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The Treasury

Decentralized, community-driven funding for Polkadot projects.

This is what a financial revolution looks like

Polkadot’s on-chain treasury represents a paradigm shift in capital allocation and social organization, with the potential to revolutionize the way people do business and collaborate around shared goals. The financial agency once reserved for corporations and governments now belongs to a decentralized, peer-to-peer network.

Get rewarded in DOT for helping build Web3

The Polkadot Treasury is a pot of DOT tokens collected through transaction fees and normal network operations. Any DOT holder can submit a treasury spending proposal to support projects and activities that benefit the network.

Funded activities

Any activity or project that benefits Polkadot can be funded by the treasury. This could include, but is not limited to:

Infrastructure deployment and continued operation

Cross-chain application development (multichain infrastructure, UX improvements)

Network security operations (monitoring services, continuous auditing)

Ecosystem provisions (collaborations with friendly chains)

Marketing activities (advertising, paid features, collaborations)

Community events and outreach (meetups, hackerspaces)

Software development (wallets and wallet integration, clients and client upgrades)

Research (academic and non-academic)

How it works

Treasury funds can be allocated via on-chain governance in three ways: proposals, bounties, and tips.

Proposals

General spending proposals are the best method when a person or team has an idea for a project that they would like to complete, earning DOT in return. Proposers put together a detailed plan for the project and a desired budget, solicit feedback from the community, and submit the proposal as an on-chain referendum if community feedback is positive.

How to submit a treasury proposal

Start the conversation

Download Element if you don’t already have it, join the Polkadot Direction channel, and ask the community for feedback on your proposal idea. Be prepared to answer questions.

Draft your proposal for Polkadot or Kusama

Your proposal should address a problem, outline a goal, give a detailed account of how you will reach that goal, and include any ongoing maintenance needs. As much as possible, you should itemize the tasks to be completed so fees can be evaluated and milestones can be followed. You can fill out either a proposal template for Polkadot or a template for Kusama.

Revise your proposal

Incorporate the feedback received and revise your proposal accordingly.

Submit it on-chain

If your proposal has enough positive reviews, submit it on-chain as an OpenGov referendum for a vote.

Report on your progress

Be sure to report to the community on the progress of your project via governance forums, showing relevant deliverables, results, links to work done, and any success metrics if relevant. This is crucial for ensuring accountability and community alignment, particularly if you want to continue working with treasury funds in the future. You can use this report template.

Learn more about treasury proposals

Discover proposals

Bounties

The Polkadot community can only oversee so much activity, and oftentimes community members lack the expertise necessary to make a judgement on the successful completion of a project. The bounty mechanism was created for this reason. Bounties are designed to delegate oversight of a project to experts called curators, who work to ensure the project’s successful completion.

Any DOT holder can submit a bounty proposal for a project to be carried out. If the proposal is approved by the community, the project team will need to select a curator or curators with expertise in the field relevant for the project.

Curators oversee the project budget and are responsible for making sure it is spent appropriately. Aside from payments, curators also undertake various administrative tasks such as documenting child bounties implementations, preparing quarterly reports, and sharing their progress with the community to evidence progress made. Upon successful completion of their assigned tasks, they can be eligible for a bounty reward.

How to create a bounty proposal

1

Start the conversation

Download Element if you don’t already have it, join the Polkadot Direction channel, and ask the community for feedback on your proposal idea. Be prepared to answer questions.

2

Draft your proposal

Your proposal should address a problem, outline a goal, give a detailed account of how you will reach that goal, and include any ongoing maintenance needs. As much as possible, you should itemize the tasks to be completed so fees can be evaluated and milestones can be followed. A proposal template can be found here.

3

Publish your proposal

Post your proposal on Polkassembly or Subsquare. Once published, share the link to your proposal in the Polkadot Direction channel for feedback. Be prepared to answer questions.

4

Revise your proposal

Incorporate the feedback received and revise your proposal accordingly.

5

Submit it on-chain

If your proposal has enough positive feedback, submit it on-chain as an OpenGov referendum for a vote.

6

Curator Selection

If approved, the requested funds are earmarked/locked in the treasury, and the bounty is ready to be assigned to a curator or curators. Community members can signal their intent to be considered as curators for the bounty at any time during the bounty proposal discussions. The community will evaluate all possible candidacies submitted through this template, and then vote on a referendum to approve or reject the candidates.

