Are you not the majority shareholder of both of these companies? Are you also no longer at the top of the Parity org chart?
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Thank you Gavin for your response and for finding these clear words - this is exactly what we needed to quell any undue speculation on this topic, and the reason why I wrote this forum post in the first place.
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Can you link to this referendum or treasury spend on Subsquare or Polkassembly? I can’t seem to find it, and I’ve been under the impression that the W3F is privately funding the Prize.
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W3F is indeed funding the prize pool per the JAM Rules
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I strongly oppose the issuance of new tokens or rebranding for the following reasons:
(1) The development of the JAM protocol is funded by DOT community, and the issuance of new tokens will harm DOT holders. Wouldn’t it be foolish to use your own money to fund/cultivate competitors and destroy yourself?
(2) We have done a lot of work in marketing DOT, and issuing new coins or rebranding will make all our efforts go to waste
(3) DOT has already submitted an ETF application, and issuing new coins or rebranding will make all our efforts go to waste. Although the description of DOT in the ETF is outdated, it is always easier to modify the description than to resubmit a new application.
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Go check edit post
He’s referring to Polkadot Referendum 682 - Polkassembly - Referendum #682 - which was a system.remark Referendum passed with >99.9% DOT in favor (31.3 million DOT / 267 accounts in favor, 720 DOT / 4 accounts against).
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I’m sorry, but this clarification only makes things worse.
Polkadot may be labeled “democratic,” but in reality, decision-making is concentrated in the hands of a few. This happens both because a small number of actors control a large portion of DOT and because most token holders simply don’t participate in governance.
Why was JAM developed by over 40 different teams funded by Polkadot’s treasury without any legal obligation or accountability to the ecosystem? It’s one thing if outside projects choose to use JAM since it’s open source, but when we’re the ones funding it, this isn’t decentralized innovation — it’s a failure of leadership and oversight.
And if legal agreements aren’t the preferred path, why not structure incentives differently? Treasury funds could have been used to offer teams an initial grant followed by multi-year DOT-based retention packages, with ongoing funding subject to governance approval. That would ensure alignment with Polkadot’s long-term interests while maintaining decentralization and community oversight.
Let’s also stop pretending that decision-making is entirely community-driven. Gavin, whether you acknowledge it or not, you hold significant influence over the direction of the project. Denying that influence only damages credibility.
Yes, Polkadot hosts major rollups like Mythos, but it’s fair to ask: are they here for Polkadot’s unique advantages, or because finality costs them next to nothing?
Polkadot has been around for over five years. It’s time to move on from subsidizing “design partners” and start building a sustainable, revenue-generating ecosystem.
At this point, we need to stop treating Polkadot as a philanthropic mission for Web3 idealists and recognize it for what it is — a business struggling under questionable leadership and misaligned incentives.
I’m selling my DOT. I hope others who see the same issues will consider doing the same.
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While I disagree with your assessments and conclusions, I appreciate the fact that you and many others feel disenfranchised with the current state of Polkadot and any financial rewards you feel to have missed out on. It can be mentally and emotionally taxing to be sure of your convictions and watching many others who appear to work against your aims.
We can move this discussion to DMs or another public space, as I think the topic has sufficiently drifted from the original theme. But based on the points you’ve outlined, I’m curious of a few of your thoughts as to:
What do you see is the purpose, or the problem which Blockchain-based technologies solve?
What do you believe is the input and output product of Polkadot?
What are the key performance indicators for a ‘successful’ Blockchain system like polkadot?
What are the most important uses for the future of Blockchain systems?
To what other competition are you comparing Polkadot?
Answering some of these questions may help me and others to better understand your core values and how there might be miscommunication or misalignment in community or leadership direction.
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Again, please show where Polkadot Treasury funded these things you are claiming. As discussed above, funding is from the Web3 Foundation, not Treasury.
Come on… and how does the Web3 Foundation get its funding?
Do they even earn anything outside of the treasury?
They received an initial allocation of DOT. This is supposed to be a non-profit foundation, which means they don’t have any real source of income beyond that allocation—aside from possibly some staking rewards.
So at the end of the day, it’s all just DOT. Either from the initial allocation or from staking it.
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Never met Gavin before but I am pretty good at reading people based on what I do for a living. I would say he chooses his words very precisely and means what he says. Look more closely “I am generally against taking actions which I do not think would ultimately bring a net gain for Polkadot.”
