Bounty Compliance Audit September 2025

Governance
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Bounty Compliance Audit - September 2025

OpenGov.Watch presents the first ecosystem-wide departmental audit based on the bounty compliance standards approved by OpenGov under referendum #1254.

OpenGov uses the bounty system to establish departments with dedicated mandates. These departments provide public goods to the Polkadot ecosystem. As such, they are required to work in a transparent and accountable manner.

The audit evaluates bounties based on objective criteria mandated for all bounties. It does not assess execution quality on the work or direct outcomes. After the overview, we include brief notes in the suggestions column.

If you think any information is missing or requires correction, please let us know, and we will update the report if the information is relevant.

This research has been funded by the Web3 Foundation Decentralized Futures Program.

Methodology

We collected information with a simple framing. The audit reflects what a regular community member can verify from public sources. We did not use private contacts. We spent no more than 40 minutes on any bounty.

Sources

  • Subsquare and Polkassembly

  • Polkadot Forum

  • Public social media posts

  • Web search

Main Table

We evaluated seven objective categories with a simple Yes, No, Partial, N/A checklist.

  1. Homepage available

  2. Submission and participation guidelines

  3. Budget breakdown in the latest proposal or public document

  4. Regular reporting on work and the budget

  5. All curators have on-chain identities

  6. Public communications channel availability

  7. Clear child bounty descriptions

We also noted how easy it was to find the related information. This field is subjective and does not affect the compliance flag.

UPDATED TABLE v.3

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You can check out the table in Google Sheets here.

Reporting

We assess reporting across three visible signals.

Monthly progress reports. We looked for an update that summarizes work done, work in progress, pending decisions, and payouts in the period. A forum post, public document, comment under the proposal, or website page counted if it was easy to find and open to anyone.

Quarterly budget reports. We looked for a statement of balance, inflows, outflows, committed but unpaid items, and the remaining runway. A single spreadsheet, reports on GitHub, or a forum post was enough if it covered the last quarter and was accessible. Some bounties published end-of-year reports instead of quarterly. We counted those as Yes if they were detailed. We marked them Partial if key details were missing.

Live tracking. Some teams maintain a public ledger, kanban board, or transparency page that is updated as items move. This is not required by the standards, but it helps audits. We recorded it to recognise good practice.

For the table, we marked Reporting as Yes if at least one of these three was present and current in H1. We used this softer rule to avoid missing real activity in a fast snapshot. The standard still requires both monthly and quarterly reports. Live tracking is encouraged as an extra.

When an item existed but was outdated or incomplete, we marked it as Partial. When nothing was found in public sources within our time box, we marked it as No. Live presentations were not counted unless supported by a public document.

Verdict and Suggestions

We marked a bounty non-compliant when at least three of the seven objective criteria were not met. Non-compliance is not a call to close the bounty. See the row notes for the action we suggest for each bounty. We also include suggestions for compliant entries. The aim is constructive improvement.

UPDATED TABLE v.3

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Immediate Improvement and Clarity

Eight of the twenty bounties need operational fixes and clearer public information. The main table shows where each one falls short and what can be improved. Below, we highlight a few cases with issues that are specific or more severe. We also recognize that some bounties have very little or no curator wages. We encourage increasing curator wages to support proper reporting.

36: DeFi Infrastructure and Tooling

From our personal communication channels, we know that this bounty is providing a lot of value. But publicly, it is almost invisible. During the preparation of this report, we saw that a discussion post from the bounty curators was posted on Polkassembly about the next top-up. We suggest improving compliance with the standards before submitting the top-up proposal.

38: Games

Despite high spending, this bounty repeatedly missed several standards. Reporting was rare and informal. Its social media presence has completely disappeared. We recommend pausing the bounty operations and reassessing the scope and structure before any restart.

44: Bridge security & 62: Legal

Both bounties show no public activity. Bridge Security has been idle for 17 months. Legal has been idle for 5 months. Stagnant bounties help no one. Either restart work or rotate curators to people ready to deliver. We are glad to see that there is already a proposal for the bridge security bounty to address this issue.

64: Rust Bounty

We see the bounty is active and engages external agencies. However, we could not find any information on how work is allocated, how to submit proposals, or any related process. We also note that four of the five curators have been collectively paid $12k per month for the past three months for a few spend approvals. Beyond improving bounty operations, we ask the curators to justify these wages and explain the extent of their work for a position with this level of payment.

Justify Wages

The following two bounties appear compliant with the standards. Even so, we ask curators to justify the high wages they receive. From an outsider’s perspective, the value of the work is not easy to see.

22: Polkadot Assurance Legion

We see a very similar pattern to the Rust bounty. Two of the curators here also serve on the Rust bounty. Curators appear to receive about 3k per month each, while the bounty activity seems limited to 2 or 3 signatures per month. We acknowledge that this work may require high competency and long hours to approve spending. For this reason, we expect the curators to justify their wage amounts.

