Polkassembly - Referendum #1930

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


Amount	83,760 USDT
Period	August 2026 to January 2027
Track	Medium Spender
Curator	`12GkpkHocU4y1vFV2CpnA2AhkjzGGRtwucHFY77A5yyiQKp5` (2-of-3 multisig)
Team	8 moderators
Monthly cost	$13,960
Predecessor	Bounty 24 on Polkadot

This is a resubmission of referendum 1928

Referendum 1928 requested the same amount in USDC. It passed, but failed at enactment because the treasury's USDC balance had fallen below the requested amount during the decision period. You can check the treasury balance here

By the time 1928 enacted on 11 August, there were 26,942 USDC available in the treasury against a request for 83,760, and the call failed with FundingError.

This resubmission is identical except that it is denominated in USDT.

Nothing else has changed.

What the team does

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

The daily work is removing scams and spam, answering questions and pointing people to the right resources, resolving disputes, and handling the administrative side including recruitment and channel maintenance. Coverage is spread across time zones so the channels are watched around the clock rather than during one working day.

Why USDT rather than DOT

Bounty 24 was denominated in DOT against a dollar budget. DOT price movement since the funds were received shortened the runway by about five months, which is why the bounty is depleted in July rather than January as planned.

Denominating in a stablecoin removes that mismatch. The requested amount maps directly to the remaining monthly budget and the runway is what it says it is.

Budget

Role	Rate	Hours/week	Monthly
Head Moderator	$20	23	$2,000
Community Operations Moderator	$20	23	$2,000
Community Moderator (x6)	$20	19	$1,650 each
Discord server boosts			$60
Total			$13,960

$13,960 x 6 months = 83,760 USDT

Server boosts maintain Discord Level 3 for the discord.gg/polkadot vanity URL. The full per-member breakdown is in the proposal document linked below.

Curators and payments

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

Monthly payments are made as child bounties from the parent. Every payment is visible on chain and attributable to the multisig.

Accountability

Payment depends on performance, assessed monthly through blind peer review. Each moderator is reviewed by at least three peers on administrative contribution, moderation quality, conduct toward colleagues, and consistency of activity. Each criterion scores from -1 to +1.

Total of 0 or above: full payment
Between 0 and -2: 70%
-2 or below: 50%

Anyone dealing with something serious outside the ecosystem can abstain from both the assessment and the payment for that month.

Reward records live in the team dashboard, monthly spend summaries go on Polkassembly, and moderation logs are posted to the bounty's Subsquare page each month.

Verifying this proposal

Call parameters. Decode the call and check four things:

assetKind should be V5, with location of {parents: 0, interior: Here} and assetId of {parents: 0, X2(PalletInstance(50), GeneralIndex(1984))}. General index 1984 is USDT on Asset Hub.
value should read 83760000000. USDT has 6 decimals, so that is 83,760.
curator should read 12GkpkHocU4y1vFV2CpnA2AhkjzGGRtwucHFY77A5yyiQKp5.
metadata should read 0xb4cb96c5aa43cef51388ab5103510c7b405d5038b8f74879f03bddd9ecffe155.

Metadata. The metadata field points to a JSON document stored on chain. Read it in Polkadot.js Apps on Asset Hub: Developer, Chain state, preimage.preimageFor, with the key (0xb4cb96c5..., 1046). The length is part of the key.

Full proposal. Pinned to IPFS at bafybeihanjfh5z2qeljp5ldch6hrxo33lemrmuzxih2iuz6mnqfzx5txl4. Resolve it through any gateway. A CID is derived from the content, so any gateway returning a document under it is returning the same file.

Curator. Check the multisig has the expected signatories and a 2-of-3 threshold, and that those accounts match the team members named in the proposal.