By doing what he did he will grow the pie for all of web3 by orders of magnitude. Why? Because JAM and PVM obscure the backend difficulties for Web2 developers and also allows Web2 developers to code in any language. And this comes at a time where the Mag7 are laying off developers and at a time college students can’t get work opportunities across the world. The number of developers brought into the web3 ecosystem could be quite large because of this.
I would study the history of tech. Elon Musk released his IP for electric car batteries. Wall Street thought he was crazy. What happened? EVs took off and Tesla became the thought leader in the industry. What he understood was that he alone could not grow the entire industry without everyone else. Further, large portions of the best talent wanted to work with the thought leaders of the industry.
I will stop for now. There are many other game theoretical actions taking place here but I will not forecast them out for everyone. HINT: I would look into the implications of what JAM can actually do (the GRID), the incentives VCs have when they fund projects, how a long term ideological approach takes shape, why abundance versus scarcity wins eventually, and where the value layer in web3 really is (very few actually have).
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VCs are by and large looking for results. No clue what is this “secret sauce” you’re implying VCs are looking for that you for some reason are also refusing to share.
When looking to invest you need to seperate promises from results, one company or project is promising growth, another project is showing results. Which project do you think is going to be worth more?
Polkadot has been all promises for over 5 years, slow to deliver, full of delays, pivots and failures. The time to wait for another promise is up. Im a developer myself and I work for one of the Mag7 you mentioned. I am not going to be working on web3 
The market is also full of jobs, there is way more demand than supply, AI is only accelerating jobs because employers want more features and you still need an actual engineer to take responsibility for what the AI is writing.
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Most VCs take a very short term mindset when funding new projects. Further, they don’t really understand where the value chain actually is in Web3. This will work against them over the mid to long term. Gavin Wood has always been upfront that he is taking a long term approach and has never promised anything else.
You may choose not to work in Web3 and that is obviously your choice to make; however, others will. While it may start off small, it is the directionality that matters the most in the long term. The mag7 will likely fail with enough time (maybe not fail but will be former shells of themselves; Amazon and Tesla may be different given their extreme competence and work in the physical world). Every industry has always made this mistake. The steel industry was invincible until it wasn’t. The car industry was invincible until it wasn’t. The oil industry was invincible until it wasn’t.
The mag7’s biggest threat is from a nation state that has invested significant amounts of time/money into education over the last 20 years and will back opensource software as a form of economic attack against the Mag7. They can scale software faster than the US can scale manufacturing. We have already seen this with opensource AI tools. The mag7 will now have to adjust by refocusing their value chain into datacenter compute (which could end up being a tower of babel type moment if AI knowledge bases can be further compressed, end point hardware devices scale, and accessing distributed compute is solved; all of which I expect to happen). This will be a very difficult task for them to do for many reasons, such as natural resources, energy, physical labor, and legal issues (hence why they tried to include a 10 year no State can do anything against them clause in the BBB). Make no mistake. I am not rooting against the Mag7; however, they will likely suffer significant losses over the next two decades. Again, it’s the directionality that matters the most (where the puck is going and not where it is at today).
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Web3 Foundation is not funded by the Polkadot Treasury, and neither is the JAM Prize. Web3 Foundation is a separate entity which helps bring about a decentralized web via supporting protocols including Polkadot.
You said the JAM prize was Polkadot Treasury funded via a “10 million DOT Treasury grant”, which is provably incorrect. Now you are changing the subject about the original funding source of Web3 Foundation?
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Whether the 10 million DOT came directly from the Treasury or from W3F’s initial allocation isn’t the point. W3F was funded with DOT to support the Polkadot ecosystem and has significant influence over its direction.
As an investor, I expect any entity holding that kind of allocation and claiming to support the network to actually act in its best interest. The problem is that decisions coming from these entities consistently feel disconnected from what’s good for Polkadot and its community.
So no, I’m not shifting the subject. I’m calling out a fundamental issue. The network is effectively controlled by actors who don’t seem to be aligned with the long-term health or success of the ecosystem. That’s the concern.
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Incentives are aligned. It’s just not obvious yet, but will be over the next few years as their plan is set in motion. Just not going to forecast the gameplan to ruin it. Even with that said, W3F based on legal standards wouldn’t currently meet the thresholds as an entity with significant influence, and their non-profit charter clearly states their mission.