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Advancing OpenGov's Core: Governance Enhancements & Automated Analytics, Cost Optimization, and Infrastructure Expansion – Retroactive Funding Request
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.
Comments (9)
Comments are restricted to accounts with an on-chain verified identity.
We have received a few recurring questions around scope, retroactivity, overlap with Ref. 1463, Asset Hub migration work and the removal of AI features from this request. To make review easier, we have prepared a full FAQ that explains:
You can read the full FAQ and detailed breakdown here:**** FAQ****
We will continue to add clarifications based on reviewer and community feedback.
Saxemberg has voted NAY on the Polkadot referendum 1814 Advancing OpenGov's Core. Several observations on how 2025's budget remained extremely limited on specifics and billing retroactively every single new improvement is not a good financial management of the platform.
These observations are:
The previously approved budget was 500k USD in value. Whose work was extremely limited to the exact details provided in the report.
From the approved budget we saw that AI was included in the budget as well as the previous two attempts which results in duplication of funding.
Identity is the first item in the previously approved proposal and it shares the same area with the 1st item of 1814 which results in duplication of funding.
Core infrastructure and migration costs is something we really have a hard time approving and justifying. The AssetHub migration was announced with a significant time in advance and now the bill includes this migration. As stated in the original proposal "A follow-up proposal will be submitted later in the year to introduce additional new features once the foundational goals of this maintenance proposal are met. This staged approach ensures clarity, accountability, and that we deliver immediate value to the community before seeking funds for further development." it is really hard to justify that AssetHub is a new feature.
Developer components was understood as covered by the number 5 & 6 of Core Infrastructure & Performance.
The two latter items seem to be in a gray area of funding.
In a nutshell, we now will prefer to remain with the originally approved budget as we consider it is enough for maintenance and core development as it was originally intended.
Override procedure:
https://voting.opensquare.io/space/the-sax-guild/proposal/QmRsxbrxRVPpqyU3C65ERzPm2NgXPJ6ry54n4n2YkinA2d
@SAXEMBERG
Thank you for the detailed feedback. We want to respond point by point and clarify where Ref. 1814 differs from Ref. 1463, and why we do not see duplication in scope or funding.
1. Relationship between Ref. 1463 and Ref. 1814
Ref. 1463 was explicitly scoped as a maintenance and platform stability proposal for 2025, covering:
Ref. 1814 is a separate, narrowly scoped, retroactive proposal covering work that emerged from ecosystem level changes that occurred after Ref. 1463 was approved, most notably:
As stated in Ref. 1463 itself, a follow-up proposal was expected once foundational maintenance goals were met. Ref. 1814 is that follow-up, but with a reduced scope and cost based on feedback.
2. AI scope and duplication concerns
We agree with the concern around AI duplication. For clarity:
There is no AI cost overlap between Ref. 1463 and Ref. 1814.
3. Identity overlap between proposals
The identity work in Ref. 1463 focused on:
The identity work in Ref. 1814 is different in nature and intent:
This is analytics and transparency infrastructure, not identity maintenance or UX polish. These capabilities did not exist in Ref. 1463 and were not funded there.
In short:
4. Asset Hub migration justification
We agree that Asset Hub migration was announced in advance. However, the timing of the announcement does not eliminate the engineering cost required to execute it safely for end users.
Key points:
Ref. 1463 covered keeping the platform running. It did not include:
Without this work, governance data would have been inconsistent or incomplete during and after migration. The cost reflects risk mitigation, not feature expansion.
While Asset Hub migration was announced, the changes needed to be made along with the actual migration process and scope was defined much later. As per our recent announcements on X there were still some missing components that are being fixed. This is understandable for a migration process as it includes a lot of nuances and hence we had refrained from billing for it in the previous scope.
5. Developer components and core infrastructure
Developer components referenced in Ref. 1814 (APIs, reusable packages, indexer improvements) are:
Ref. 1463 covered internal maintenance. Ref. 1814 covers ecosystem-facing infrastructure that other tools already rely on (wallets, explorers, dashboards).
6. Why the originally approved budget is not sufficient for this work
The 500k USD budget in Ref. 1463 was sized for:
Ref. 1814:
This is not an expansion of the original mandate, but a response to ecosystem-level changes that could not be deferred without breaking governance UX and data integrity.
7. Summary
We understand the preference to rely on Ref. 1463 alone, but based on actual work delivered and the structural changes to Polkadot governance, we believe Ref. 1814 represents necessary follow-through rather than redundant funding.
We remain open to further clarification and are happy to break down any line item in more detail if helpful.