Marketing Bounty Deep Dive

[jeeper]

Marketing Bounty Deep Dive

It is the treasury report season, and we will publish the general treasury report for Q3 in the coming days. In parallel, we ran a deep dive on the Marketing Bounty and selected spends that deserve community attention.

The aim is to create a transparent look at where the bounty has spent funds in the past year. A top-up is approaching, so now is the time to discuss what the community sees as good and bad. This way, we can have an informed debate that can shape strategy and future direction for planning what comes next for the department.

This research was funded as part of a Web3 Foundation grant to OpenGov.Watch.

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Blast Campaign

The largest spend since the bounty was re-established last November is the Blast campaign. After finalizing the first proposal, a second campaign has already started. Combined costs with NovaShots App development included stand at around $1.73m so far, with outstanding payments remaining. Since the proposal is not public, we cannot give a precise figure.

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The Kusamarian

Another major spend was the Kusamarian. At around $50k per month, the Kusamarian and related items have received about $485k since January. This is separate from the $254k Kusamarian received from the treasury last December for public service broadcasting, funding AAG, OpenDev, and Space Monkeys.

Within the Marketing Bounty, the half a million payment funds Friday News and ad buys, as it is stated in the treasury proposal last year, as well as on-site media coverage for some events. With outstanding costs expected in the coming months, the current year total for Kusamarian sits around $740k for the network, including the direct treasury spend.

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KOL Agencies

Total cost sits around $498k. These agencies were active only in the first months of the bounty. They were then replaced by the Kaito campaign and have been discontinued since.

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Kaito Campaign

The Kaito campaign was also among the biggest. It aimed to shift the content creation focus from KOLs to community members. Total spend sits around $670k, and the campaign appears to have discontinued since August.

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Community Managers

Another significant line item is community management. The bounty has paid a little over $200k across ten months for the wages of community managers. Most of the spend supports the DotBulls Telegram channel, the Discord server, and the Vibe Hub Twitter account. The work includes AMAs and quizzes to drive engagement.

This is separate from the Moderation Team bounty, which recently failed a top-up and also covers parts of community engagement. It also does not include management of the official Twitter accounts, which is funded under the Editorial Board spends for the Spanish and English channels.

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Curator Wages

Finally, a major spend is curator compensation. It totals about $472k for nearly one year of activity. This figure covers curator wages only. It excludes operational costs and curator assistants.

Wage levels vary widely across individual curators.

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Crane

The highest wage in the bounty goes to the bounty manager Crane. Total received is $195k for 13 months of work. The payment includes a fixed monthly wage of €14k and some covered expenses.

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CultureDot

Runner-up is CultureDot. Curator Wages total $98k for 13 months, which also employed two assistants during this term for $56k. This brings the total cost to the department around $154k.

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Natti

The newest curator seat in the bounty. Received $55k for eight months of activity since March 2025.

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ET and Eric

The remaining two curators received $57k each for 12 months of activity.

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Notes

• All the data presented is manually compiled from the Marketing Bounty Spend Tracker based on public descriptions. Some items may have pending invoices, undisclosed side costs, or incomplete descriptions.

• With a 200k DOT monthly allocation, the Marketing Bounty funds many activities beyond this list. This report selects spends by size and network relevance.

• Amounts are rounded. EUR to USD figures use a rate as of 7 November.

• The report excludes Distractive and Serotonin agencies. Their scopes span PR, go-to-market strategy, content creation and oversight, event design and campaign support, and regional speaker placements, as well as support on other campaigns.

• Further reports can be found on the Bounty’s Notion Page.

• If you think there is an error, please contact us so we can correct it in the next update.

[muddlebee]

@jeeper

Finally, a major spend is curator compensation. It totals about $472k for nearly one year of activity. This figure covers curator wages only. It excludes operational costs and curator assistants.

This is concerning!

[jeeper]

@muddlebee

I previously asked the team to justify the expenses and here was the response.

Hey, the link you sent redirects to Events Bounty, I havent had the chance to look into the EB specifically. But I agree that curator wages are out of hand in general among many bounties.