33: Marketing

We observe a large discrepancy in curator wages. The general manager can receive up to 17k per month, while some curators receive about one-fifth of that. Our qualitative assessment also shows that reporting and admin work do not match the amounts paid to management. Reports have been delayed for months, and the quality is weak. Although the bounty appears compliant on the checklist, we suggest that curators justify their wages.

No suggested actions

17: Events, 43: Meetups & 52: UX

Finally, we thank these three bounties for meeting almost all the audited criteria. Their work should be seen as an example for other bounties.

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Don’t all bounties have the same issue? The PAL bounty is expanding to analytics to get enough activity it seems even though it was not the original intention. Even the Events Bounty has this flat rate structure that pays curators a rate of ~84k, 85k, 86k USD per quarter (plus other extras) regardless of funding. Amounting to an average of 10% of expenditures.

Fortunately the KSM-DOT bounty curators didn’t receive the flat fee proposed in the document because curators’s fee would have been 100% of expenditures :laughing: lucky it’s been revamped.

Maybe a min amount expenditure cap can be put in place so that curator fees only are disbursed when the bounty is above said threshold. Or limit on the curator fee divided by the expenditure could also work and it would make sense for both cases of overspending and underspending on curator fees.

Looking forward to hear feedback on this.

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thanks for putting this report together @jeeper. super helpful given how many bounties there are to keep track of and how little time most of us have in a day :zany_face:

i realize it avoids assessing execution quality on the work itself, but i can’t help but wonder… does anyone know if or when the marketing bounty plans to share performance reports for the projects they fund?

for example, the ~$345,000 nova blast sponsorship (tranche 1 of 3 planned) - how is it actually performing? it seems like something the community should be able to see before a tranche 2 is funded, especially with ref #1701 set to pass shortly, which aims to give bounties even more control while reducing reliance on opengov.

and with a >$16k/month administrative role in the marketing bounty, having these kinds of performance reports publicly shared in a timely way (with tangible metrics that matter, not just fluff) feels like a reasonable expectation.

not trying to be confrontational here, just genuinely want to make sure we’re setting up good network practices that help everyone make informed decisions and get the most out of treasury/bounty spend.

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As a UX Bounty curator we only earn up to $2k/month for curator work and we must report hourly to get compensated. No flat payments. Nothing is guaranteed. You must actually show up and do work to get paid. This should probably be standardized (e.g. earning/hourly cap + recording hours)

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What clarity are you expecting from the IBP? Payments are according to the terms laid out in the ref. The only possible clarity can be for the hourly spendings on dev and admin stuff which are all collected and reported on github every month.

The results are actually kind of hilarious and totally inaccurate for the IBP. Double check your AI or use GPT 5.

“live” results are at IBP Dashboard as much as pre-defined payment amounts and service levels can be “live”.

Edit:

To explain myself better – I’ll clarify with a few points.

  1. If your information is incorrect for the bounty that I am part of – How likely would I be to trust the other information?
  2. The first point is a major red flag because we’re not supposed to trust anyone. We have to move past the instinctive gate keeping and instead focus energy on developing systems that make #1 obsolete.
  3. Instead of concerning yourself on what is currently happening; Concern yourself with giving the necessary information for the reader themselves to make as quick a decision as possible. Maximize quality, Minimize time spent analyzing.
  4. Focus on determining what tools can be developed or what information needs to be put on chain that we don’t have to rely on a third party judgement to see the health or quality of operations of a given bounty.
  5. There is a non-zero probability that when #1 occurs that the bounty participant would view it as an attack, further dividing community and increasing otherism.
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Only monthly report I could find is the bounty payments for the services (ChildBounties/Polkadot Bounty 50 at main · ibp-network/ChildBounties · GitHub). There is nothing about bounty ops, how much curators are compensated for curator work etc. There is no single sentence on the “monthly overview” documents you’ve been sharing for the past 2 months too (ChildBounties/Polkadot Bounty 50/2025_08-Monthly_Overview.pdf at 3dec91e352a848d4ea1bdc3a112ab9b230bcb2ad · ibp-network/ChildBounties · GitHub).

The other flag your bounty received is because one of the bounty members doesnt have on-chain id. Which is a very small issue imo.

Everything else is a pass for IBP. I genuinely dont understand your hostility, if you think the information is incorrect (in this case its not, as anyone can see the reports mentioned above) I would happily fix the table and publish an apology.

Of course you should not trust anything I say and verify if you care enough.

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Most of them do, but surprisingly some bounties have very low curator payments which I think is the cause of the lack of reporting and should be increased.

Interesting, but this might also push people to spend for the sake of spending.

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I would love to see you lead by example by just quoting and linking the missing piece of information you refer to

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On a second look, I actually saw that your monthly reports (which are actually just invoices and lacks any qualitative information except for the past two months), indeed has a section that define admin work, so it was a mistake of mine to flag it as partial rather than yes on the reporting section.

