How Can We Make Polkadot Treasury Safer? Preventing Scams & Fund Misuse!

[umerda518]

Hello Polkadot Community!

I want to start a discussion on an important issue related to the Polkadot Treasury Funds. Recently, we have seen cases where scam projects and fund misuse have become concerns. Many proposals get approved, but there is no proper tracking system to ensure funds are used correctly. This could impact Polkadot’s long-term growth.

Problems That Need to Be Addressed:

Scam projects receive free funds and disappear without delivering results.
There is no proper monitoring system to track if the funds are being used as proposed.
Some projects receive excessive funding, while important proposals struggle for resources.
Lack of transparency on how effectively treasury funds are used.

Proposed Solution:

To make the Polkadot Treasury safer and more efficient, I suggest a multi-layered approval and tracking system:

Multi-Signature Approval:

• Before releasing funds, projects must pass three layers of approval:
  Community Vote (DOT holders decide)
  Independent Review Committee (selected experienced members)
  Smart Contract Validation (ensures proposal terms are followed)

Milestone-Based Funding:

• Instead of releasing funds all at once, payments should be made step-by-step as milestones are completed.

Public Treasury Dashboard:

• A real-time tracking system should be available to show:
  • How much treasury funding is allocated
  • Which projects are receiving funds
  • Their progress & spending reports

Penalties & Clawback Mechanism:

• If a project misuses funds, there should be a slashing mechanism to recover lost funds.
• Fraudulent actors should face penalties or bans from future proposals.

Regular Independent Audits:

• Treasury spending should undergo third-party audits to ensure everything is being used properly.

Expected Benefits:

Scams and fund misuse will decrease.
More transparency and trust in the governance system.
Legitimate projects will receive fair funding and proper tracking.
Polkadot’s long-term sustainability and value will improve.

What do you think about this? How can we improve it further? Let’s discuss ways to make Polkadot Treasury safer and more efficient!

I hope all respected members understand my concerns and the importance of this issue. This post has been refined with the help of ChatGPT for better clarity, but the ideas and concerns expressed are entirely my own.

Best Regards
ABDUL RAUF

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[bill_w3f]

Are you aware of OGtracker? OG Tracker This helps with some of these.

I’m not sure what you mean by smart contract validation. But funds given out via bounty (which is increasing in usage) can be milestone-based and selected by the curators of that bounty.

[GabrielJ]

We are releasing a tool that reduces the risk to the treasury.

The Treasury Guardian App.

[Mork]

Public Treasury Dashboard:
Done.

Milestone-Based Funding:
Take a look at @GabrielJ’s Treasury Guardian App discussion. It really is a well-thought out tool which facilitates much of what you are suggesting without needing to mess with the existing onchain infrastructure.

More generally, though, a turn towards more milestone-based funding (and smaller milestones facilitated by a tool smoothing the UX of milestone-tracking) is a question of properly aligning incentives over time. I definitely support this, and I think this should be a discussion standing on its own, not mixed in with a bunch of other solutions.

Multi-Signature Approval:
Well, we already have (DOT holders decide), so what you’re suggesting is to add - equivalent to a veto by certain experienced members. That will be super controversial. I’m guessing you haven’t thought about it long enough to see that but, if that’s really what you want to propose, please go ahead and do so. It will, at the least, bring out some interesting discussion on the nature of democracy . Re: Smart Contract Validation - I’m not even going to start to unpick what I’m assuming are your misunderstandings about the technology here. Again, if you think that this () is an idea with merit, why not make a separate discussion, outlining exactly the logic of what these smart contracts would enforce, briefly how this would work technically, and in game-theoretical/ incentive-timing terms how it improves on what we can do with the existing tech?

Penalties & Clawback Mechanism: - Re: the slashing mechanism. Again, you’re missing an actual suggestion for how this would work in game-theory/ incentive-timing terms here. It suggests a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of crypto if you haven’t considered the question of where the funds to be slashed would come from. IDK. Maybe you have 4-D chessed it out, but there is no mention of it in your suggestion.
Fraudulent actors should face penalties or bans. Yes, they certainly should. Penalties are not practical (for the slashing reason I mentioned) and bans are socially enforced (and, indeed, could not be practically enforced onchain). Again, if you have an actual mechanism by which we can ensure better enforce what we already try collectively to do, please bring it.

Regular Independent Audits - Again, you are raising a question which is bigger and more philosophical than you appear to realise. Who would the auditors be auditing? What kind of auditor would be sufficiently independent, and would be trusted by the community to be so? What would be the terms given to the auditor to measure against? Who defines those terms?
In almost all cases, the answer is something like ‘the community’. In which case, why not just ‘audit’ in a decentralised manner amongst ourselves? As, in fact, we have already started to do .

I like the focus towards Milestone-Based Funding, and, while I assume that most of the community agree with you and I on that issue, it’s not at all clear to me, and I would certainly like to see more discussion on the issue to concretise everyone’s expectations on that question.

As for the rest, I’d suggest to you - get familiar with the governance/ transparency tools we already have and which are being developed; and check out the existing transparency initiatives and if you want to suggest improvements, identify the gaps in them first.