[Juba.K]

@jeeper solid overview.

Few things missing worth mentioning as they take an incredible amount of time to facilitate.

Wire Service - Topics, Strategy & Oversight
Paid Media (Ads) support for PBA, Pala, Webzero, V. Labs, Nova Wallet, Talisman, Builder Party
News Channel for LATAM
Events Bounty Support / Collaboration
Defi Bounty Support / Collaboration
Community Page Campaign - Polkadot Community | The Most Rebellious & Innovative Community in Web3
GoGiga DeFi Campaign (In Production)
Editorial Board
Spanish Editorial Board
Stablecoins support for LATAM
Stablecoins support for SEA
Stablecoins payment terminal - EU

Each one of these with its own set of personalities, time-zones, project managers, methods of communication, payment preferences, third-party providers, analytics and discussions.

Cheers.
J.

[bLd]

Is it just me, or is this bounty basically a tribute to the late Giottodf?

Everybody sing

We pay our friends more, yeah that’s on me
We boost our own cuts, pure “market” fee
We burn all the cash on nonsense you see
And still tank the results, on a rampage of glee

[flez]

numbers this bad should have sparked a reset months ago.

the marketing bounty reports keep coming out, but its the same ol’ story. months of big spending, vague updates, and no clear proof of growth. before another top up hits the treasury, it’s worth looking at what the data actually says.

based on the september 2025 financial report:

• nova wallet x blast premier campaign: ~1.5m usd
• kaito / kol influencer campaign: ~1.1m usd
• the kus weekly recaps on friday: ~500k usd
• curator and management salaries: ~470k usd
• measurable roi, tracked performance: under 75k usd

language over substance
the latest marketing bounty report reads like a pr recap with lots of verbs and no numbers. it’s full of “coordinated,” “facilitated,” and “aligned,” but never mentions users, signups, or measurable outcomes. there isn’t a single kpi listed. no cost per click, cost per user, retention, or engagement metrics. everything is qualitative and internal facing.

redundant partnerships
many of the “key achievements” repeat the same names we’ve seen for months… nova wallet, blast, serotonin, coinmarketcap, etc.. implying the same partners are being recycled under new campaign names. this looks like circular activity, paying the same groups repeatedly for lackluster results instead of focusing on new growth channels.

events and proposals ≠ outcomes
most of the deliverables are about attending events, coordinating booths, reviewing proposals, and facilitating discussions. those are operational tasks, not marketing roi. if the MB’s main deliverables are “coordination” and “oversight,” then why is it framed as a marketing body rather than a PMO or operations bounty?

blast 2026 extension
really? extending the blast partnership again, despite both ethical and performance concerns, suggests no lessons were learned. the last campaign already produced short spikes and poor retention, so doubling down without data justifying such a high cost partnership feels wrong. how many millions must be wasted for this to be stopped?

coinmarketcap partnership
finalizing a coinmarketcap partnership is presented as a big win, but every chain already has one. it’s baseline hygiene, not innovation. without traffic attribution or funnel data, this is just marketing theater.

looking past the latest monthly report, we see a similar story..

nova wallet x blast (~1.5m usd)
this campaign reportedly onboarded around 20,000 wallets, most of which went inactive soon after. even if they were sticky users (they definitely aren’t), this would still be a bad deal for polkadot in terms of roi. the bounty report even notes that “post event retention remains under review.”

the graphics shared showing its results are also misleading, see below (I hear this was created by Crane, maybe he can confirm):

blast itself has a questionable history, including its controversial neom partnership on land taken from the huwaiti tribe (source) and later legal issues in cs2 tournaments (source). even worse, this was a one sided deal that mainly benefited nova wallet, not polkadot. nova has already raised many millions through opengov this year, so why is the MB also footing the bill for marketing this private company? this partnership solves no real problem and is near-sighted at best.

kaito / kol campaign (~1.1m usd)
pitched as a major visibility push, it now stands as a costly failed experiment. engagement was inflated and traffic didn’t translate into real usage or on-chain activity. metrics looked good in the moment but faded quickly, leaving no measurable lift across wallets, staking, or developer participation. most people agree it was botted traffic, which makes sense given how low human activity is lately across the board once the campaign ended.