One of your curators still missing on-chain id, which is a small issue in my opinion, but still is a partial fullfillment of the complaince standard.

I apologize for the oversight and changing the related field.

I still do not understand the hostility, we stated in the document that there might be errors and we would fix them if you point that out.

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The ‘reports’ can be found here:

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You can simply click the bounty page on Subsquare:
:link: https://polkadot.subsquare.io/treasury/bounties/50

There, in the first comment from 1 year ago, you’ll find the following message:

“All IBP and Bounty reporting is now available at the following GitHub repository IBP Child Bounties.
This includes all the details and documentation of the IBP program and associated bounties.”
:link: https://github.com/ibp-network/ChildBounties/tree/main

From there, you’re welcomed with a landing page containing all relevant links, including direct access to the online monitor and billing system:
:link: https://ibdash.dotters.network/data

I’m honestly surprised that after claiming to spend 40 minutes on this bounty, you weren’t able to navigate through these links. Even so, a simple DM to any of the curators would have helped you get the answers quickly.

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I do not understand why you think we havent find the documents you mentioned.

As a non technical person, I personally do not think its feasable to dig github to find out what a $1650 engineering bill is spent for in 3 different documents. I still cant find why you received $3400 for curator work in august for example since the bill only says ‘curator’. Surely you guys might disagree with that, find the provided information enough, or keep on with the gaslighting game and blame on AI etc.

This is obviously a difference of opinion on what we think a proper report should look like.

I’ve already changed the monthly reporting section on the main table to ‘Yes’. Even tho I still think its not enough personally, your bounty seem to fulfill that specific criteria.

All the information is open for everyone to see, so people can check out the reports and form their own opinion.

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You stated yourself that you didn’t even look the first time, and now, on a second look, you’ve actually found that our monthly reports are there.

The entire issue here comes down to communication, not missing information. It would have been better if you had double-checked or clarified things before posting your report, rather than making assumptions.

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I said:

not that ‘reports’ doesnt exist.

It would be very nice if you can also link the ‘reports’ which covers what you are actually doing for $3400 monthly curator work too since we are on the topic btw.

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All hourly admin work requests are listed here:
:link: https://github.com/ibp-network/ChildBounties/tree/main/payouts
where rates, curator duties, and responsibilities are clearly described in the bounty proposal document and were approved as such.

Implying your personal stance as fact is simply wrong. I disagree with your finger-pointing approach, especially when no effort was made to check the available information beforehand. My DMs, those of other curators, and the IBP channel are always open if you’d like to continue the discussion constructively.

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Thanks for linking yet another github page that still does not answer the question about $3400 monthly curator work.

I think the discussion here is enough for people to form their own opinions. If you want personal consultation you can book a call from Book a Call | OpenGov.Watch.

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As mentioned before, all curator duties, responsibilities, and rates are clearly described in the bounty proposal and were approved as such.

The low-effort, finger-pointing approach and the accuracy of your report are best left for readers to judge.

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There are break downs of hours by day for any billable hours here: ChildBounties/payouts/202508_StakePlus.md at 3dec91e352a848d4ea1bdc3a112ab9b230bcb2ad ¡ ibp-network/ChildBounties ¡ GitHub

I wouldn’t call it a report or would definitely put report in quotes as you’ve done since they are just breakdowns in invoice style.

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UPDATED TABLE (v.2)

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We received additional information from the curators of the Anti Scam Bounty, Public RPCs, and System Parachains Collator bounty. This information is also provided in the appendants sections of the related bounty pages on Subsquare. The following changes have been made:

  • Anti-scam Bounty:
    • Reporting is changed from partial → yes.
    • The bounty is now green flagged as compliant.
  • System parachains collator:
    • Homepage is changed from no → partial, as the Subsquare bounty page was updated with the necessary information.
    • Public comms channel is changed from no → partial, the curators stated the Element channel will be opened to the public soon.
    • The bounty is now green flagged as compliant.
  • Public RPC’s:
    • Homepage is changed from no → partial, as the Subsquare bounty page was updated with the necessary information.
    • Submission guidelines is changed from partial → yes, the curators linked to the related forum post.
    • Public comms channel is changed from no → yes, the curators linked to the related telegram channel.
    • The bounty is now green flagged as compliant.
  • IBP
    • Based on the discussion above, the report section for IBP also changed from partial → yes.
    • The bounty is now green flagged as compliant.
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Hey @jeeper thanks for the post!

I do participate as a curator on the bounty #19 from R0GUE’ side.
The bounty#19 was stale for some time which caused the closing proposal. However we did reignite it last December with ref#1331! So its current status is most certainly active :slight_smile:

Everyone is welcome to review the ink!ubator github org: ink!ubator ¡ GitHub
The most interesting bits would be

Regarding public communications we mainly use:

On reporting, we have shared the following public updates with the community since we started working:

3 Likes