Requesting 83,760 USDC to fund the Polkadot Moderation Team for six months, via the new pallet-multi-asset-bounties on Polkadot Asset Hub.

What this proposal does

The Moderation Team has been funded since 2024 through Bounty 24 on Polkadot, denominated in DOT. That bounty will be depleted by July 2026, earlier than its intended January 2027 runway because DOT price movement since the funds were received reduced the team's effective budget.

This referendum creates a new bounty under pallet-multi-asset-bounties on Asset Hub, denominated in USDC, to carry the team through January 2027.

To be precise about the mechanics: this is a successor to Bounty 24. Bounty 24 lives on the legacy pallet-bounties, which cannot hold USDC. fundBounty creates a new bounty with a new index. Going forward, moderator payments will be made from the new bounty via child bounties, and Bounty 24 will be closed after the setup of this bounty

Nothing about the team's structure, rates, or accountability changes. The monthly budget stays at $13,960 across eight members plus Discord server boosts.

Why USDC rather than DOT

The original allocation was sized in DOT against a dollar-denominated budget. When DOT weakened, the runway shortened by roughly five months.

Denominating in USDC allows the requested amount to map one-to-one to the remaining monthly budget, to allow for a more predictable runway. This is only possible now because pallet-multi-asset-bounties went live on Polkadot Asset Hub, enabling bounties in assets other than the native token.

This proposal is, as far as we are aware, among the first community bounties to use the new pallet. We have documented the verification steps below in some detail partly for that reason.

Who we are

The Community Moderation Team monitors and supports the official Polkadot and Kusama channels: Discord (both networks), Telegram, Reddit (r/Polkadot, r/Kusama, r/dot), the Polkadot Forum, and Element. The team began as unpaid volunteers, was funded by Bounty 14 on Kusama, and migrated to Bounty 24 on Polkadot.

Day-to-day, moderators handle scam and spam removal, first-line user support and direction, dispute resolution, and administrative work such as recruitment and channel maintenance. Coverage is deliberately spread across time zones so the channels are watched around the clock.

Budget

$13,960 × 6 months = 83,760 USDC

Full per-member breakdown is in the proposal document (see verification section).

Curators and payment flow

The curator is a 2-of-3 multisig pure proxy: 12GkpkHocU4y1vFV2CpnA2AhkjzGGRtwucHFY77A5yyiQKp5, with signatories tramymisa, abdulbee, and gr33nhatt3r.

Accountability

Payment is conditional on performance, assessed monthly through blind peer review. Each moderator is reviewed by at least three peers on administrative contribution, moderation quality, respect toward colleagues, and consistent activity. Scores run −1 to +1 per criterion:

• Sum ≥ 0 → 100% payment
• Sum between 0 and −2 → 70% payment
• Sum ≤ −2 → 50% payment

Members facing extenuating circumstances may abstain from both assessment and payment for that month.

Reporting: reward records are maintained in the team's public dashboard, monthly spend summaries are published on Polkassembly, and moderation logs are posted to the bounty's Subsquare page monthly.

How to verify this proposal

The proposal is verifiable on-chain or through content-addressed storage:

1. Verify the call parameters

Decode the referendum's call and check four fields:

assetKind should be USDC on Asset Hub:

{
  "V5": {
    "location": { "parents": 0, "interior": "Here" },
    "assetId": {
      "parents": 0,
      "interior": { "X2": [ { "PalletInstance": 50 }, { "GeneralIndex": 1337 } ] }
    }
  }
}

PalletInstance(50) is pallet-assets on Asset Hub; GeneralIndex(1337) is USDC. Asset IDs are the only authoritative identifier.

value should read 83760000000. USDC has 6 decimals, so this is 83,760 USDC.

curator should read 12GkpkHocU4y1vFV2CpnA2AhkjzGGRtwucHFY77A5yyiQKp5.

metadata should read 0xfe6bd3000ef64a0b62486a7a8596275cc66c30da90a5537d3dfcaa9c3f426ffe.

2. Read the on-chain metadata

The metadata field is a hash pointing to a JSON document stored on-chain in pallet-preimage. To read it:

Polkadot.js Apps → connect to Asset Hub Polkadot → Developer → Chain state → preimage → preimageFor

The key is a tuple of (hash, length):

• hash: 0xfe6bd3000ef64a0b62486a7a8596275cc66c30da90a5537d3dfcaa9c3f426ffe
• length: 1046

The returned bytes decode as UTF-8 JSON. It contains the headline figures, the curator address and signatories, and links to the full proposal.

Because the bounty stores a cryptographic hash of this document, its contents cannot be altered after this referendum passes.

3. Read the full proposal document

The JSON references the full proposal PDF by IPFS CID:

bafybeihanjfh5z2qeljp5ldch6hrxo33lemrmuzxih2iuz6mnqfzx5txl4

Resolve it through any IPFS gateway:

• https://ipfs.io/ipfs/bafybeihanjfh5z2qeljp5ldch6hrxo33lemrmuzxih2iuz6mnqfzx5txl4
• https://dweb.link/ipfs/bafybeihanjfh5z2qeljp5ldch6hrxo33lemrmuzxih2iuz6mnqfzx5txl4
• or your own IPFS node

A CID is derived from the content itself, so any gateway returning a document under this CID is returning the same bytes. No version of this document resolves to this CID other than the one we published. The PDF contains the full team roster with addresses, per-member amounts, coverage hours, evaluation criteria, and the complete Q&A.

Links

• Full proposal (IPFS): bafybeihanjfh5z...
• Team dashboard: Google Sheets
• Predecessor: Bounty 24 on Polkadot

Questions are welcome here or in the Polkadot Direction channel. We will respond to comments throughout the decision period.