@thewhiterabbitM A week ago I ended my last post here saying the people already working on this could settle the denomination line together before the upgrade vote. That week turned out to be a busy one, so here is the state of it, and a text to react to.
W3F Research now has a design on the table: dynamically priced JAMKB via decaying deposits. A builder pays a refundable deposit, the protocol bonds the footprint on their behalf, the deposit decays toward a floor at a rate that follows occupancy, and the decayed part is DAO revenue. The shape is rental, from the researchers themselves, with the unit still left open. When I pressed that point there, Jonas agreed that “denominating the deposit in DOT looks like more direct value capture, since each allocation and top-up would have to source DOT.” In my thread, a business voice arrived at the same rental conclusion on its own: @usualsuspect grants that paying exclusively in DOT “would indeed create stronger direct buy pressure and more frontal value accrual”, and wants stablecoins accepted anyway so no builder stays away. Meanwhile the case for a dollar-steady deposit is being made in the W3F thread on predictability grounds. Every side of the trade is now on the record. The answer to your second question has not changed, though: still “a design commitment or just one option among several”.
So here is the settling, in practice. Below is a one-page draft of a Wish for Change, folded to keep this post readable. The operative part is a single paragraph:
Any allocation or release by the DOT DAO or its treasury of JAM state footprint (JAMKB, or however the DAO’s holding ends up being represented) settles in DOT. Whatever form a release takes (sale, lease, metered rental, or refundable deposit), the payment is made in DOT and any refundable part is returned in DOT. Prices may be quoted in dotUSD or any other unit.
Everything else stays open on purpose. It chooses none of the mechanisms and sets no prices. The builder-flexibility worry lives comfortably inside it: quote in dotUSD, and let front ends take whatever asset a builder shows up with and convert it at the point of payment. What the rule fixes is what the treasury settles in and holds.
It is a draft to be edited, not a text to be voted on. @Kingston007 already treats denomination as its own governance question in RAMTIME. @BizaRre priced the lease in DOT from the start. usualsuspect wants no builder turned away, which is what the free quote unit and the open counter are for. You want the commitment in writing before the framing hardens. If one page can carry all of that, it is ready for the track. If it cannot, better to find out here than in a referendum. Pick it apart, propose edits, and if a few of you will put your names to a final version, it goes to the Wish for Change track before the upgrade proposal lands in the back half of the year.
Full draft text
The wish
The DOT DAO adopts one standing rule for the state footprint that current JAM proposals place under its ownership:
Any allocation or release by the DOT DAO or its treasury of JAM state footprint (JAMKB, or however the DAO’s holding ends up being represented) settles in DOT. Whatever form a release takes (sale, lease, metered rental, or refundable deposit), the payment is made in DOT and any refundable part is returned in DOT. Prices may be quoted in dotUSD or any other unit.
What this leaves open
- The release mechanism. One-time sale, fixed-term leases, a metered flow, and the decaying-deposit design from W3F Research are all compatible with the rule. It picks none of them.
- Cadence and price. Nothing here sets how much footprint is released, when, or at what price.
- How builders pay at the counter. Front ends and brokers stay free to accept any asset and convert to DOT at the point of payment. The rule fixes what the treasury settles in and holds, nothing upstream of that.
- The protocol. This is sales policy for an asset the DAO would own. No Gray Paper change is involved, and whether a JAMKB token exists, and how it reaches the DAO, are untouched.
- Third parties. The rule binds the DAO’s own releases. What holders of already-released footprint do with it is theirs to decide.
Why DOT at settlement
Coretime, the resource the network already sells, is paid in DOT. This rule has the second resource sell like the first.
Settled in DOT, every allocation and every top-up sources DOT, and everything the treasury keeps accrues in the native token, with no conversion step and no later vote. Settled in a stable unit, value reaches DOT only through a conversion policy someone has to adopt and keep running, or through a stablecoin design the DAO has not chosen yet. In the W3F mechanism thread, Jonas Gehrlein agreed that “denominating the deposit in DOT looks like more direct value capture, since each allocation and top-up would have to source DOT.”
The designers agree the unit barely affects their mechanisms. That is the reason it will not settle itself: whichever unit the first implementation ships with becomes the default. The JAM upgrade proposal is expected to reach governance in the back half of 2026. Adopted now, while the sales design is on paper, this rule costs nothing. Later it is a change to a running system.
Why this track
A standing rule about how the DAO sells what it owns is what the Wish for Change track exists for. It involves no spend and no protocol change, and OpenGov has used it for this class of decision on both networks: Kusama referendum 573 set JAM strategic direction, and Polkadot referendum 1827 adopted the first phase of the Dynamic Allocation Pool. Like any wish, a later referendum can revisit it.
Record
Deliberation so far: 17912 (distribution), 17928 (holding or metered flow), 17969 (the funders’ ask), 17971 (the W3F mechanism). This page is a draft for co-editing. Comments and co-sponsors welcome.