Decentralized, community-driven funding for Polkadot projects.
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.
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.
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)
Treasury funds can be allocated via on-chain governance in three ways: proposals, bounties, and tips. Currently, allocations are approved by Polkadot’s council, though this may change in the future.
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 for an on-chain council vote if community feedback is positive.
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. If you need help on the process, fill out this form.
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.
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.
Revise your proposal
Incorporate the feedback received and revise your proposal accordingly.
Submit it on-chain
If your proposal has enough support, submit it on-chain for a vote.
Report back on your progress
Be sure to report back to the community in discussion forums on the progress your project makes, 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.
The Polkadot Council can only oversee so much activity, and sometimes council members lack the expertise necessary to make a judgment 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 council, the council then selects 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. For this reason, they need to put up a deposit of DOT as collateral to disincentivize malicious behavior. Upon successful completion of the project, they receive their deposit back plus a portion of the bounty reward.
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. If you need help on the process, fill out this form.
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.
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.
Revise your proposal
Incorporate the feedback received and revise your proposal accordingly.
Submit it on-chain
If your proposal has enough support, submit it on-chain for a vote.
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 discussions. The council will evaluate all possible candidates and invite one of them to accept the curation role and put up a deposit of DOT tokens.
Implementer and (optional) sub-curator selection
Once a curator has accepted the role on-chain, they 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. Like curators, sub-curators must also put up a deposit of DOT tokens. 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).
Bounty execution
The newly-formed team or curators and implementers has three months to complete the bounty, or the option to extend the bounty time if needed.
Report back on your progress
Be sure to report back to the community in discussion forums on the progress your project makes, 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.
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. Each member of a group of designated tippers then offers a tip in the amount they believe appropriate for the work done. The final value of the tip is then calculated as the median of all tips offered. Currently, council members serve the role of tippers, but network governance could change this in the future.
Proposers of tips must put up a deposit DOT, but also earn a 20% finders fee if the tip is approved. 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.
Submit your proposal on-chain
Create a tip proposal on Polkassembly, specifying the address to tip and the reason for the tip, including links to the work that was completed if relevant. There should be a way of verifying that the address belongs to the tip beneficiary, such as with a verified on-chain identity or some other method. You must lock up a small deposit when submitting the proposal.
Respond to comments and feedback
Keep an eye out for comments and questions on your proposal, answering any questions as necessary. If your proposal does not get enough support, you can cancel it and get your deposit back.
A tip is determined
If your proposal has enough support, designated tippers will each submit their own tip amount, based on their valuation of the work that was done. The final tip amount is selected as the median of all tips proposed by the tippers.
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.
Go Substrate RPC Client by Centrifuge
See the proposal on Polkassembly
P2P hosting network by DatDot
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Governance mobile app by Litentry
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Node infrastructure by OnFinality
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Common-good infrastructure for university student clubs
See the proposal on Polkassembly
OpenZL Common-good Zero-Knowledge Proof Library by Manta
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Omni enterprise app by Nova Foundation
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Web3Alert on-chain alert service by Ryabina
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Validator recommendation algorithm testing
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Redspot, Europa, Elara, Megaclite, Metis by Patract Labs
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Node infrastructure by Pinknode
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Treasury explorer by doTreasury
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Polkadot explorer by Polkascan
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Substrate explorer by Polkastats
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Substrate explorer by Subscan
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Education, hackathon, and accellerator by EncodeClub
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Polkadot Brand Update Bounty
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Chinese community by Polkadot Ecology Research Institute
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Incentive prize by Polkadot Pioneers Prize
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Czech community by Polkadotters
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Maintenance and operations by Polkassembly
See the proposal on Polkassembly
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)
Nova Wallet
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Development by Fearless
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Development by Stylo
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Subwallet
See the proposal on Polkassembly
Omni Wallet
See the proposal on Polkassembly
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
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%.