the kus (~500k+ usd)
ya you read that correctly. half a million dollars for just one of jay’s many shows, the friday recap. and it doesn’t stop there. he’s already raised another 250k+ for other treasury-funded media projects, bringing his total take to around three quarters of a million dollars plus whatever he has already raised via OG in the past.

apparently the videos pull in thousands of impressions per episode, yet only around twenty people watch live when I check… so the numbers don’t compute. where are all the real users at? the comments? the community discussion? the kus discord has been shrinking for months, not growing. the comment to impression ratio on youtube tells the real story. it’s either botted traffic or we’re paying for low quality impressions from audiences with zero interest in polkadot. pick your poison. engagement isn’t just low, it’s almost nonexistent. countless videos from other creators with one tenth the views often have ten times as many comments.

the reality is after all that funding The Kus has received, any serious media company would have built real revenue streams like sponsors, ads, or paid subscribers, but that does not appear to be happening, just a steady stream of treasury money. are more asks incoming shortly? when will it end?

we’re not marketing to the masses here. we’re basically paying premiums to entertain the polkadot echo chamber.

crane (gm role, ~195k for 13 mo. of work)
the general manager role was meant to bring structure and accountability, but there’s still no public reporting of roi, retention, or attribution. crane’s agency, nospec, has no visible presence, website, or client portfolio. is it even real? it was apparently co-founded with don diego sanchez, both chaosdao members known for using private dao channels to talk down on other builders. if there’s real marketing experience here, it hasn’t shown up in the results.

how we move forward
the truth is, we probably shouldn’t expect much to change. the way opengov works right now, it naturally protects the status quo. many dvs are financially or politically aligned with the same ecosystem players who benefit from keeping things exactly as they are. without parity or the web3 foundation stepping in, the marketing bounty will likely keep burning funds until the next refill.

that said, fixing it isn’t complicated and it shouldn’t even be controversial. start by removing crane immediately for breaking the agreed upon standards for Ethics / Transparency / Reporting provided in the approved marketing bounty 2.0 ref here. he failed to live up to #1, 5, 6, and 7.

then pause all marketing bounty spending for six months. the simple truth is there’s nothing meaningful to promote right now. wait until new products begin shipping biweekly under parity’s product-first roadmap, and then use marketing to amplify real solutions to real problems.

[Juba.K]

As most seem to disregard the outlined work in this response, I feel it is only right to re-emphasize the Marketing (Growth, Communications, Operations) Bounty mandate. With the exception of Updating the Online Presence - which has proven to require much more authority to enforce than we currently have - our operations have always landed within the following categories here:

Our work is a facilitation of connecting existing agents, protocols and projects with the right channels to help expand their reach and success. When times have been better financially, the curators made decisions to explore new & interesting ventures - as long as they were relevant within the greater industry landscape.

To respond to a few of the larger ticket items:

The Kaito campaign was well in-line with many of the other L0 / L1 / L2 platforms who actively participated in its emergence onto the scene - and quite frankly speaking - before Polkadot X Kaito, the running commentary was severely negative in nature.

Kaito campaign brought Polkadot back into the conversation and shed light on the ecosystem in ways that had not been picked up before.
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The Blast partnership is quite literally a mix of multiple Polkadot secured products (Nova, Hydration), with the chance of exploring more additions - NFT’s, Marketplaces, Voting Principles - a dynamic prediction market breaking the boundaries between esports and blockchain - not a force, but a fit. The feedback has been overwhelming and so far the attempts by other protocols to copycat the product is opening the doors for opportunities hard come-by in the last few years in this ecosystem.

In-fact, a massive shout-out to @Crane for the tireless efforts put in getting this up and running (and the source of the increased hours) - as an almost one-man show - bootstrapping the product into a functioning, exciting and available beta test. Quite literally fended off multiple armies of bot-wars just so the world could play - on Polkadot - without even knowing it.

