

This agile way of working is necessary because:

1. We need to go where the evidence takes us
2. It's likely that many of each of the small technical steps that would make up a milestone can only be identified once a previous step is complete, so identifying and costing out these small technical steps in advance would either lead to wasted labour or force investigations down an inflexible path.

The fact that, in the base case of Squidsway funding referenda, the treasury will be funding something unknown should be mitigated by the ongoing nature of the project, and the fact that each 'milestone' (ie funding period) is a small amount.

Any Questions?

Two parts, insights and tool

The tool is a backend, not a frontend

I can haz dashboard?

How is different from, say, Dune Analytics?

What do we get from these governance insights?

What kind of 'user behaviour' are we trying to encourage?

What are these 'iterations' of OpenGov?

Can you investigate ?

WTF is 'rich data' / 'chain indexer'?

Contact

Read the full proposal

(Full proposal)

(IPFS (draft v.0.99 to be updated))

Ref is for $8k USDT but somewhere I seem to have switched the track to Big Tipper (max 1k DOT).

Anyone got spare 10,00 DOT for Decision Deposit?

Bitcoin + Polkadot: Completing the BRC-721 Integration to Scale Bitcoin NFTs via Polkadot Coretime

Requested amount: 122,000 USDC

Purpose: Complete the open-source BRC-721 integration stack so Bitcoin-native NFTs can scale using Polkadot(via LAOS + coretime) as the deterministic computation, validation, and metadata layer.

1) Summary

This proposal funds the final integration work required to make BRC-721 production-ready for the Polkadot ecosystem.

BRC-721 enables Bitcoin-native NFTs that remain on Bitcoin (no wrapped assets, no custodial bridge) while using Polkadot as the scalable layer for deterministic validation, metadata evolution, indexing primitives, and developer tooling.

The result is an ecosystem primitive that makes Bitcoin NFT and RWA-style assets viable at scale for applications that require:

• Millions of assets
• True metadata with evolution
• Verifiable rules and provenance
• Application-grade indexing and developer UX

All deliverables will continue to be fully open-source.

This proposal does not fund LAOS chain development. The LAOS Parachain is already live and funded independently. Treasury funds only the BRC-721 integration with Polkadot, indexer, SDK, user-adoption, and Polkadot-facing tooling.

Current Status

The technical implementation of BRC-721 has been started by the LAOS team and is currently at 70% completion.

The team has created a walkthrough video, explaining the basics of BRC-721, and showing the current status of the technical implementation. It can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yt_LHAr8z0

We have also created a ChatGPT agent that can answer any questions about BRC-721. Please see it here: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6935d265a9bc8191b00c390933e5d73c-brc721-guru

2) Benefits for the Polkadot ecosystem

Polkadot Treasury spending should create durable, compounding value for DOT holders. This proposal does that in four concrete ways:

2.1 Increased demand for Coretime (Polkadot 2.0 economics)

BRC-721 uses Polkadot as the computation and metadata layer. As adoption grows, the indexer/validation workload and protocol usage create ongoing demand for coretime (directly or via chains/services that procure it), supporting the long-term economics of Polkadot.

Measurable signal: post-launch, we will track coretime usage attributable to BRC-721 workloads and publish a usage report (where measurable).

2.2 Establishing Polkadot as a credible Bitcoin Interoperability layer for builders

Bitcoin remains the largest liquidity network in crypto. BRC-721 gives Polkadot a specific, developer-usable wedge into Bitcoin:

• Not “bridging marketing” but actual tooling and infrastructure developers can use.
• A clear value proposition: Bitcoin-native assets + Polkadot-grade compute/metadata.

This helps Polkadot compete in the interoperability landscape with a differentiated story: Polkadot as the computation layer for Bitcoin-native assets.

Measurable signal: number of external Bitcoin ecosystem teams running the indexer and integrating wallet libraries within 120 days of release.

