There have been discussions for around a year about alternative approaches for incubating parachains, whilst also making use of relay treasuries and better aligning long term interests of voters and proposers.
This in discussion post for funding grass-roots teams aims to create guidelines, but its off-chain structure means it will always be limited since funding will remain subjective and therefore prone to friction - per this comment.
we probably should have funding policy and programs that are fair for all, and are focused on the usefulness of the proposed, rather than how rich or poor is the proposal team. A bit more meritocracy might be a good way to put it.
The question is can we improve on this?
It has been a long-standing idea within the Polkadot network for the on-chain Treasury to hold many assets, in addition to its native token. One, users making Treasury proposals may want to request funding in other assets besides DOT. In addition, the Polkadot stakeholder community as a whole may want Polkadot to acquire stakes in other assets. By providing the multi-asset support that Statemint specializes in, it can allow more options for Treasury use and management. Proposal for Common Good Parachains
The latest Kusama upgrade includes XCMv3 makes possible some interesting new things related to multi-chain governance, asset locking and cross-chain exchange.
In its simplest form, the following is an outline for an experiment we would like to run, that would see an on-chain org based on Kabocha parachain create a funding proposal to Kusama structured as an asset swap thus giving KSM holders some potential upside in the future success of a parachain.
Note KAB is intentionally unlisted on any CEXs or governance permissioned DEXs such as Karura etc.
Kabocha is a fully decentralised and leaderless network whose largest holders are Parity/W3F due to its genesis/snapshot in the Edgeware community.
The proposal relates to funding that is core to its own value accrual model, and so distinct from more general spend on better multisigs etc and therefore may be viewed as contentious by voters who do not wish to fund ‘independent’ networks, but only common good.
We’re actively researching the below, but would love to hear from others about how they might approach the following:
Proposal high level
Kusama referendum: 1000 KSM for funding research and development of a new NFT based treasury pallet for Kabocha.
Kabocha referendum: 1000 KAB spend to be approved via simplemajority and sent to statemine account where KSM holders govern its future use.
KAB will later be listed on the Statemine DEX offering a path for KSM holders to recoup its funding - or hold as part of an emerging treasury diversification strategy, which could see further spending in this model.
On-chain structure?
The aim would be to make this a unified multi chain governance process, executed across two democracies - that could develop its own UI/UX for teams to fund their new substrate chain without needing external capital.
How might this work technically is the open question?
Unlocking performance related funding
If we can marry permissionless listings and price discovery, with on-chain metrics and performance related pay, we can develop this mechanism into a stream funding model that enables successful teams to build without racing to hypey CEX listings, or return constantly to have work and progress reviewed, addressing some of the challenges facing teams in the ecosystem - and governance at large.
All comments and questions appreciated.