Is the network currently paying for persuasion toward a specific direction? What is the policy and the rationale, other than creating fear and doubt about the upcoming native stablecoin of the ecosystem?
My understanding is that the core mandate is to âincentivize individuals to discover, develop, and distribute network-related contentâ. Why is it spending so little on content while admin payments dominate the budget? I can see that management payouts are in line with what has been proposed, while the content payouts are much lower and there is still about 180,000 USD sitting in its treasury.
Why did management receive the full amount while appearently there is little content to manage? Are there any plans to return the unused funds now that the proposed 52 weeks are over?
I was one of the first contributors who produced content for WagMedia. It hurts to see where this has gone.
The issue about the allocation to Curators/managment was raised multiple times during the last proposals.
Unfortunately is commonly shared & approved by the community so far.
Weâll see if this can be justified again in the next ref.
Multiple spends (see current ref about it), should probably become a standard for this kind of spendings so that the community can ract and cancel/delay milestones in proper time if necessary.
Some DVs are obviously concerned about it.
Letâs wait for the official report from Wag to draw conclusions.
The Grifter Hunters Have Become the Grifters themselves, understandable so, this happens when you employ the UN-employables.
jeeperâs concerns about WagMedia expose something we need to say plainly: the people who positioned themselves as guardians against ecosystem exploitation have become the primary beneficiaries of a misaligned system.
Look at the numbers:
Management: $146,000 (paid in full)
Content creation (the actual mandate): $44,000
Unused funds sitting in treasury: $180,000
This is a 3:1 ratio of management to actual work, on a bounty whose entire purpose is content creation. The management got paid in full while the work got done at a fraction of the proposed level. Thatâs not oversight or inefficiency, thatâs capture.
The political propaganda post jeeper flagged isnât a content problem, itâs a symptom. When a bounty prioritizes paying itself over delivering its mandate, editorial standards collapse because thereâs no real accountability to mission or output quality.
jeeper asks the right questions: Why was management paid in full when content delivery was minimal? Where are the unused funds going now that 52 weeks are complete? These deserve immediate, public answers.
But this isnât just about WagMedia. My analysis shows only 55% of active bounties meet basic compliance standards. 65% lack monthly reports. 60% have no live tracking. Weâve built a system where getting paid is easier than delivering results, and where those who should be enforcing standards are the ones benefiting from their absence.
The curators who approved this allocation and allowed full management payments while content delivery lagged need to be named publicly. Their judgment calls need to be visible and their professional reputations should reflect these decisions. Not all curators are aligned within bounties, and not all curators are the same⊠some have tried to enforce standards while others have looked the other way. But the current system makes it impossible to distinguish between them or hold anyone specifically accountable.
We need to pay special attention to the Marketing bounty, which has been totally opaque about everything they do. Hereâs what should have happened: WagMedia should have been structured as a child bounty under the Marketing bounty. That way thereâs clear mission alignment between what gets funded and the expected outcomes of those efforts. Instead, we have fragmented oversight with no one clearly responsible for ensuring marketing initiatives actually advance the ecosystemâs communication goals.
The deeper problem is the arms length approach has been abandoned. Weâre watching people cannibalize the system theyâre supposed to be stewarding. When curators fund themselves, when management extracts more than the work delivers, when oversight becomes a formality rather than a function, the whole mechanism breaks down.
We need to restart this with a new system in place. One where curators canât fund their own operations, where bounty structure enforces mission alignment through child bounties, where decisions are onchain and attributable, and where reputation has actual consequences. The current system has shown us what doesnât work. Time to build what does.
WagMedia should return the unused funds immediately. Management should justify why they received full compensation while delivering a fraction of the content mandate. And the Marketing bounty curators need to explain why theyâve been operating with complete opacity while initiatives like this fail to deliver on their mandates.
Iâm working on a reform proposal that makes this kind of situation impossible through structural accountability. We need systems that prevent capture and self-dealing, not just better intentions from the same people.