2.3 Reusable infrastructure for the wider Polkadot ecosystem

The deliverables are designed to be reusable beyond BRC-721:

• Reorg-safe event indexing patterns
• Deterministic validation pipelines
• SDK packaging for parachains/dApps
• Documentation templates and reference flows

This reduces time-to-market for other cross-chain or UTXO-adjacent projects and creates common tooling the ecosystem can build on.

Measurable signal: number of independent forks/adoptions of the libraries and indexer repos.

2.4 Open-source public good (no vendor lock-in)

All work is released under permissive licenses with reproducible builds and public CI. That means:

• Any team can fork, run, or maintain the stack.
• Treasury funding creates a public good, not a dependency.

Measurable signal: third-party deployments of the indexer and SDK.

2.5 Why Treasury (vs private funding)

This is infrastructure that benefits the ecosystem broadly, not just one product. Treasury is the appropriate mechanism to fund:

• Open-source protocol integrations
• Developer tooling and reference implementations

3) Why Polkadot? Why now?

3.1 Bitcoin policy changes do not remove NFT/RWA constraints

BRC-721 is not only designed to compete with Ordinals-style collectibles or speculative Bitcoin NFTs; it also targets application-grade assets such as RWAs, gaming items, naming systems, and other high-volume use cases that require deterministic ownership, scalable metadata, and long-term evolution.

Recent Bitcoin relay policy changes have increased default limits for certain data-carrying outputs, but Bitcoin still does not provide:

• General-purpose computation for NFT/RWA logic
• A rich, canonical metadata layer
• Application-grade scalability for millions of evolving assets
• Deterministic indexing primitives required by developers

3.2 Polkadot’s unique value proposition

Polkadot (and coretime) is built for parallel execution and modular infrastructure. BRC-721 leverages this to:

• Offload computation and deterministic validation to Polkadot
• Maintain an on-chain canonical metadata/evolution layer
• Provide production-ready UX via SDKs, indexers, and reference integrations

4) What already exists

The technical implementation of BRC-721 has been started by the LAOS team and is currently at 70% completion.

• LAOS parachain is live, stable, and in production. LAOS's Bridgeless Minting allows NFTs to be minted on any EVM chain, while spending only gas in LAOS. The solution greatly scales NFT minting and is already being used by several web3 games.
• BRC-721 research/spec exists publicly.
• Core primitives already implemented:
  • UTXO parsing
  • Taproot-related logic (as required by the protocol)
  • Collection logic
  • Early tooling
• Current technical implementation video
• Text walkthrough/demo
• Open ChatGPT Explainer

5) What this proposal delivers

All deliverables will be released under MIT or Apache-2.0 (final list in Appendix A), with public repositories and reproducible builds.

5.1 Core Deliverables

1. Bitcoin ↔ LAOS dual-chain indexer (production-grade)

• Reorg handling up to configurable depth
• Deterministic rollback and replay
• Exportable event stream / database schema

1. Complete BRC-721 validation logic

• Full protocol rules coverage
• Published test vectors and adversarial cases
• “Known-good” reference implementation

1. Wallet + developer libraries

• Minimal, auditable libraries for constructing/validating BRC-721 transactions
• Reference integration guidance for wallet providers

1. Polkadot SDK package for parachain / dApp teams

• Clear integration path for Polkadot builders
• Templates + example flows

1. Reference dApp + documentation

• Demonstrates mint → index → verify → trade/list (as applicable)
• End-to-end developer documentation

5.2 Outreach (developer adoption)

• 3 workshops targeting Bitcoin developers
• Tutorials and technical write-ups
• Presentation at relevant conference/event
• Office hours for early integrators

6) Execution plan and milestones

Target completion: end of Q2 2026

Milestone 1 (Weeks 1–8): Indexer foundation + reorg engine

• Reorg simulation harness passes up to 200 blocks
• Deterministic rollback verified (repeatable state from the same inputs)
• Indexing latency target: < 2 seconds for new events under normal conditions
• Public repository with:
  • CI tests
  • Release instructions
  • Operator documentation