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Without the KUS, Polkadot surely would be in a tougher spot.
The hustle and consistency of this channel is unmatched.
Jay & Co. run the single most educational, research backed, networking channel in all of Polkadot, and yet every single moment there is some angle to cut the work down.
The void this would leave if they were to leave would surely do more damage than most would even comprehend and imo these attacks come from personal vendettas > output of driven facts. Just ask anyone who has worked with their production team and your answers will be clear.

___

As for budgets, reports and navigating this extreme storm.

The @Pala_Labs Openshore Demo has recently been released showing a -25.77% reduction in Marketing & Events spending for 2025, as bounty curators tightened up, became more collaborative in efforts, shared, communicated and aligned on where expenditures take place - is a testament to the maturity of Opengov - one that I personally feel is not being given the rightful appreciation from the comments above, especially with the amount of historical waste seen in this ecosystem. This report metric above, we can truly pride ourselves upon - as it’s never easy to say ‘no’ to funding endeavours - especially in certain conditions and certain relationship ties.

Final note - as it seems misunderstood amongst many - no bounty is set in stone. There is no rule or Wish for Change to dictate only one bounty per category can exist. This is a completely open, decentralized funding platform of which literally anyone on the planet can submit their proposal and pass a project - whether independently or as a collective. This specific bounty has been a staple of marketing & communications support for multiple homegrown creators, rollup teams, products and agents.

We live to serve and serve we have with every intention of becoming better suited to deliver and optimize as each living day goes by.

Upon re-opening the bounty, it was clear there was a sensational amount of foundation missing and the efforts it would take to rebuild & introduce these concepts would be tough.

Hope was never a strategy here - and it’s been nothing but hard work.
I, for one, am happy to stand by my own endeavours, and expect each curator and collaborating team who has received funding, taken consultations or simply requested that we plug them in to our network, stand with the same confidence.

See you all in Opengov.
J.

[bLd]

@Juba.K

In-fact, a massive shout-out to @Crane for the tireless efforts put in getting this up and running

In which world is this “tireless effort”?

• being paid by hour and claiming extra payment for extra hours
• still having time to be extra paid by the “media” which is also the “client” of the bounty you manage

Asking for a friend who’s looking for a tireless job.

[TheOyster]

Massive sums of money spent,

0 to show for it.

No new apps, teams, projects or anything of value to an actual user.

All while the token trades lower and lower all the time.

The “marketing bounty” has failed on every metric.

There was no better decision I made in life than to not bet my career in DeFi on these horrible people.

Anything Crane touches is a dishonest, underhanded scam. If he was the last man on earth I wouldn’t work with him.

Not surprised to see he’s still lining his pockets doing this.

The blind being lead by the dishonest on Polkadot, nothing has changed.

[SAXEMBERG]

@Juba.K

Kaito campaign brought Polkadot back into the conversation and shed light on the ecosystem in ways that had not been picked up before.

Let’s stop trying to defend the unjustifiable. The Kaito campaigns were a net negative for all chains who participated and it’s been criticized even outside of Polkadot and trying to turn a failing result into positive discourse is highly detrimental. Let’s be critical of the shortcomings, this idea of “bringing Polkadot into the conversation“ as a sufficient objective is highly detrimental and it has burned enough money already without significant results.

And that is the most visible negative thing which criticism should be taken easily.

[Juba.K]

@jeeper - just an fyi. deleting a comment on the forum doesn’t just make it go away

the mb funds the kus friday news and i’ve already been positively vocal about the kusamarian channel, standing by the mb decision to fund & promote this specific segment, as it is the most consistent and comprehensive news & update feed the entire ecosystem has.

space monkeys, aag, regulatory rewind, opendev fellowship call, any other live feeds or productions are all opengov funded and not for me to be singled out to speak on or defend.

if you have any further problems with their content, value or strategy, you can contact the team at the kusamarian directly and share your grievances with them.

J.

