While there is currrently a proposal focused on the moderator team, the underlying issue is much broader: there is a serious concentration of roles within the ecosystem. Several individuals simultaneously hold moderator and curator positions, giving the same small group significant influence over community management and treasury-funded decisions.
These four individuals collectively receive $12,150 per month from curator and moderation roles combined while holding positions across almost all remaining active bounties.
Following the bounties restructuring, curator responsibilities have become increasingly concentrated among a limited number of individuals. This reduces opportunities for broader community participation and gives the same group significant influence over treasury allocation decisions.
Treasury governance should promote decentralization, transparency, rotation of responsibilities, and wider community involvement. This situation deserves a broader discussion on mechanisms such as curator rotation, limits on simultaneous roles, and clear conflict-of-interest guidelines to prevent excessive concentration of responsibilities and decision-making power, ensuring that treasury resources remain open, diverse, and aligned with decentralization principles.
is $13,960 monthly budget really justified?
Discord, Telegram and Element has very less participation and engagement is very very low compared to before. 8 member team seems inflated and IMO halving the budget around $5-6k makes more sense.
The worst part isn’t just the concentration of power in the hands of a small group of people acting as bounty curators and holding multiple ecosystem roles in what is supposed to be a decentralized system.
What’s even more concerning is that these same curators previously approved payments to inactive moderators. Under that system, an active moderator received 100% of the allocated compensation, while someone doing absolutely nothing still received 70%.
Proof here: Moderation Team Bounty Top-up
Who thought that was a sensible incentive structure? If inactivity still earns you 70% of the reward, why would anyone put in the effort to contribute? It creates exactly the wrong incentives.
And to make matters worse, W3F has just voted in favor of a new top-up, effectively endorsing the continuation of this approach.
At least ParaNodes (Will Paradox) has been removed from the moderator team after being inactive while still collecting 70% of the allocated compensation. However, he is still earning around $2,000 per month as a curator in another bounty, while also charging 50% commission on Kusama. 
Regardless of whether the same people serving as moderators also act as Bounty curators, I’d like to share my thoughts on moderation itself.
I believe these roles should rotate periodically. For example, if there are six moderators, every three or four months, three of those positions could be filled by new people, and the rotation could continue from there.
This would bring fresh perspectives, encourage new moderation approaches, and potentially help re-engage the community by introducing different ideas and styles of leadership.