Milestone 2 (Weeks 9–14): Full validation + SDK packaging

• Protocol rule coverage documented and complete
• Comprehensive test vectors published (including malformed/adversarial cases)
• SDK packaged and released with example integration project
• Reference dApp alpha available on a public test environment

Milestone 3 (Weeks 16–20): Mainnet readiness

• Mainnet readiness checklist completed and published
• Adoption outputs delivered:
  • 3 workshops (recordings published)
  • Tutorial series published
  • Presentation at relevant conference/event

7) Budget request (122,000 USDC) with itemization

Total requested: 122,000 USDC

Breakdown:

• Engineering (1 full-time engineer, 1 part-time engineer, 20 weeks): 78,000 USDC
  • Indexer/reorg + validation + SDK + CI/release engineering
• Infrastructure (nodes, storage, monitoring, CI runners): 8,000 USDC
• Documentation + developer relations + workshops + events: 30,000 USDC
• Contingency (unspent returned to Treasury): 6,000 USDC

8) Accountability, reporting, and controls

8.1 Public reporting

• Weekly progress updates on Polkassembly, plus GitHub links and on the LAOS Medium blog
• Public dashboard: milestones, commits, releases, tests, open issues

8.2 Return-of-unspent commitment

• Any unspent funds will be returned to the Treasury within 30 days of completion.
• A public final accounting report will be published.

10) KPIs (measurable, time-bound)

10.1 Technical KPIs (by end of Milestone 3)

• Dual-chain indexer runs continuously with reorg simulations passing
• Full validation rules implemented with test coverage and published vectors
• SDK released + reference dApp demonstrating end-to-end flow
• Mainnet readiness checklist completed and published

10.2 Ecosystem KPIs (within 120 days post-release)

• 2 parachain or Polkadot teams prototyping SDK usage
• 2 external users running the indexer (self-hosted)
• 3 workshops delivered; recordings published
• 4 technical posts + tutorial series published

11) Conclusion

This proposal funds a well-scoped, last-mile integration that positions Polkadot as the computation + metadata layer for Bitcoin-native NFTs without custodial bridging.

It is designed to be easy to evaluate:

• Clear milestones and acceptance criteria
• Stablecoin budgeting
• Transparent reporting and controls
• Fully open-source deliverables

Appendices

Appendix A: References

• LAOS parachain
• BRC-721 research/spec.
• Introduction to BRC-721 video (AI)
• Current technical implementation video
• Text walkthough/demo
• Open ChatGPT Explainer

Appendix B: Team Bios

Dr. Toni Mateos

LinkedIn

Dr. Toni Mateos leads research at LAOS Network. He was recently awarded an Oscar for Scientific & Technological Achievements from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as co-creator of Dolby Atmos, from research to product, a tech that has reached ~1Bn users in 90+ countries.

He was Director of Research at Dolby Laboratories for 7 years. In 2019, he left Dolby to co-found Freeverse, a blockchain R&D company, with the vision of using blockchain technology to bring digital ownership to the mainstream.

Toni holds a degree in Quantum Gravity (U. Barcelona), a PhD in Mathematical Physics (String Theory, Imperial College London), a Postgrad in Blockchain Technologies (Polytechnic University of Catalonia), has 17 years of experience leading R&D teams in the entertainment tech industry, and is author of 30+ patents in various technological fields.

Alessandro Siniscalchi

LinkedIn

Alessandro is the Lead Engineer at LAOS Network, bringing over 20 years of experience deploying mission-critical systems across domains including blockchain, industrial control for space observatories, military avionics, cinema sound, and audio signal processing. He is highly experienced in system design, software quality, and agile development practices.

Alessandro became a Polkadot protocol developer in 2022 after graduating from the inaugural Polkadot Blockchain Academy and has been a key contributor to the Polkadot ecosystem ever since.

