Official statement of the Advisory Board of the Polkadot Ambassador Fellowship

Ambassador Programme
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Official statement of the Advisory Board of the Polkadot Ambassador Fellowship:

May 5th, 2025

As the Advisory Board of the Polkadot Ambassador Fellowship, we reflect on the progress of the initiative and the ongoing development of a strong, decentralised global community.

Over the past months, we have witnessed tremendous dedication from Ambassadors and contributors around the world. The foundational work done through the Fellowship’s OpCom structure, the creation of technical and social frameworks, and the global outreach efforts—from grassroots events to international conferences—are a testament to the potential of this initiative.

However, the Board must also acknowledge that the current operational structure has not fostered cohesive and efficient collaboration. Despite individual efforts, there have been delays in implementation, misalignment in governance, and ultimately, stagnation in areas crucial to long-term success.

We firmly believe in the vision that the Polkadot Ambassador Fellowship represents. The Manifesto outlines a future built on inclusivity, autonomy, reputation, and decentralised empowerment—principles that remain central to our community’s identity. The creation of a new operational programme, one open to fresh leadership and committed to the values outlined in the Fellowship charter, is both welcome and necessary.

We encourage past and new contributors and leaders to step forward. The Fellowship must be shaped by those who embody collaboration, integrity, and purpose, and who are willing to grow it in the spirit of decentralisation and innovation.

In line with this spirit of evolution, we also wish to highlight the Phragmen Initiative Fund (PIF), which was introduced as part of the Fellowship to support grassroots, community-driven experimentation. With the conclusion of the current Fellowship structure, the future of the PIF remains open. We encourage community members to explore how this concept might be continued, potentially as an independent initiative stewarded through OpenGov or other community-driven frameworks. The original intent behind the PIF remains valuable, and its continuation could offer ongoing opportunities for innovation and inclusion across the ecosystem.

The Polkadot network is stronger when we empower those who represent it. The Ambassador Fellowship must continue to evolve as a community-led initiative that reflects the strength, diversity, and ambition of the ecosystem it serves.

The remaining cash, approximately 230thsd USDT, is returned to the treasury, and the entire advisory board is stepping down from its function.

Signed,

The Members of the Advisory Board
Polkadot Ambassador Fellowship
May 5th, 2025

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Very sad to see this. We have had 3 iterations of the ambassador program, and not a single one has really taken off. This one seemed to have had a good chance, and I am not really sure what was happening behind the scenes, but I can tell you that ambassasdors are community members, and I only saw 1 or 2 people actually in the trenches from leadership in this program. That is not a recipe for success imo. Hopefully, if there is a 4th attempt, that will change.

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Thank you to the Advisory Board for your dedication and thoughtful reflection on the Polkadot Ambassador Fellowship’s journey. While it’s clear that there have been challenges, the vision and principles of inclusivity, autonomy, and decentralised empowerment remain powerful and inspiring. I wholeheartedly support the call for fresh leadership and a renewed commitment to collaboration. The future of the Fellowship, along with initiatives like the Phragmen Initiative Fund, offers exciting possibilities for innovation and growth. I look forward to contributing to the evolution of this initiative and continuing to build a strong, community-driven Polkadot ecosystem.

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I am open and willing to collaborate with a mixture of type A & B brain’s/ Technical and Creatives. Everyone has gifts and to organize all the different group projects within Polkadot, enhance them and cross mingle initiatives where appropriate will require a diverse leadership team.
I would like to be part of a team that regularly meets to “Think Tank”, make decisions, delegates and works to support others initiative’s within Polkadot and beyond. If a team is struggling, but making progress this organization of leaders should be here to help and solve them, in addition to being able to pivot. Budgets are key and require management as well, these should be strongly considered as initiatives in any organized structure. All initiatives feed the organization and are not just one offs (we lack this oversight of OpenGov funded initiatives and the PIF). The wonderful OG Tracker is guidance and not a full solution, it is a tool.
I had originally believed this organization would have been the “Head Ambassadors” dedicated full time to supporting WEB3 from a collaborative cohesive structure of support and growth. I do not care about the label it receives, I am looking to help this thrive and grow, as I had been watching for many years, up until a year and a half ago.
I appreciate you reading my post, I will await any other leaders who would like to work as an organized entity that aligns with these values. I have a lot of ideas on how to bring things together and welcome others who want to work to align Polkadot with projects/people/users/enthusiasts.
Feel free to ask me any respectable questions.

