This wasn’t in the initial proposal!
If we’re to go by openness, transparency, and a full autonomy system,
then the system should encourage equality
and not bias towards encouraging stakers over active contributors.
If having up to 5,000 DOT is the yardstick for becoming a head ambassador, then the position is not based on merit, but simply purchased by those who can afford it.
It’s not. As stated many times in the thread, HAs do not need to have any DOT.
There seems to be a lot of confusion, speculation, and outright guessing in this thread about how referenda on Polkadot work in general that is not at all related to collectives or the Ambassador Program in particular.
Ambassadors (and especially HAs) should not only understand but be able to communicate clearly how governance on Polkadot works. The same rules apply to all referenda, including Treasury proposals.
For people applying for an HA position, I would expect that they have fluency on this topic and also ask questions / do research when they don’t understand rather than speculate. Of course it’s fine to be new and still learning, but people who can’t do that probably are not ready to be HAs and should perhaps apply as a regular Ambassador once there are other HAs in place.
@joepetrowski
HA’s role has many facets. Not all of them are technical or gov. focused. The strength of a group is to pool multiple differents skills and to be able to rely on each other.
What do you know about regulatory intentions at EU level, for example? Probably nothing. I’m involved in several working groups but I’m not familiar with governance, so I can’t be HA?
The purpose of this post is to inform and to be as inclusive as possible. Your role should then be to be as clear as possible for all the people…
Of course, but there are some basics that I believe are reasonable expectations. I don’t expect everyone to have the same level of expertise on fine details about governance or code, that is the purview of the Fellowship.
But the conversation in this thread shows a complete lack of familiarity with Polkadot. Why should Polkadot designate someone as the highest ranking ambassador (and thus a representative) who doesn’t know even the basics or design principles of Polkadot? We’re not talking implementation details here, just really basic principles, motivation, and design.
I’m sure you do know a lot about EU regulation, that’s awesome, but it doesn’t mean you should be an envoy/ambassador/representative of Polkadot in that context. To represent Polkadot means to be able to communicate effectively about it to that audience.
But it doesn’t. It is full of misunderstanding and has led to more confusion and uncertainty.
I would suggest that everyone reads the Polkadot wiki, or other various places where OpenGov is explained in detail before going for the position of Head Ambassador.
I agree with everything Joe is saying, as a Head Ambassador you should have a fundamental understanding of the basics of Polkadot (albeit at a high-level, you don’t need to know how to code).
I was present on one of the calls with some of the current Head Ambassadors (I am not one, I was just invited to the call for some reason) and when Joe and another member from the Fellowship (I’ve forgotten who it was, apologies) were trying to explain the basics it was obvious that there is a clear lack of understanding.
For example, when Joe was talking about “tracks” to me it was incredibly obvious he was talking about OpenGov tracks, but some current HA believed he was talking about marketing/content creation/whatever tracks in the Polkadot Discord.
I’m purposely not naming names, but clearly, some people need to read up on the basics of Polkadot - part of the job of the Head Ambassadors will be to explain these concepts, for example, if you are talking to your local government, probably you want to have a very clear understanding of OpenGov to be able to explain it to them – as quite likely Polkadot’s governance is of high interest to those kinds of people.
(my views are my own and are not representative of any 3rd party that I may be affiliated with)
So @Leemo , yesterday the information arrived in the group that it had to have 5000 dots, because from what I remember Joe said that I should go through the fellowship track, the track with id 13 that asks for the deposit of 5000 dots, I thought they had changed something of what was previously said and recorded with the post they made yesterday 5000 dots(track) + 5000 dots .
5000 dots for deposit is ok, I only think of applicants from poorer regions. making the process more democratic for them to participate too
Perhaps it’s also because we receive bad information and trust those who pass it on. Just ask PHIND, which I use every day, for a full explanation and it’s available in 30’'. I have no gaps in the knowledge, because I use it every day to develop as well.
About this post, it was validated by all the people in the meeting with in which I wasn’t before I posted it… I realize that you have to check everything yourself to avoid being exposed to bad reaction. One more sad story…
However, I’m not sure we are in the basics when comes the question of locking 5000 DOTS. It’s your point of view but not necessarily the truth…
Finally, I propose that you test all candidates. I’m not sure you’ll get 10 people who meet your expectations. It’s the group that makes a collective and Polkadot strong.
I’m candidate for your test!
So to sum up, my apologies for this post for which I didn’t check the sources. At least it had the merit of bringing some clarification and making this issue public. Because in everything, there is a positive side. Have a great Sunday!
The ambassador program has definitely taken a wrong turn.
All the efforts that the ambassadors have made over the years have been discarded as worthless garbage. The evaluation of past contributions is ZERO, respect for the volunteering for years- ZERO.