Dr. Alun Evans

LinkedIn

Dr. Alun Evans is a co-founder of LAOS Network, and has over 20 years of experience in the tech industry for entertainment. Alun has a passion for building teams with a strong collaborative culture, that are focused on creating products that solve genuine problems. Previously, he was CEO of Shar3d.io (collaborative 3D applications on the web), CTO of Bodypal.com (virtual garment and fitting service), and Director of Barcelona World Race - THE GAME, the first-ever video game that allowed players to compete in a simultaneous real-world sporting event. Alun has a Ph.D. in Medical Physics from University College London.

Proposal Summary

PolkadotAvatars is requesting community funding to continue building an open, cross-engine avatar identity infrastructure that allows players to use a single customizable avatar across multiple games, while remaining fully compliant with Web2 platforms such as Roblox, Unity, and Unreal.

This proposal seeks support to complete the next 12-month development phase, focused on:

To complete and launch the Polkadot Avatars application, multi-games integration loop, achievement system and DOT-powered PA platfrom MVP:

• Production-ready web-app,
• Unreal SDK, Unity SDK
• 3 mini-games,
• +50 new modular parts (10 new IP characters)
• 7+ partner IPs integrations,
• Cross-game identity loop,
• Achievement system loop,
• 1000+ registered users in PA-app.
• Develop MVP platform & creator ecosystem
• Implement DOT-based item operations (combine/upgrade/trade)

To prove that cross-engine avatar identity works in real games with real users.

What Is PolkadotAvatars? - VISION

Tagline:
A unified, chain-agnostic avatar identity system for multi-engine and multi-game ecosystems.

It is an identity and avatar infrastructure layer that:

• Let players keep one persistent avatar across games,
• Allows digital collectibles to become playable assets,
• Works across multiple engines without forcing wallets or blockchain logic into games.

Games remain fully open to everyone.
Players who opt in can sync extended visual identity through an external companion app.
No crypto UX exists inside the games themselves.

Short Description:
Polkadot Avatars is building a cross-game, cross-engine digital identity layer that allows players to use a single customizable avatar across multiple supported games (Roblox external-ID integration, Unity, Unreal).

Relation to Polkadot/Substrate:

• Provides real utility for Polkadot and any supported chain communities through playable digital assets.
• Prepares a framework compatible with Polkadot’s emerging DID / Proof-of-Personhood ecosystem.
• Enables future DOT-powered operations (combine/upgrade/trade) once gameplay and user-base validation are complete.
• Acts as a Web2 to Web3 bridge that respects all Roblox/Epic/Unity policies (no wallets in-game, no blockchain calls inside engines).

Why Our Team Is Interested:
We aim to solve the long-standing fragmentation of digital identity across games by creating a neutral, portable, Polkadot-aligned identity format with real utility across mainstream gaming engines.

Already Functional Technical Components

1. Companion Web-App (To be polished)

• Web3 login
• NFT indexing (chain-agnostic)
• Modular avatar customization UI interface
• JSON-based avatar config storage
• External account linking (Roblox → PA app)
• Reward/Achievement system

2. SDKs for Game Engines

• Roblox SDK

SDK functions:

• Load a user’s avatar config
• Build a modular character in-engine
• Apply unified avatar movement/animation system
• Trigger achievement events to external reward assignment

3. Modular Avatar Architecture

• Game-ready production pipeline for multi-platform integration
• Interchangeable modules: head, torso, left arm, right arm, legs, back accessories
• Costume system replacing full body
• Millions of combinations

4. Reward Pipeline

Game to PA App to User Reward
Compliant with Roblox/UEFN rules - no wallet actions inside the engine.

What the Project Is NOT (important)

• Not launching a token
• Not providing a full marketplace in this grant cycle
• Not doing wallet connections in games
• Not making on-chain calls from engines

Ecosystem Fit

Polkadot Avatars becomes:

• a hub layer for game developers, communities, IP holders, brands, and creators,
• a shared identity standard across engines,
• an entry point for mainstream users discovering Polkadot.