[flez]

@Juba.K - just an fyi, focusing on a deleted comment in a thread exposing millions in waste you helped oversee only proves the concern. it says a lot about priorities.

the elephant in the room is that you somehow have two paid assistants, “Abigail C” and “Mike CD1”, costing the treasury $56,000 on top of your own curator pay of about $100,000. no other curator has assistants. none. so what do you need assistants for exactly? what do they do? where are their hours and tasks being tracked? be specific.

people rarely bite the hand that feeds them. i imagine that’s why you keep defending Kus, Crane, and the rest of the MB at every turn. your ties run deep with the same people you’re supposed to hold accountable. it’s not hard to see why, considering Jay was the one who first introduced you to the ecosystem.

a quick look at your portfolio at culturedot.io says it all. you run vague billboards with no clear CTA or messaging that sticks with users in any meaningful way, and provide no measurable outcomes beyond screen counts and campaign length from what i can tell. the same pattern, the same gaps, and none of the marketing skill this role demands.

just step down.

[Juba.K]

A large amount of the work was mentioned here - Marketing Bounty Deep Dive - #4 by Juba.K yet overlooked to speak about bigger spends.

The yearly report will come out in a couple months and then everything can be re-assessed.

Good bout though - tough, but enjoyable lol.

Until next time.
J.

[dandan]

Perhaps from now on, all bouunties should be re-evaluated and re-voted. This is definitely not the only area where money is being wasted.

[D0tSama]

These are great comments. Have you looked at other bounties?

[Megadot]

I’m honestly surprised to see people trying to justify the unjustifiable. Seeing curators receive large payments with little accountability highlights serious issues in how the ecosystem is being managed. This lack of transparency and responsibility reflects poorly on the overall health of the Polkadot ecosystem, and it’s disappointing that both Parity and W3F allow it to continue.

[leon2025]

To be frank, Polkadot’s current marketing is a catastrophic failure, and ironically, all of this has occurred against the backdrop of enormous marketing expenditures.

From the market perception perspective: Despite massive financial investment, user perception of Polkadot has not only failed to improve but has further solidified into “the next EOS”—a technologically idealistic but gradually dying public chain. Once such a negative label forms, it becomes extremely difficult to reverse.

From the secondary market performance: DOT has completely lost investor attention. The continuous downward drift not only reflects the market’s denial of its value, but more alarmingly, it has formed a vicious cycle of “self-fulfilling decline expectations”—no attention means no buying pressure, and no buying pressure means continued decline.

From ecosystem building results: Years of investment have failed to incubate even one quality project with genuine market influence. This exposes not just a marketing problem, but a failure of the entire ecosystem strategy.

The core problem: Polkadot’s marketing spending appears more like “spending money for the sake of spending money,” lacking clear market positioning, target user profiles, and value delivery strategies. This blind capital consumption is essentially using treasury funds to pay for ineffective marketing.

[bLd]

It’s been a year this bounty is up, yearly report is due to community this month, not « in a couple of months ».

If you could please have a human written report for once, monthly reports are 100% AI written, this is indigestible for humans.

[GabrielJ]

What if…

…and I know this is crazy…

But what if, we just used the tools available to us today to ensure more accountability for every single treasury spend, whether it be bounties or proposals…

Let me say it again: What if instead of giving bounties millions at a time and proposals a ton of funds up-front, what if we just used scheduled payouts tied to milestones?

We have a proposal up that demonstrates exactly what that looks like: $0 up-front. Scheduled payouts all tied to verifiable milestone deliveries. Payouts 50 days AFTER milestone delivery so anyone can cancel/delay them if milestones are underwhelming.

The best part?
We built a UI where anyone with a polkadot wallet can easily cancel/delay scheduled payouts. If the community agrees with their cancel/delay proposal: they earn! Meaning we have a decentralized army of treasury guardians that are finally holding projects accountable. Interests are aligned.

It is time to turn up the accountability in OpenGov! More $ for teams that deliver.

More reading: Treasury Guardianship

We talk about how bounties specifically can make use of scheduled payouts here.

[GabrielJ]

It would be so easy to pause things and reflect if the marketing bounty were running through monthly scheduled payouts (all scheduled via one ref) rather than full up-front lump sums.