7

Implementer and (optional) sub-curator selection

Once curators have been assigned their role on-chain, they can select implementers to work on the bounty. Potential implementers can also signal their intent to complete the work in any of the discussion channels. Using the child-bounties feature, curators can also select sub-curators, delegating responsibility over a portion of the project to them. Sub-curators in turn select appropriate implementers to complete that part of the project. Child-bounties can be used for more complex or long-term projects that require sub-tasks to be delegated to specialist sub-curators who report to the primary bounty curators (who in turn report back to the community).

8

Bounty execution

The newly-formed team of curators and implementers have three months to complete the bounty, with the option to extend the time allocated to the completion of the bounty, if needed.

9

Report on your progress

Be sure to share the progress of your project every quarter with the community on governance forums, showing relevant deliverables, results, links to work done, and any relevant achievements. This is crucial for ensuring accountability and community alignment, particularly if you want to continue working with treasury funds in the future.

Learn more about bounties

Discover bounties

Tips

Tips are a way to reward work that has already been done. Any DOT holder can propose a tip to be paid out to a community contributor after they have completed work. Tip proposals need to be submitted under the relevant OpenGov referendum tracks, and proposers need to take into account the caps that apply on the payouts.

Types of activities that can be awarded by tips include but are not limited to: content production (video tutorials, news, updates, and tech explainers), translations (of the Polkadot Wiki, blogs, video subtitles), Substrate PR contributions, channel moderation and community support.

How to propose a tip

Submit your proposal on-chain

Create an OpenGov referendum under the Small tipper or Big tipper track and provide contextual information about the recipient of the tips, the reason for the tip (including links to the work that was completed if relevant) on Polkassembly or Subsquare. There should be a way to verify that the address on-chain belongs to the rightful beneficiary of the tip, such as a verified on-chain identity or some other method.

Respond to comments and feedback

Keep an eye out for comments and questions on your tip proposal, answering any queries in a timely manner.

A tip proposal is approved.

If your tip proposal gets approved, the beneficiary will receive the payment from the Polkadot treasury.

Learn more about tips

Discover the Small tipper and Big tipper tracks.

Funded Projects

Below are some examples of projects funded by the treasury. Specific projects are selected for educational purposes only and are not an endorsement of the teams behind them.
See all the funded projects here.

Software, Infrastructure & Tooling

Centrifuge

Go Substrate RPC Client by Centrifuge

See the proposal on Polkassembly

DatDot

P2P hosting network by DatDot

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Litentry

Governance mobile app by Litentry

See the proposal on Polkassembly

OnFinality

Node infrastructure by OnFinality

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Common-good infrastructure for university student clubs

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Manta

OpenZL Common-good Zero-Knowledge Proof Library by Manta

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Ryabina

Web3Alert on-chain alert service by Ryabina

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Validator recommendation algorithm testing

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Patract Labs

Redspot, Europa, Elara, Megaclite, Metis by Patract Labs

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Pinknode

Node infrastructure by Pinknode

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Explorers

doTreasury

Treasury explorer by doTreasury

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Polkascan

Polkadot explorer by Polkascan

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Polkastats

Substrate explorer by Polkastats

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Subscan

Substrate explorer by Subscan

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Community & Marketing

EncodeClub

Education, hackathon, and accellerator by EncodeClub

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Polkadot Brand Update Bounty

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Polkadot Ecology Research Institute

Chinese community by Polkadot Ecology Research Institute

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Incentive prize by Polkadot Pioneers Prize

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Polkadotters

Czech community by Polkadotters

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Polkassembly

Maintenance and operations by Polkassembly

See the proposal on Polkassembly

PolkaWorld

Chinese community by PolkaWorld

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Content production in Portuguese

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Polkadot Hackathon campaigns and prize pool

See the proposal on Polkassembly (proposal 1, proposal 2)

Wallets

Nova Wallet

Nova Wallet

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Fearless

Development by Fearless

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Stylo

Development by Stylo

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Subwallet

Subwallet

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Omni Wallet

Nova Spektr

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Network Security

Merkle Science

Transaction Monitoring by Merkle Science

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Anti-scam bounty

See the proposal on Polkassembly

Security Bug Bounty for the Open Runtime Module Library (ORML)

See the proposal on Polkassembly

The Treasury Burn

Tokens in the treasury are periodically burned, or destroyed, if they are not used, creating deflationary pressure and incentivizing the community to spend the funds. Currently the burn rate is set at 1%.

Polkadot Decoded 2021: The Polkadot On-chain Treasuries – Decentralized Community Funding

Dive Deeper

Read more about how the treasury works in the Polkadot Wiki.

Learn more