Whatâs truly baffling is that despite Polkadotâs massive spending on marketing, the results have been remarkably poor. As far back as two years ago, media outlets exposed Polkadotâs pattern of high investment with low returns, and they were widely ridiculed for it.
Two years later, this behavior still hasnât been effectively addressed. As an early holder of DOT, Iâve watched the price plummet from $50 to the current $3âa staggering 90%+ drop.
Itâs deeply disheartening to see the team continue to ignore the token price issue and persist in doing things their own way.
I agree with you. The core mandate was to incentivize content by help and support the creators. At the contrary, this picture is clearly showing misaligned priorities with the community and misuse of funds.
I would like to highlight that lack of accountability and transparency goes even deeper.
The same days of this post, directors decided to grant a $5,000 USD monthly payment to The Dots for an âunclear partnershipâ. This agreement, not in the original proposal, shows unacceptable favoritism.
Why should The Dots receive such huge monthly payment in advance while the other content creators have to follow the wagâs rules?
$5,000 represents more than 10% of the previous distributed rewards for the content creators during the 12 months, why does The Dots deserve this much?
This is even more concerning since it happened right after the Polkadot community rejected funding TheDots via OpenGov (Ref. #1750) and after the Marketing Bounty curators decided to stop funding them too.
This looks like directors actively subverting curators and community consensus and break their own rules. Clear signs of misalignment with the whole community and bounty curators and lack of transparency.
Few months before, in March, LV was âhiredâ by the directors. The excuse was to evaluate the video content which suggests they lack the basic competence to fulfill their role, which was not mentioned in any initial proposal. However, directors made sure to be fully compensated for their services. No information about the economical âdealâ between Wagmedia and LV highlights once again lack of transparency.
In the end, it looks like LV is getting âpaidâ as content creators but somehow much more than all other creators.
+700 DOTs for 11 contents in few months, making him one of the most rewarded creator ever, while other creators are struggling to get rewarded a couple of DOTs as shown in the audit page.
Why is that?
If itâs true that LV is now getting weekly/monthly pay for contentâanother exception to the standard processâit confirms that the directors are rewarding some special âfriendsâ rather than empowering and incentivizing the wider community of builders and writers.
As The Dots above, both âcompensationsâ are included in the rewards for content creators while they should be included under Management since âhiddenâ exceptions. These two would increase even more the disparity between funds for rewards and management/administration.
All these examples dimostrate how this initiative got rotten day by day. Wagmedia needs to return the unused funds to the treasury as soon as possible.
The community deserves competences, transparency, and fairness. It is evident, directors could NOT provide any of that and they did take advantage of the community. For this reason, all directors should resign in order to save Wagmedia. At the contrary, it is sad but this initiative should be closed down and directors flagged so they wonât receive any funds in the future.
Lately, Iâve been mentioned a lot in this forum in reports from other people or in problems with entities I have absolutely nothing to do with other than a purely altruistic âcollaborationâ ON MY PART :).
Iâve never been hired as a âdirectorâ in the last year, nor since 2023. If they gave me that role on the Discord server, itâs probably to differentiate my activity after investing my time helping creators try to improve the production and distribution of their content. WITHOUT EXPECTING ANYTHING IN RETURN. Basically, the same as Iâve always done with all the entities that have asked for my help in this ecosystem.
You can see everything Iâve been compensated for transparently on-chain or on the Discord server.
And omg, please, donât dear to compare the work I do or my content with any other sporadic or even regular threadoor creator. If you think Iâm well compensated for my time, youâre very wrong, especially compared to how time is compensated for any mid administrative role funded in this ecosystem :).
You mention â11 pieces of contentâ. If you open one of those links, youâll see that most weeks I received rewards include several individual long videos :). I am literally one of the individual creators who have contributed the most in every way to this ecosystem, not only in volume of content, so stfu xd, have some respect.