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Smh :woman_facepalming:

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Trying to wrap my head around this. The statement is very vague. What was the expectation? Is it the implementation that was an issue or targets wasn’t met? Or direction was not desirable? Any specifics?

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I think it is up to the community to decide if they are pleased with what has been delivered so far. The statement says that the Fellowship should continue to follow the manifesto, which I penned in representation of the community voices. I personally am still committed to driving this forward, the Board served their purpose and although the message is confusing, the intention is to disperse the Board and allow us to continue building.

Join me on tomorrow’s AMA on X or YouTube and we will review the Phase I report and begin the conversation about our very hopeful future. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Clarity is needed, what exactly is going on😏

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Since OP is fairly vague, I will try to provide some clarity from the knowledge I have.

The current iteration of the Ambassador Program (v3) is based on two referenda:

How it started

More on the historical context of the initiation of v3 of the program in this thread.

The basic idea was to separate the social institution (1267) from the funding mechanism (1287) and to isolate out the poisoning effects of money from the social aspects.

The Polkadot Ambassador Fellowship (PAF) itself is an unpaid on-chain collective of multiple ranks that are ideally purely based on merit.

The Phragmen Initiative Funding (PIF) on the other hand was intended to incentivize more intensive work by letting bidders compete for up to 20 pots of 30k USD each.

PAF = Social Institution
PIF = Monetary Incentives

How it went

Now for PAF the idea was to install a small coordination team that coordinates the process around application, execution, admin. @Lucy and @DonDiegoSanchez made up the leadership team. Above them was an advisory board of senior Polkadot community members. Below them was an ops team.

There was a phase of applications and ~a dozen or more projects were selected for execution.

I only know part of the context and it seems that OP is referring to different issues, but what became apparent after a few weeks is that the two leaders had very different expectations of how and where to lead the program. The advisory board spent countless hours to mediate and find solutions, but eventually, it did not work out.

I think the overall understanding was to conclude Phase 1 of PIF to at least let the agents that work on things deliver their successes. Which they did for the most part. (I dropped out and returned the money for my project because I was overworked on other fronts)

From what I observe, Lucy staid to bring PIF Phase 1 to a proper conclusion. DDS moved on to lead the 1533 Esports Metaproposal.

What is next

I think the most valuable thing about the previous phase of the Ambassador Program has been PIF and the over a dozen teams of agents that have been working for Polkadot success. This is a good that we should keep developing.

It has been an incredible miss that the on-chain collective was not properly developed in the meantime. I think this is a collective miss, since I and I think almost every other ambassador did not step forward and lead the process.

It’s hard to find leaders for the Ambassador Program because everyone who touched it in the recent year burned their fingers and by now it has become a hard thing to recover and many are afraid to risk their reputation for it.

Next steps:

  1. Initiate phase 2 of PIF (I think this is the absolute minimum we should get done)
  2. Find Ambassadors who are willing to lead; even when the financial compensation is not (yet) there
  3. Push to bring the Ambassador Fellowship as agreed on-chain
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For those to have not followed our progress over the last few months, and particularly in the final sprint. Or who seems to have forgotten everything in a moment of panic after a perhaps confusing memo from the Board, which has not actually inspired the reaction they were looking for, join the call at 1300 UTC today.

