Establishing a Governance-Backed Recovery Group for Inactive or “Dead” Projects

Governance
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1

Hello fellow travelers👋

I wanted to bring up an idea that’s been on my mind — one that’s both ethical and practical for the long-term health of the Polkadot ecosystem.

:warning: The Problem

As our ecosystem continues to grow and mature, it’s inevitable that some projects will eventually become inactive or “dead.”
Teams may move on, lose funding, or pivot away from their original missions — leaving behind parachains, or dApps that still hold locked assets.

Rather than waiting for this to happen and reacting afterward, we should prepare pre-emptively by establishing a clear, fair, and transparent process to handle such situations responsibly.

This proactive approach would:

  • Prevent loss of funds that could otherwise be returned or redeployed toward active initiatives.

  • Reduce community frustration and the potential for unnecessary drama.

  • Protect Polkadot’s reputation as a transparent and self-regulating ecosystem.

  • Make it easier for governance and the Treasury to track and recover allocated resources when needed.

:light_bulb: The Proposal: A Recovery & Stewardship Group

I suggest creating a governance-backed working group or committee — tentatively called the “Recovery Group” or “Stewardship Collective” — that would be responsible for handling funds from projects that are confirmed inactive, abandoned, or unresponsive over a defined period.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Identify inactive or “dead” projects through transparent criteria (e.g., no commits, updates, or governance interaction for X months).

  • Engage in outreach to the project’s original team to verify the situation.

  • Facilitate the safe return or redistribution of locked funds — whether to the Treasury, individual contributors, or governance-defined destinations.

  • Publish transparent reports so the community can track reclaimed or reallocated assets.

  • Recommend follow-up governance actions, such as de-registering a parachain, deactivating vaults, or adjusting allocations.

:gear: Governance and Oversight

  • The group could operate under governance oversight, similar to other collectives (e.g., Fellowship, Bounties).

  • Membership could consist of trusted ecosystem participants — perhaps from the Fellowship, auditors, Treasury curators, or long-standing parachain teams.

  • Decision-making could remain on-chain and transparent, with clear records of reclaimed funds and outcomes.

:locked_with_key: Why This Matters

Creating a formal recovery process ensures:

  • Ethical fund management and protection for contributors and token holders.

  • Reduced drama and speculation when projects fail or fade out.

  • Improved trust in Polkadot’s governance model and Treasury stewardship.

  • A sustainable, self-regulating ecosystem that holds itself accountable.

This isn’t about punishment — it’s about maturity, transparency, and protecting the integrity of the network.

:brain: Implementation Thoughts

  • Define criteria for inactivity (e.g., no runtime upgrades, commits, or governance proposals for 6–12 months, …).

  • Establish a review process where the Recovery Group evaluates cases before taking action.

  • Funds could be temporarily escrowed until governance decides on redistribution.

  • Could also include a “grace period” where teams can reactivate before final decisions are made.

:speech_balloon: Personal Note

I’m personally not yet deeply familiar with the governance system — so I’m not entirely sure how to move forward if this discussion gains momentum.
If this thread were received overwhelmingly positively, I’d love to understand how to make a formal “Wish for Change” proposal or any other governance motion that could move this idea toward research and experimentation.

:ringed_planet: Goal

Polkadot should remain a trustworthy and responsible ecosystem, where community and Treasury funds are always traceable, recoverable, and ethically managed — even when individual projects fade out.

By creating a Recovery Group, we can ensure that no funds remain permanently lost in inactive projects, and that the network’s integrity remains intact.

2

another idea could be to collect the code of the inactive dapps and websites all in one place, so the community can reuse those.

Example: https://bountymanager.io/ a project which received 175k funding and then did not get finished and abandoned. However, the code here might be useful to do bounty analysis or overviews e.g.

2 Likes
3

That’s a really good addition — I completely agree.

Recovering code and development output from inactive projects could be just as valuable as reclaiming unused funds. There’s no reason for good work to disappear simply because a project went inactive.