And well, I could explain everything you have doubts, but I am not the boss of this lol; if anyone has any question about me, you can ask directly or better read some of my posts on this forum to learn a bit about how to manage content initiatives or deal with regular creators.
Cheers, and omfg, donât even dear to mention me again don @Mark65 unless itâs to thank me or kiss my ass, no with the anon account. Peace, take care kids.
Based on the latest administrative and production results, Wagmedia didnât seem to justify the spending on actual projects and products and itâs only been able to spend rationally a fraction of it. Now itâs likely we start seeing pointless increased expenditure now that funds are high and results low. The next refill is coming and thankfully people are starting to notice about this lack of results or even deliveries.
The main problem with that approach is that marketing by itself cannot move the macro forces, a fact that was wilfully or unwilfully ignored by the marketing proponents and supporters quoting Solana. Now it becomes evident that marketing is not the main and should not be the main effort in a blockchain seeking for adoption and success. Itâs great that we are seeing that the results are null despite the large investment and the unfortunate churn of investors and teams. A fact that should be self-evident now considering that the marketing spending is close to 30% just for marketing alone.
Fortunately in the case of Wagmedia, it is not a bounty structure which makes it easy to discontinue based on lack of results and repeated support attempts.
Thank you for taking the time to write your strong defense, though it seems your passion may have led you to misinterpret the nature of the original criticism.
To be clear: No one questioned the quality or volume of your content. The original post used your role in Wagmedia and your received compensations as a prime exampleâalongside the âThe Dotsâ paymentâto illustrate the directorsâ severe misalignment, lack of transparency, and clear favoritism. Learning the right English context might clear that up.
Honestly, your highly defensive and aggressive response suggests a guilty conscience more than a demand for respect. Instead of addressing the facts, you chose to attack the critic, which only makes the âtransparencyâ you claim to uphold smell even worse.
Letâs look at what you conveniently ignored:
You were supposedly âasked to helpâ to evaluate video content because, presumably, the directors lacked the competence to do so themselves.
You become âDirectorâ on Wag Discord server (as per your comment, I did not even mentioned that) but still you were not part of the team.
Suddenly, WITHOUT EXPECTING ANYTHING IN RETURN and after not producing anything for months (I wonder why?), you were embedded in the team and given a âDirectorâ title on Discord, and you restarted producing weekly the exact type of videos. Without a âdealâ agreed upon in advance,no other creator would even consider doing that, given the poor rewards previously distributed by the Wagmedia directors. In fact, no one ever did it."
These are the âtrackedâ rewards in the Discord. As mentioned before, this makes you one of the most rewarded creators ever within a couple of months.
I repeat, this is not about questioning your work, but I hope this clarifies how these behaviors raise serious questions about the transparency, fairness, and skills of the current directors continuing this initiative. Maybe next time try to demand respect through a less aggressive and impolite language, CabrĂłn!
Your situation and the âThe Dotsâ deal demonstrate that Wagmedia has fully failed in its core mandate to incentivize content creators broadly. Instead of fostering a wider ecosystem, Wagmedia has devolved into a mechanism where a few directors prioritize retaining funds for their own employment and rewarding always the same âspecial friendsâ who, very well funded for years, have successfully deliver poor results for the ecosystemâyet they expected to believe that continuing this practice will yield a different outcome.
This is done instead of genuinely supporting the wider community.
The community should not asking for respect for the few who benefit; they should demanding accountability, fairness, and the immediate return of unused funds from an initiative that seems intent on eliminating creators rather than cultivating them.
And just when you thought things couldnât get more ridiculous, following their âsuccessesâ on November 8th Wagmedia partnered with Sacred Protocol to discover new creators. The audacity of directors who have failed to manage their own initiative now assuming the role of âcuratorsâ is laughable. They are even so brave to ask for âvolunteersâ in their Discord to help them decide who deserves a tip!