Target Audience

• Game studios (Roblox, Unity, Unreal)
• Any chain WEB3 communities / WEB3 Players
• Mainstream WEB2 Players (Roblox, UEFN)
• Developers/Creators

Needs It Solves

• Real gameplay utility for digital collectibles
• Lack of portable identity across games
• Lack of gaming presence for Polkadot in mainstream engines
• Safe, compliant Web2/Web3 integration model
• Missing cultural/visual layer in Polkadot
• Onboarding non-crypto users through games

Similar Projects in Polkadot

None.
Other projects offer games or NFT utilities, but not cross-engine identity infrastructure.

Similar Projects Outside Polkadot

• Ready Player Me — centralized, closed, limited game-to-game logic

Polkadot Avatars is the first chain-agnostic, multi-engine, gameplay-driven identity layer.

Team Members

CEO — Ilya Kurkin GitHub LinkedIn

• 6+ years in 3D game art and modular pipelines
• Extensive production experience in Web3 gaming (Moonsama, Seedify)
• Strong technical focus
• Founder of Polkadot Avatars

CTO — Oliver Duedam GitHub

• Full-stack web3 engineer
• Creator of ZeroSum (top-10 Manta testnet dApp ~500 DAU)
• Built interactive experiences for Moonbeam & SNI
• Background in engineering consulting

Project GitHub

PolkadotAvatars GitHub

Development Status

Already implemented:

• PolkadotAvatars website
• Web-app onboarding with Web3 wallet login
• Real-time 3D avatar customization preview page
• Chain-agnostic NFT indexing feature
• Roblox external-ID integration
• JSON avatar config system
• Reward pipeline prototype
• Modular 3D asset production pipeline and 15 game-ready modular avatar parts (3 ready-made integrated avatars IPs)
• 2 Roblox game prototypes
• Public demo videos

Additional Information

Previous support: Received two Child-Bounty payments (now discontinued).

Reason for new proposal: GameBounty dissolution.

Why This Matters for Polkadot

Polkadot excels at infrastructure, but most of that value is invisible to everyday users.

PolkadotAvatars adds:

• A visible, cultural layer to the ecosystem,
• A non-financial onboarding path via games,
• A practical identity layer compatible with future DID and Proof-of-Personhood concepts.

Instead of speculation-driven use cases, PolkadotAvatars focuses on:
gameplay utility, persistence, creativity, and long-term engagement.

This aligns with Polkadot’s core strengths: interoperability, openness, and sustainability.

Who Benefits - HOW IT WORKS

• Players: one identity that doesn’t reset between games
• Creators: a reusable avatar and asset standard
• Developers: ready-to-integrate SDKs
• IP holders: long-term utility for their characters
• Polkadot: visibility, culture, and real users interacting with the ecosystem

Pitch Deck Presentation:

Approximate 12-Month Roadmap

2-Person Team

1 engineer (WEB3 Backend / Web-app / Documentation / Game Development)

1 technical artist (SDK / In-Game content / Avatars / Pipelines / UI / UX / Game Development)

Q1 (Months 1–3): Core Infrastructure Stabilization

Deliverables:

Team focus:
Web-App polishing + Content production + SDK development (Unreal, Unity)

• Production-ready PA web-app (polish, stability, performance)
• Stable external account linking
• Finalized JSON-based avatar identity format
• Cross-game identity loop (single avatar to multiple games)
• Unity SDK v0.1 (Avatar assembly, Config loading)
• Unreal SDK v0.1 (Avatar assembly, Config loading)
• +10 modular avatar parts
• 1–2 IP character integrations
• Basic achievement triggers (off-chain)

Q2 (Months 4–6): Games & Validation

Team focus:
Games development + Content production + Main PA to Game loop polishing

Deliverables:

• Cross-game avatar persistence demonstrated
• 1 complete mini-game (total: 1)
• Achievement to reward loop (off-chain, web-app mediated)
• +15 modular avatar parts (total: 25)
• +2 IP character integrations (total: 4)
• Creator-ready avatar pipeline (internal only)
• Public PA web-app launch

