We write as stakeholders in Kusama: independent validators, parachains other than the system chains, builders whose applications account for more than a quarter of active addresses on Kusama Asset Hub, and dUSD, the only US-dollar stablecoin still issued natively on Kusama. We have come to OpenGov in good faith, through treasury proposals and bounties, and put our own time and money into Kusama without engagement or support from the bodies that wrote the four options now on the ballot.
On 20 October four Wish for Change referenda went up, #671 to #674. Each moves Kusama onto JAM Prime, Polkadot’s JAM network: 8 cores for 5 years, 6 for 6 years and 8 months, 4 for 10, or 2 for 20 (the case for them). All four end Kusama’s own validator set and retire staking.
KSM holders have voted on this before. #573, “Lightweight and independent”, passed on 21 August 2025: a smaller Kusama on its own JAM network, with its own validators and KSM as its native token. #655 carried out its first step. Each of the four says it would supersede #573 if selected, but none puts #573 itself on the ballot.
What we propose
A fifth Wish for Change, now on chain as #676, in the same voting window, that continues #573:
An independent Kusama, keeping its own validator set, staking, governance and monetary policy on a reduced JAM network of its own, is scoped, priced and specified in the open, with Kusama’s validators, nominators and parachains, and put to KSM holders beside JAM Prime before any transition retires Kusama’s validators. Kusama-specific maintenance is carried by an open steward collective accountable to KSM DAO. No funds are requested.
Validators keep their seats while the comparison is made. Staking continues and nobody is forced to unbond. Parachains pay for coretime in KSM. Nothing is asked from outside Kusama: no DOT, no draw on the Kusama Vision fund.
Why it belongs on the same ballot
If #573 can be set aside by submitting different wishes, whichever of #671 to #674 passes can be set aside the same way, and the track stops meaning anything. Four options that share a premise also leave no line for anyone who wants Kusama to keep its validators. Voting no four times records a refusal, not a preference. If KSM holders still choose JAM Prime after a real comparison, #573 is reversed by a vote, which is how it should be.
Who would hold the other side
All four make Kusama’s security a promise from DOT DAO without saying which body holds it. DOT DAO is deciding 1954, which asks it to “avoid fragmented tools or efforts that don’t drive user adoption for the Polkadot Product Platform”. Its legal arm, the PCF, can reject token-holder-approved proposals, and the two board seats DOT holders are meant to elect have never been filled (two attempts failed in October 2025, thread). KSM holders would have no seat in that chain. Independence is the one line whose protections KSM holders would enforce themselves, so it needs to be a credible, priced offer.
A steward needs legal standing too, or it answers to whoever signs for it. Birdbrain is taking the opposite shape to the PCF: a Wyoming nonprofit association, a plain UNA first and a DUNA once it passes the hundred members the law requires. A DUNA has no board to overrule its members, limits their liability, and can take its on-chain votes as its governing rules. Birdbrain’s members would be its voters. The case is published as RFC 003, the governing principles are drafted, and nothing is filed until the members approve it on chain.
What it would cost
We don’t know yet, and neither does anyone else. The four options are priced on a benchmark of US$3,000 per validator per month. Nobody has asked Kusama’s validators what a seat costs them. The fifth option asks for that first: a validator cost survey, a reference configuration tested on a public network they run, and a funding model set beside JAM Prime’s, all published with workings.
The steward would be paid later, through ordinary treasury proposals, each against a milestone and a published rule. We have tried one already. #665 asked for 8 KSM to pay for memberships only for people a session’s anchored attendance record could vouch for, one person one claim, with a public checker. It was rejected on 30 September, about 60 KSM to 4,335 counted with conviction. The larger case behind it, and its numbers, offered as a model to argue with, is RFC 001.
A steward, and where this goes
An independent Kusama needs a steward that answers to KSM holders. Birdbrain was first proposed for that kind of role in March 2025, as #506, an on-chain innovation agency for a Kusama that #498 had just recognised as Polkadot’s peer. It timed out without a vote, and we built it anyway, as the open-source lab of Decent Partners. It now offers to form the steward as an open collective on Kreivo, covering runtime releases, the JAM genesis and test network, the transition plan and a quarterly report to KSM DAO. Its members work in Murmur, our open app, which we are growing into one tool for the network’s operators and contributors. It is built around the privacy and self-custody Kusama’s community has said it wants: passkeys kept on members’ own devices through Virto’s VOS, live on mainnet, and on test networks a zero-knowledge claim written in Noir, shielded payments through Kusama Shield’s pool and a members’ exchange on Decred’s DEX software (paper, Section 6). We are also beginning to onboard other collectives and their members onto the same systems. The first is Four To The Floor, the Channel 4 music film series turned platform, built as a home for arts and culture. Decent Partners is incubating it and is beginning to sign artists to new deals built around what these systems can do, backed by well-known figures in UK music, among them Matt Black, co-founder of Ninja Tune, an investor in Decent Partners. We can’t do this alone. We need JAM client teams, validators and runtime engineers, and anyone who joins with a passkey is a member with a vote.
Enactment on Kusama follows stake-weighted votes, and any holder can delegate theirs and take it back at will. Once Birdbrain’s membership is a credible association of infrastructure partners with a fully scoped, specified and costed plan, holders who want a different path can delegate to it, and enough stake would let that plan be enacted. That is the ambition, said openly, and a continuation of Kusama’s chaos. We are not asking for delegations now, and our members will publish how any are cast before we accept one.
Read, come, reply
- The paper, written for anyone new to this: An independent Kusama on a reduced JAM, keeping its validators.
- Monday 26 October, 15:00 UK (15:00 UTC). The Chaos Session is given to an independent Kusama, and holders, validators, builders and teams are welcome. Joining is the demonstration: a passkey on your own device makes you a member of Birdbrain on Kreivo, with no seed phrase. The call is recorded, and the door says so before you agree: birdbrain.wtf/chaos/join.
- The resolution is on chain as #676 on the Wish for Change track, the fifth option, with this thread and the paper linked from it.
- Questions here. We will answer each one.
We keep building on Kusama while the vote runs. If you disagree, please say so here. A no vote tells us less than a reason.
Our interest: Decent Partners supports Birdbrain and funds its members’ deposits, has a commercial interest in dUSD through Brale, builds and incubates Four To The Floor’s platform as a paid commission, counts Matt Black among its investors, is an investor in Bloque and holds about 7.17 million KAB, the token of the Kabocha parachain. Kabocha’s initial supply also made the Web3 Foundation a major KAB holder, an estimated 5 million. Decent Partners also holds KSM from the KSM:dUSD pool funded by referendum #474, withdrawn in May 2025 and treated as owed to the Kusama treasury in KSM. Birdbrain holds KSM.