The Recovery Group (or whatever we end up calling it) could include a “code and resource preservation” process as part of its responsibilities. For example:

  • Collecting open-source repositories from inactive or abandoned projects.

  • Hosting them in a central community-maintained archive — maybe under the Polkadot GitHub organization or an independent repo like polkadot-recovery-lab.

  • Tagging and categorizing projects (e.g. treasury-funded, parachain, dApp, tooling) so developers can easily find reusable code.

  • Potentially rewarding contributors who document or repurpose this code for new projects.

This would prevent waste, foster reuse, and give future builders a solid foundation to build from.

The example of bountymanager.io is a great case — the funds were lost, but the code might still help future bounty dashboards or analysis tools.

So yes, I think this idea could become a dual recovery effort:

  • Financial recovery (returning or redistributing funds), and

  • Code recovery (preserving useful work for future builders).

Both contribute to the same goal — keeping the Polkadot ecosystem transparent, efficient, and self-sustaining. :raising_hands:

4

Hi.

Parallel is another example.

Most funds was ‘hacked’ and possibly lost, but alot of DOT is PENDING due to hack and parachain stopped operating.

Here is an example, I deposited my DOT to Parallel, transaction is pending and I guess it will be for a long time.

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image1422×631 36.9 KB

Creating Recovery Group might be the last hope for folks like me and I think there is alot of us.

5

Couldn’t you just open a ticket with Parallel on their Discord? You could ask them to roll back the transaction via a governance vote.

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I wish I could. They gone from the Discord, not answearing any questions for a months now.

7

Wow, that sucks. That must be frustrating. You do know they’re rebranding? They’re renaming to “Nirvana.” Maybe they just don’t have time because of that, and they’ll come back around to people like you who have their assets stuck after they launch the new product. I hope so, at least.

This is exactly the reason why we NEED a recovery group.

1 Like
8

I’m not sure that this is up there in the projects that should be prioritised for funding with the current state of the treasury, but it’s for sure a plan which should be in the queue for if we ever do become sustainable again.

I invested heavily in DOT, and took part in many crowdloans.

I guess I don’t regret putting money into DOT because there was no indication at the time that so many poor decisions, heaped on other poor decisions, would crash the price.
I can’t really regret ‘investing’ in crowdloans - since they were just loans.

But what has really given me fear of putting any new money into the DOT ecosystem is the way that it looks like a graveyard of promising projects. I want to be able to invest in something and come back years later and it still be there. If I have lost money on the price, fair enough.
But if the project just dies or disappears , or if some technical breaking change is introduced (which is something that Polkadot teams - Gav/ Parity especially - seem to think is exciting and fun) which prevents me getting at my tokens, that feels like some kind of trauma :confused:

So, yes, knowing that there is a team and a stable process for this kind of situation - dealing with it like adults rather than teenagers that follow ‘move fast and break stuff’ with ‘and walk away’ - that would give me a lot more confidence in DOT-eco based products.

And as a tokenholder that has paid, along with everyone, for hundreds of projects around DOT, only to see the benefit die when the project dies, I would love to see code and asset recovery become normal too..

2 Likes
9

Well, emotions aren’t logical, and that’s not a big deal. If you want to regret something even though it’s not logical, then that’s ok if you ask me. I can literally hear your frustration through the screen, and I agree with you that it is frustrating as hell. That’s also part of the reason why I made this thread. I can clearly see that people are NOT feeling happy with how the state of the ecosystem is, and then I combined that with my own emotional frustration of the ecosystem, and then I came to the conclusion that maybe having a recovery group would be great, since we do have a lot of dead projects and someone needs to clean that shit up. That just gave me an idea… we could call them “The Janitors.” They’d be like a trash pickup crew. They’d make sure the trash of the ecosystem gets cleaned and sorted. Wow, I like the idea of someone mopping up the shit in the ecosystem.