Q3 (Months 7–9): Platform MVP & Controlled DOT Utility

Team focus:
Platform MVP + Games development + Content production

Deliverables:

• PA Platform MVP
• +1 complete mini-game (total: 2)
• Identity registry
• Asset registry
• Asset validation
• Metadata ingestion
• +15 modular avatar parts (total: 40)
• +2 IP integrations (total: 6)

DOT-based operations:

• Item minting
• Item combining

Q4 (Months 10–12): Ecosystem Readiness

Team focus:
Polishing + Documentation + Games development + Content production

Deliverables:

• +1 complete mini-game (total: 3)
• +10 modular avatar parts (total: 50)
• +1 IP integration (total: 7)
• Optional DOT-based trade (platform-only)
• Cross-engine showcase demos (Unity + Unreal)
• Performance optimizations
• SDK/Integration documentation

Final metrics report:

• Registered users
• Active users
• DOT operation usage

PolkadotAvatars turns Polkadot from invisible infrastructure into something people can see, use, and identify with. This proposal is about: utility over hype, infrastructure over speculation, long-term value over short-term narratives.

We ask the community to decide whether this is a direction worth supporting.

One avatar. Infinite worlds. Built for the ecosystem.

This proposal requests the closure of the Polkadot UX Bounty and the return of its remaining funds to the treasury, due to persistent misaligned incentives, poor impact relative to spend, and structural issues in how the bounty is operated.

As detailed in this forum post:
https://forum.polkadot.network/t/a-case-study-in-misaligned-incentives-the-polkadot-ux-bounty/16275

• Total spend to date is ~$340k, of which >80% has gone to curator-controlled addresses and “operational” costs, rather than to independent teams or ecosystem-wide UX improvements.
• Roughly one-third of all funds have been directed to product-specific UX audits that produce non-reusable reports, with no clear evidence of measurable, ecosystem-level impact.
• The bounty structure effectively turns curators into both gatekeepers and primary beneficiaries, incentivising continuous busywork (audits, coordination, internal initiatives) rather than high-leverage public goods.
• Initiatives like the Polkadot-UI library were pushed against expert feedback, heavily promoted as “modern Polkadot tooling,” and yet show zero adoption, arguably harming developer perception rather than improving UX.

While some positive outcomes exist (e.g. address format unification, the Turtle grant), they are exceptions in an overall pattern of poor capital efficiency and misaligned incentives.

This proposal does not seek to punish individuals, but to acknowledge that the current UX bounty design has failed to deliver sufficient public good for its cost. Closing the bounty and returning the remaining funds to the treasury is, in my view, the responsible step so that future UX efforts can be funded under better structures, clearer mandates, and healthier incentives.

TL;DR

This proposal asks the Polkadot Treasury to retroactively fund transparency and infrastructure work that keeps OpenGov usable after the Asset Hub migration and aligns with the 2025 Social Contract (Ref. 1463).

Scope is limited to:

• Transparency & analytics: Treasury, delegation, bounty and judgement dashboards
• Identity & relationships: identity flows, judgements, proxies and account mapping
• Core infrastructure: multi-chain indexer (Relay + Asset Hub), GCP migration and PAPI integration
• Developer support: reusable components and APIs that other teams already build on

Proposal scope & budget on IPFS: IPFS Doc

Proposal detail & budget sheet: Polkassembly Q4 2025
What this proposal funds

A. Transparency & analytics

All work here is either live or scheduled for completion by mid–Dec 2025:

• Judgement Explorer: registrar activity, fees, turnaround times in one place
• Coretime & Spends dashboard (by 15 Dec): balances, inflows/outflows, efficiency trends
• Treasury Analytics (by 15 Dec): balances, liabilities, model-based spend categorisation, plus reporting aligned with opengov.watch and recent Alice_und_Bob work
• Delegation statistics (by 20 Dec): delegation flows and voting behaviour
• Bounty analytics (by 20 Dec): completion rates, curator performance, ROI by category

