Discussion Context: Bounties in Polkadot
Bounties were introduced as a mechanism to structure and manage the Polkadot Treasury, enabling subject matter experts (curators) to oversee the allocation of funds.
This approach allows projects aligned with the specific scope of each bounty to request funding directly from curators, bypassing the lengthier OpenGov proposal and voting process typically required for Treasury funding.
At the current state of the Polkadot ecosystem however, there is no main point of reference for applicants to easily discover and engage with available bounties. The landscape is fragmented, with various tools addressing isolated needs, and the bounties themselves differing in structure, processes, and points of contact.
Informed by community feedback to Galaniprojects’ development of Bounty Manager and, in particular, a conversation with Joe Petrowski and the Games Bounty, Galaniprojects is proposing a unified vision: the creation of a Bounty Hub—a single, comprehensive interface for the entire bounty process.
Building upon the existing Bounty Manager, Bounty Hub aims to serve as the definitive entry point for curators, beneficiaries, and prospective applicants. It will streamline access to bounty information, clarify pathways for funding, and facilitate a more cohesive experience for all participants in the Polkadot bounty ecosystem.
What follows is an outline of our vision and the components needed to bring Bounty Hub to life and we welcome feedback, suggestions, and ideas from the community to shape this together.
Bounties Tooling Status Quo
Development of Bounty Manager began in July 2024, supported by Treasury funding, with the goal of creating a user-friendly platform that empowers curators and lowers the technical barriers for engaging with the bounty system.
At its current stage, Bounty Manager enables curators to perform all on-chain bounty actions through an intuitive interface. It provides pre-configured templates and user-friendly tools that abstract away the complexity of manually crafting extrinsics via developer-focused utilities.
For applicants and users, the Bounty Manager offers an overview of bounties on Polkadot, including information on past payouts, curator addresses, bounty balances, and the ability to claim open payouts or initiate the setup process for new bounties.
Subsquare and Polkassembly provide a way for users to browse through bounties and see their original proposals, alongside limited on-chain bounty capabilities. The papi bounties app and Polkadot js. are more ways for curators to execute on-chain actions.
We’ve identified a significant gap in user experience: potential applicants often need to navigate multiple platforms, search through Telegram groups, X posts, and Google Forms, just to determine which bounty might be suitable and how to reach the relevant curators.
Bounty Manager is uniquely positioned to bridge this gap. By expanding its current capabilities into a complete bounties platform, we aim to offer a seamless experience for curators, applicants, and the wider community.
Furthermore, with ongoing discussions around making Requests for Proposals (RFPs) a primary funding mechanism, Bounty Manager can natively integrate and support this shift, enhancing discoverability and streamlining participation.
Bounty Hub Vision and Features
As bounties continue to evolve with the goal of becoming the primary funding mechanism of the Polkadot Treasury, it is increasingly important to provide a seamless experience for teams seeking support for their ideas.
This includes the ability to easily explore available funding opportunities, understand eligibility and scope, and navigate the application process.
Equally vital will be the onboarding of new subject matter experts into curator roles. To scale the bounty system effectively, we must offer accessible, no-code, and jargon-free tools that enable curators to manage responsibilities without technical overhead.
Our development focus is structured around two primary user groups:
-General Users & Applicants
These users will benefit from a streamlined interface that allows them to browse detailed information on active and past bounties, access links to the official bounty websites, documentation, and application forms, identify communication channels to engage with curators and view financial and operational analytics to assess bounty performance.
-Curators
Curators will be equipped with tools to perform all bounty-related operations directly within the interface, and access dashboards and analytics for oversight and transparency.
We also introduce the idea of providing tooling to make RFPs utilisation easy.
General Users & Applicants
Our guiding principle is to make all bounty-related information accessible and understandable within a single interface. Every user, regardless of technical background, should be able to clearly see where opportunities lie and how to act on them.
Bounty Hub
The Bounty Hub will provide users with the ability to explore all existing and past bounties in a clear and organized manner. Users will be able to browse, sort, and filter bounties according to their interests, and view information about the curators involved in each initiative. The hub will offer insights into the financial status of each bounty, including spending reports, current balances, and historical payouts.
In addition, we want the user to see the application requirements and curation process to apply to a bounty directly in the UI, along with contact forms, websites, or any other application channels used by curators.