The official announcementââWagmedia partners with Sacred Protocol to discover and empower new creators!ââis just pathetic.
I wasnât exactly a gentleman the last time fate brought us together on this topic, it wasnât one of my best responses, tbh^^, but you really got on my nerves, @Mark65, so I took the liberty of being a bit casual :), too many gratuitous mentions and accusations without a single kind word, and from an anonymous account
So, excuse me, Mark, if that bothered me and the anonymity seemed a bit cowardly. And look, I apologized for my soft, inappropriate language, âwith my cheap English,â as you say, even though you responded again like a complete imbecile, but itâs okay.
I havenât played politics here for a while and I didnât plan to. I think itâs the most awful thing, and the more automated it is and the less attention it requires, the better. Itâs a huge, inefficient headache, turning into a game of absurd âpvpâ and discarding instead of a mechanism for collaboration and iteration. A black hole with no way out, in other words.
In any case, youâre all in luck! letâs get to the point.
First, unfortunately for everyone, whether WagMedia is managed well or poorly is not my problem.
Iâm not the one making decisions in any marketing, content, education or any other kind of bounty right now, nor did I ever intend to, even though being a curator might seems to be a great business model nowadays o_O.
In any case, whether I agree or disagree with something, or even get indignant like with your comments, I canât do anything about, and I have no intention of publicly criticizing the work of others, and even less so from an anon account.
Although I may openly think there are better ways to redirect some initiatives, elements and even global efforts. As I said, itâs not my problem. Itâs better that intellectuals in the field, like you, Mark, enlighten us with their insights, and that those who are the more qualified, with the more experience, and the ones who have literally produced more and contributed more value to the ecosystem in their field by far (like me), are ignored or disrespected while they give away the most part of their time for free
Anyway, letâs move on from this post-dinner chat and address your questions and mentions, Mr. Mark, in honor of your anonymous, selfless contributions.
1)Here I simply started doing some live streams on X, working openly, trying things and doing small workshops on content, compiling resources, sharing guides, etc.
On an open Discord server, you can surprisingly communicate, start conversations with people, and share your experience, etc. So thatâs what I did in my free time, as always, unaware that it was inappropriate, excuse me again, Mark65.
And well, since Iâm very possibly the most experienced video content creator this industry has ever known, the devil direction at WagMedia had the very wise decision to tell me: âHey, why donât you help review some video content and give advice to the participants on your free time?â
And thatâs what I did in my free time, receiving 1 DOT tips for most of the reviews a except some. You hear me well, a whole unit! o_O
Imagine the crime of receiving a 3$ reward for dedicating 20 minutes to a short review and quick advice.
In any case, here the only thing I see is the great deal they made with me for my âfree timeâ. And Iâm not complaining, so if Iâm not complaining, nobody should have a problem with this.
2)You shouldnât attach any importance to having the Discord role. It didnât make any difference at all, tbh. I never participated in any private conversations about WAG administration or anything like that.
Iâve simply been sharing resources and guides, doing live streams when I felt like it and sharing them there, and giving those little reviews and advice to the participants producing video content.
3)Where did you get the idea that I havenât produced anything for months? Maybe itâs the complete opposite , and I didnât know I only produce videos :/.
And thanks for asking about my content Mark! <3. youâre partially wrong because theyâre not the same videos XD, I completely changed the distribution and approach (and now full english on X baby ). And everythingâs going really well, tbh! Iâve practically doubled my verified followers on X in the last few weeks now that Iâve redirected my content and efforts towards playing CT, which this industry loves so much^^.
If you want to learn a bit about these topics, or even make comparisons with other creators in other ecosystems, niches or something like that, I shared several resources on the Wag discord server that might be helpful.
Exactly. Look how crazy and obsessed I am with this ecosystem, that in the first few weeks producing all those top SS+ tier videos and even distributing them decently on various platforms, I only received like 25-50 DOT.