B. Identity & verification infrastructure

• Sub-identity flow: simplified UX for creating and managing sub-identities
• Account relationships (by 20 Dec): mapping between accounts, proxies and multisigs
• Proxy Explorer: unified dashboard for governance, staking and identity proxies

C. Technical upgrades – Asset Hub + infra

To support the Asset Hub migration and reduce long-term infra risk/costs, we delivered:

• A unified multi-chain indexer (Relay + Asset Hub) with historical continuity
• Refactored Next.js frontend, APIs, caching and schema to be chain-aware
• Migration to GCP with Cloud Run, CI/CD pipelines, global load balancing and Secret Manager
• PAPI.how integration to stabilise multi-chain RPC and reduce ops overhead

Measured impact so far:

• Page load times reduced by ~60%
• API response times reduced by ~35%
• Projected infra and maintenance savings: >150k USD next year, >400k USD over three years based on current usage and costs

D. Developer infrastructure

• Public, multi-network API layer (Polkadot, Kusama, Moonbeam, Moonriver)
• Reusable UI components, hooks, wallet-connect helpers and governance widgets
• NPM packages and usage guides so parachains and products can integrate OpenGov data without rebuilding their own backend

 Scope exclusions and no-overlap commitment

• No AI funding: Klara, DelegateX and AI forecasting are not part of this ask. They will be discussed separately with the Foundation, Parity and the community.
• No Fellowship workflows: All Fellowship-specific UX and process work has been removed from scope.
• No overlap with Ref. 1463 maintenance: This proposal covers new infra and feature work, not baseline maintenance already funded in the 2025 Social Contract.

We look forward to useful feedback for the direction ahead. If you have any questions, please drop them in the comments here on Polkassembly, or on our Telegram and X.

Statescan is an explorer solution for substrate based chains. We have been serving polkadot/kusama and related chains since 2021. Compared to explorers like subscan, it provides a 100% open source solution and low cost candidate for ecosystem projects.

Besides polkadot/kusama relay and system para chains, followings chains has adopted statescan as their explores: Hyperbridge(Nexus, gargantua), Heima(Litentry), Laos, Crust Shadow, Argon, Ajuna, Frequency, Datahaven testnet, Cere, Interlay. There are also projects who deployed statescan by theirselves like Joystream and 3Dpass. Note our request only include the cost for polkadot/kusama/westend/paseo and their system para chains, no other chains.

Infrastructure

For relay chains and system para chains.

Maintenance

The maintenance work mainly includes:

• Server deployment maintenance: daily server monitor, upgrading products versions, emergency handling, etc.
• Codebase maintenance: code refactor, bug fixes, UI tweaks, dependency upgrading, etc.

Please check the commits for more details. We will request 5 FTE days equivalent work per month.

Common features development

Total cost

At the moment no child bounties have been granted.

https://polkadot.subsquare.io/treasury/bounties/62

However it is expected to have the following payments: the bounty members have done Administrative Work, a Sample Case of a Crypto Foundation, a 14 page document outlining the PCF work and interactions “Polkadot Community Foundation” and a IP Strategy Pack. This should total of ca. CHF 26k (ca. USD $33k) or 10’904 DOT, plus 2’548 DOT vested over 6 months (total 13’452 DOT).
https://forum.polkadot.network/t/polkadot-legal-bounty-update/15944

At the moment that our discussion began
https://polkadot.subsquare.io/posts/425

no activity was recorded. According to the discussion and private communications it was expected that the bounty would ramp up activity or wind down the bounty. No further replies from the bounty have been published after that.
It remains to be seen if significant activity can be achieved with the remainder of funds with the current approach.
As far as we can tell, onboarded teams cannot be verified due to privacy, confidentiality concerns as well as light research about people and teams who might use the bounty.
As we originally argued, teams seem to seek their own legal support independently and the Legal Bounty doesn’t seem to have found a niche to justify its continuation.
For those reasons we believe it is better to close the bounty and to return the funds to the treasury.