Live streaming on X and YouTube. To join the panel, check out the Global calendar. Link: Polkadot Ambassador Fellowship: Entering Phase II
Tuesday, 6 May · 14:00 – 15:00
Time zone: Europe/London
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/fbw-tqdz-tyq
Or dial: (GB) +44 20 3956 9310 PIN: 921 771 645 #
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/fbw-tqdz-tyq?pin=3580762378392

This call was already diarised to deep dive into the achievements of the past 4 months, detailed in this report.
https://dotfellowship.my.canva.site/

To quote the Board’s message to me, which was before the unexpected forum post, “thank you for your efforts, Lucy. The Board truly appreciates all of the hours of work you have put towards making the Fellowship’s establishment successful.” I agree with them that it has been successful and until ysterday, the community seems to agree with me. Let’s see what today brings and I will support whatever move forward the informed community wants to see next.

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Well said. “It’s hard to find leaders for the Ambassador Program because everyone who touched it in the recent year burned their fingers and by now it has become a hard thing to recover and many are afraid to risk their reputation for it.”

And as you pointed out, Lucy is the only one who stayed, and from what I have seen over the last four weeks, the community has been cheering her on to complete the outstanding promises that were made, and the momentum is positive? Perhaps the board saw their role as a Phase I role only, so it would make sense that they have moved on. We are all busy and this appears to be a time-consuming volunteer role; I myself did not feel that I would have the time required to make the commitment. However, it is a valiant role and perhaps other people with fresh ideas to add to the PAF and PIF leadership will emerge for Phase II. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. Isn’t this a moment to move forward, learn from and build upon what we already have done? Those lessons, in and of themselves, represent valuable progress.

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This post was not intended to shutter the Ambassador Fellowship, quite the opposite. It is confusing I agree, but the intention is not to close the Fellowship down.

You have followed every step of what we have been doing and have been involved in some of the execution over the past few months. If you still believe that the work you did and the reasons you sis it are valid, join in 30mins and have your say.

This is another test as to whether we can stand up together and prove that we are resilient. The reactions to this post, which is not saying anything about shuttering the programme, has shown very little. Let’s change that.

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I was part of the advisory board. It was said it would only take some weeks and then it would be over. I have to say I had no real idea to what I agreed upfront and found it confusing all the time. Maybe mainly related that I did not had time to follow what is going on. At some point there was also the discussion about which members should be which rank and whatever. Way too much what I could handle, especially for people I did not knew. I should have rejected this position from the beginning. Probably in general the people that were part of the advisory board already had enough on their plates, that it was hard to be focused for this project.

I think the community should decide on how the program should continue. I also think that the best idea would be that 5-6 head ambassadors are being elected and they will then do the initial seeding with other members. These 5-6 head ambassadors should be (in the best case) find together, without doing the giotto on chain fight like last year. These members should agree that they all can do the job together. Then make on chain referendum approving these 5-6 members at once.

(All these are just my ideas, I’m not saying it should be done this way or whatever. Just want to ensure that no one tries to interpret too much into my post:))

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Thanks Basti, I really appreciate you stepping in here and making it a little clearer what the circumstances were that led to last week’s forum post.

In great news - your idea above is EXACTLY what Incubation Phase II ushers in. An Advisory Board of high ranking Ambassadors. This was always the plan and members were confirmed prior to the dissolving of the first Board. On that Board will be: Joe Petrowski, Kasper Joergensen, Arron Goolsbey, Ingo Rube and me. We have two additional members signed up who need to make sure their schedules allow participation, but they are keen to participate. We now know what we are doing (a little more clearly) so the team, deliverables, KPIs will all be much clearer and there will be no nasty surprises for an of us!

The Incubation Phase II OpenGov proposal will be submitted no later than Monday 18 May 2025. it will request funding for the continued growth of the Fellowship until 10 December 2025, the anniversary of the passing of the first referendums.

Keep an eye our everyone - and check out Phase I in the meantime! https://dotfellowship.my.canva.site/

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