Everything about the new version of the ambassador program is wrong:
it’s all unfair to the community and a betrayal of trust from a project that I’ve been a part of for years.
But what is the plight of the existing active ambassadors? Is their any arrangement for them in the new program?
The deposit of 5000 DOT is the main barrier for ambassadors to onboard to the new program in underdeveloped countries.
Personally, I don’t have the funds, so I can’t apply. I don’t want to be sponsored externally with conditions. If the sponsor doesn’t have conditions and simply wants to help applicants with the deposit, that would be rare to find. Giving up two months’ rewards, you are a good guy 
Good luck to applicants
We were talking about having some barriers, so not any random person without Polkadot knowledge could apply. Now we have it:
If we are doing such a barrier in a hackerspace, where you only have tech hackers, its fine. However, as pointed out before, not everyone is that technical who would be still capable Head Ambassadors or some of them might not have access to friends/sponsors - just because they are/were working in a field that is less focused on accumulating money, eg. community moderation or being citizen of a poor country.
Notable, I believe this 5000 DOT was an unintentional amount, just nobody thought about this can be a problem…. In addition, to my best knowledge (and correct me if Im wrong), the first Fellowship members got paid the deposit by W3F, so they have a way easier situation. It was anyways started with the help of the legal entity who initially issued DOT (many overlapping people I mean).
Solutions for now?
Application: If you want to apply and have technical difficulties, you can contact me too.
Deposit: As pointed out before, you need to ask a friend or take a loan. A proposal would be a legit way and paying back the Treasury later.
For later, if we don’t fill the 21 until this is solved, we will be looking better by decreasing the DOT amount to be somewhere under 1000.
So I have given this quite a bit of thought after seeing @dbpatty feedback. Based on the Conor Daly funding issue, we should be able to open a new wallet ask for donations to said wallet and after, lets say 3 months, (1 month to campaign for 5,000 DOTS) and the 2 month lock, the DOTS can go back to the people who supported the running for Head Ambassador?
I understand the stress of the 5,000 DOTS and that is over 3 months salary to receive Head Ambassador position, however there does seem to be a mechanism in place that we know works based on the Conor Daly issue.
if you find a sponsor he can directly block his funds without taking any further steps and after the period they will be automatically released.
If you take a look on ( polkadot.js(Polkadot/Substrate Portal ) you will be able to see that some proposals have two different addresses.
Saying it again, the 5,000 DOT is not targeted at Ambassadors. Every track in OpenGov has a decision deposit. The design of OpenGov is not “unintentional” in this regard. Repeating again, Polkadot is a crypto-economic system.
The Fellowship was seeded using an on-chain migration to initiate the accounts, as the Fellowship manifesto stated in its seeding process. The referendum that approved the Ambassador Program specifically stated that there should not be an off-chain seeding process, but rather each HA would have to apply individually.
That said, some ranks in the Fellowship (e.g. VII and above) are only attainable via public referendum, see for example the ongoing one to promote Gav to rank VII. Someone, I don’t know who, placed the 5k decision deposit.
For HAs, if they have the skills necessary to be effective as HAs, I’m sure they can convince someone to place the 5k deposit to support a decision on their application.
Gotcha, or a multisig too. I guess I thought some people would try to receive donations to get to the 5,000 liquid DOT from multiple people.
From OpenGov point of view, I totally agree the number is intentional.
At the same time, from a project management perspective this is a major change in the workflow compared to the narrative discussed before. The proposal that passed the new Ambassador Program was saying “similar to the Fellowship” and technically the implementation is correct, but nobody talked about this barrier before. No surprise some people are now unhappy about the news.
Non-techically, this process created a negative social situation. I imagine if we’d have discussed it before there would be no drama now. Personally Im ok with the amount (still think its too high), but when these things happen it is not really helping the community and do present Polkadot in a way we don’t want to be seen.
I am particularly unhappy about those people in our own community who did not help at all and are now posting negative comments about the Ambassador Program.
Perhaps it would be a better narrative to look at this as something where the community comes together to solve a problem that occurred because of a series of mistakes of many people.
Communication and planning needs to improve between collectives/teams in the ecosystem. Thank you @joepetrowski and everyone who is keeping up the good spirit, explaining and looking to make the situation better.
Honestly, this 5000Dot decision deposit will deter person coming from areas not as successful as Europe:
As much as this is a good initiative to make the applicants have skin in the game, it also will does not put into consideration those from poor countries or regions that cannot afford 5000 DOT.
For those in economically disadvantaged regions that has contributed voluntarily to the ecosystem as ambassadors for years now but do not have the 5000 DOT, it will be a big stumbling block to them. even though they have the passion, knowledge, zeal and vision to continue contributing as HA, this will make them not want to apply.
Its even very difficult to see someone that will back them with the required 5000 DOT.