# Coinstudio paid $3400 per month as curator. Excuse me?

**URL:** <https://forum.polkadot.network/t/coinstudio-paid-3400-per-month-as-curator-excuse-me/16442>\
**Category:** Ecosystem\
**Tags:** treasury\
**Created:** [December 22, 2025, 11:59am UTC](https://forum.polkadot.network/t/coinstudio-paid-3400-per-month-as-curator-excuse-me/16442 "2025-12-22T11:59:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 26

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**Author:** ![labormedia](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/forum.polkadot.network/labormedia/32/2638_2.png) [@labormedia](https://forum.polkadot.network/u/labormedia)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2026, 5:20pm UTC](https://forum.polkadot.network/t/coinstudio-paid-3400-per-month-as-curator-excuse-me/16442/26 "2026-02-04T17:20:09Z")

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This follow-up (re: IBP curator pay / auditability and the broader validator-set discussion) is exactly the kind of “institutional surface” that tends to get waved away as _social drama_ — until it hardens into a durable chokepoint.

In “message number 25” of this thread, the claim being argued is basically: (a) certain validator operators can exploit _timing + UI observability gaps_ (e.g., commission flips / identity splitting), and (b) at the same time, large budget rails (bounties / curator roles / reporting) can become _hard to audit in practice_, creating trust erosion and a concentration vector. [oai\_citation:0‡Polkadot Forum](https://forum.polkadot.network/t/coinstudio-paid-3400-per-month-as-curator-excuse-me/16442/25)

This is why I keep pushing collaboration around **RFC-0162** :

- RFC-0162’s framing is: treat _institutional capture / chokepoint formation_ as a **security failure mode** , and force every future change to include a **Market Structure Impact** analysis (i.e., make these attack surfaces explicit, reviewable, and bounded). [oai\_citation:1‡Polkadot Forum](https://forum.polkadot.network/t/rfc-0162-pr-162-ecosystem-anti-trust-market-structure-omnibus-review-thread/16709)
- It also explicitly **does not prescribe treasury procurement policy** , so the goal isn’t “use RFC-0162 to litigate one bounty.” The goal is to stop building systems where auditability and contestability are optional. [oai\_citation:2‡Polkadot Forum](https://forum.polkadot.network/t/rfc-0162-pr-162-ecosystem-anti-trust-market-structure-omnibus-review-thread/16709)

Concrete suggestion for anyone willing to engage productively:  
Let’s propose an RFC-0162 follow-up amendment that adds **observability/auditability invariants** for protocol-adjacent “utility rails” (dashboards, reports, registries) that the ecosystem treats as canonical in practice—so the default is verifiable history, not “trust me” narratives.

If you’re sympathetic to that direction: please jump into the RFC-0162 review thread and propose one concrete invariant / metric / monitoring requirement we can actually implement.

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