Simplified Terminology
We aim to abstract all of the blockchain related terminology and language into simple, standard financial language, to make the concepts familiar and understandable to any newcoming user (e.g. the user sees child bounties named simply payouts/payments, bounties named budgets etc.).
Curators
With curators playing the central role in the bounties system, we want to continue ensuring they are provided with streamlined and intuitive workflow enablers.
Multisig Management
Bounty Manager already simplifies on-chain bounty actions, offering curators an easy-to-use interface with two-click workflows for initiating transactions.
However, the current process still relies on external multisig management tools for transaction confirmation. This means that curators must leave the platform to approve transactions, and co-signers are similarly required to use third-party tools with no interaction with Bounty Manager itself.
While this fragmented approach may suffice for those already familiar with the Polkadot ecosystem, it presents a significant challenge for newcomers, or non technical users.
To address this, we plan to integrate multisig management functionality directly into Bounty Manager.
We envision a workflow where every stage—from transaction creation to final approval—takes place entirely within Bounty Manager. This will remove the need to switch tools and will streamline the curator experience into a single, accessible system.
Here is an example of how we envision the workflow.
Documentation and Application Paper Trail
Bounty activity takes place for the most part off-chain, with each bounty managing its process and documentation in its own way.
We propose using system remarks on-chain to store small but essential metadata, such as application links and curator contact information. This allows for a decentralized method of sourcing key details and ensuring they are accessible to users through the interface.
In addition, we propose to integrate the AssetDIDComm solution currently in development. This will provide each bounty with a dedicated and auditable digital space where all documentation—applications, curator reviews, decisions, and updates—can be securely stored. It not only ensures transparency but also enhances accountability and trust within the ecosystem.
Requests For Proposals as Child Bounties
RFPs have already begun being demonstrated on Kusama, and we have applied as implementers for the RFP launcher app.
As that is likely the direction the Polkadot treasury will follow in the future, with curators issuing RFPs to create child bounties, similar to how a national government issues and confirms tenders, we think Bounty Manager is the perfect place to integrate this functionality.
Our intention is to offer curators a set of built-in tools for creating RFPs, including templates that simplify their setup and encourage consistency. By tagging RFP child bounty titles in a standard way in the background, we can enable a dedicated section within the platform focused solely on open RFPs.
This will allow development teams to easily browse proposals that reflect real, high-priority needs across the ecosystem and apply directly through a structured process. \
We see this RFP-based model as a natural evolution for the Treasury. It can help minimize waste by reducing funding for loosely defined or lower-impact proposals, and it can simultaneously increase accountability by tying funding to clear deliverables and expectations set by curators. This is why we believe that the RFP process should also be available for existing bounties, through the creation of child bounties.
Analytics
Another important area of focus is visibility into bounty operations. To this end, we plan to introduce an analytics suite within Bounty Manager that will serve both curators and the wider community. Curators will be able to generate detailed financial reports, supporting their reporting obligations and enabling more informed decision-making.
The analytics features will include insights such as monthly Treasury spending, average expenditures over time, distribution of funds across beneficiaries and curators, frequency and volume of bounty top-ups, and other relevant financial metrics. These dashboards will also provide community members with a clear view of how public funds are being used, fostering greater transparency and engagement.
We actively welcome suggestions from both curators and the community regarding the types of insights and metrics they would find most useful for monitoring bounty performance and Treasury spending.
Technical Requirements
To deliver the proposed functionality, we will require to build a backend with an indexer that tracks bounties, child bounties, multisig transactions, and system remarks.
This foundation will enable seamless multisig abstraction, allowing curators to view, confirm, or reject pending transactions directly in the interface, while also displaying the confirmation status of other signatories.
It will also allow us to improve the login experience by identifying and preselecting relevant accounts in the wallet interface.
By indexing remarks, we can use the blockchain to store lightweight metadata—such as curator websites or contact information—and display it contextually in the UI.
To support financial analytics, this same infrastructure will allow us to generate insights, with the option to incorporate additional data via the existing Opensquare indexing service if needed.
For more complex documentation and secure, decentralized record-keeping, we propose integrating AssetDIDComm, to offer curators a verifiable space to manage application materials and communication history.
Request for Feedback
We welcome input, feedback, and suggestions from the community, curators, and teams who interact with the bounty system on usefullness of the proposed system.
If you see ways we can improve the proposed features, refine the workflows, or better serve the needs of applicants and curators alike, we’d love to hear from you.
This vision is shaped by open collaboration, and insights will be essential in making it successful.