Phew. And instead of working on my projects, now I have to be here explaining to Mark65 about something I donât manage and donât even have to fully agree with.
Thanks so much for the recognition on this Mark . And I should be getting so much more, right!? Those mfs from The Dots got like 5k, omg. they are cool guys, but my cachet should be worth 3 times more at least .
And well, guys, Iâm always willing to help you reach enlightenment on these topics since theyâre something Iâm passionate about, but you have to start putting in a little effort to be worthy of my attention, because patience has its limits. Youâre just lucky I have Stockholm syndrome with all of you, tbh.
Before we say goodbye in this new meeting, If you âresearchersâ want to know more about how these kinds of initiatives should be managed, Iâve written a lot about it⊠about how to structure them, categorize the creators, and curate the value of the work and its impact, but nobody seems to care about anything other than appearances, deadlines and inefficient accounting instead of iterate and look for more productive models .
Honestly, the issue isnât just about whether the rewards are high or low, but also the model itself.
No senior creator likes having someone come in to critique and evaluate their content, simply because of ego.
Thatâs where a categorization of creator profiles needs to be implemented, based on their experience, impact, content type, and frequency. This is just one example to provide context.
In short, there are many topics to discuss, including for all media initiatives.
In a very ideal situation, an organization like WagMedia in its mature stage providing a service to a decentralized ecosystem of independent entities and agents should act more like an agency: a hub funding, coordinating, and supporting all resources, individual creators, and media teams. The main concern shouldnât be âwhether the content is politically correct,â but rather the growth and coordination of the creators and media teams, who are the only truly productive elements.
So, today, guys, Iâm giving you some reading homework!
Iâve taken a moment to update a short document I had on this topic (from 2023!) and publish it as a brief introductory article on how to initially structure and approach these initiatives.
These donât have to be just for âcontent creatorsâ. I mean, this type of categorization and reward model would be perfectly suitable for curating, for example, ambassador programs (sorry if bringing up old memories). Itâs simply better to call them open work cooperatives, which is how most initiatives and structures derived from opengov should function imo. This to allow more flexible iteration and competitiveness that encourages better results, not an inefficient political game and discussions about whichever one has the best appearances.
Anyway, letâs set aside your individual case in this discussion, as it served only to illustrate how Wagmedia and its directors have failed in their core mandate.
However, it was interesting to note that you ultimately highlighted the issue as the[Wagmedia] model itself:
âthe issue isnât just about whether the rewards are high or low, but also the model itself.â
This statement merely confirms what many here have been observing and proposing.
You even spent the last few years developing a possible alternative to Wagmedia, so one must wonder why you are currently assisting them if you believe their model is fundamentally flawed. Makes really no sense, unless it is all about funds.
In the endâŠ
While Wagmedia was a cool initiative initially, it has deteriorated day by day.
Critically, it appears the last three treasury refills went straight into the pockets of the Directors and other same few folks.
Fewer and fewer creators are engaging with and sharing their content in the Wagmedia Discord channel, largely due to unjustified critiques, lack of transparency and fairness, and minimal support from the Wagmedia Directors.
None of the directors actively recruit new creators to Polkadot (just waiting for someone to appear anyway their salary is safe anyway), and none of them maintain an active or influential presence on X or other social platforms (apart from one, who left).
Their memes/posts/newsletters only gain visibility through retweets from official Polkadot accounts, where some of these Directors are also employed (what a coincidence?!). If Wagmedia truly serves as the main hub for Polkadot creators, why are the Wagmedia X account and Discord community completely dead?
, and I didnât know I only produce videos :/.
, me tenéis todos hasta los cojones xd
). And everythingâs going really well, tbh! Iâve practically doubled my verified followers on X in the last few weeks now that Iâve redirected my content and efforts towards playing CT, which this industry loves so much^^.
. And I should be getting so much more, right!? Those mfs from The Dots got like 5k, omg. they are cool guys, but my cachet should be worth 3 times more at least 
.
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