Pretty confusing why no one is allowed to discuss the elephant in the room. The one leading to mass holder and developer exodus. The one that keeps Polkadot in people’s mouth for a negative reasons not positive ones. The one that gets me laughed at when I try and get other crypto people into Polkadot.
When will leadership start discussing the things holders clearly care very strongly about and open this forum to all forms of Polkadot discussion, not only the ones they deem appropriate?
I’ve been a holder/staker since 2021 and really feel nothing other than disgust towards it now. The smugness from those in paid positions is beyond comprehension to me, all of which openly say they hold little DOT. Long term support shouldn’t merit feelings of being used.
Hearing stuff like JAM has a jacuzzi on it, Kus making $1.1M per year, Gavin flys private, and other extravagant spending rubs salt in many wounds formed through trust and let down time and time again.
Change is needed. Discuss change and make change. More of the same leadership is going to tank Polkadot for good and I mean that as someone who loved it.
I am not sure what you are suggesting should be done differently, but speaking for myself, I am always open for feedback and suggestions.
“The smugness from those in paid positions is beyond comprehension to me, all of which openly say they hold little DOT.”
Everyone in a paid position in the ecosystem say they hold little DOT? I am an employee of W3F and I haven’t done this. In fact, I can’t remember every having seen any instances of this. Can you share some?
I believe you raise a valid point in your criticism regarding Polkadot’s lack of a clear vision and accountability.
The yearly costs vastly exceed the network’s income, and even with the recent increase in core time pricing, there remains a huge gap between costs and revenue. This is clearly unsustainable.
My impression is that many participants in the space have quietly accepted this reality, continuing with “business as usual” while implicitly acknowledging that the funds will eventually be depleted.
I also believe it’s important to talk about that which must not be discussed here.
Nobody wants to back a loser - which is why PolkadotFollower was ridiculed for merely suggesting that people give DOT a try.
Sure, this also centers around staff that are already paid to be part of Polkadot making extra money through Kaito rewards which they personally voted for through OpenGov.
Polkadot head of community Phunky revealed he only holds less than $9,000 in DOT and in a since deleted post was very public about selling his DOT winnings ($7,700~) from the Kaito leaderboard for USDC or BTC on Hydration. Phunky is paid by Polkadot and was additionally paid through Kaito for completing the responsibilities of his job.
Leemo is paid to be part of Polkadot yet is actively participating in Kaito making 2 streams of income. 1 for doing his job and 2 for doing his job that was already paid for, posting Polkadot. I don’t know why these people that are already paid need further incentives to post Polkadot. Especially when it is them that vote for the spend with extra power handed to them from Web3Foundation. The few times he posts his wallet I see a lot more hydration in it than DOT.
Lolmcshizz frequently shows he holds very little DOT by suggesting Polkadot Dca ETH, BTC, and USDC with treasury DOT while DOT is at all time low and these assets are not. These are not suggestions of a Polkadot holder, they’re suggestions that make DOT holders extremely unhappy as seen by the comments.
Giotto was very open about selling his DOT position and he was closely involved with Polkadot since its golden era. The needle hasn’t moved nearly at all since 2 months ago when he announced his sell giving credence to his position.
I’ll edit with more if I have time.
I’ll wrap up by saying I have never seen anyone from the paid Polkadot staff show off their DOT or any large significant holding. They’re all for BTC and other coins like Hydration but DOT is thrown to the side. Now there is talk of JAM token which Gavin won’t rule out completely which is like kicking a dead horse of DOT support. If those in the core team aren’t heavily invested in and aggressively investing in DOT I don’t see why the community or public would want to either.
I would not classify any of these people as having “paid positions” to work on Polkadot. To me, this would be a salaried member of the Polkadot Technical Fellowship, an employee of Parity, or an employee of Web3 Foundation.
Phunky is not “Head of Community at Polkadot”. He is head of protocol partnerships for Global Stake, which provides staking services for numerous ecosystems. https://x.com/ThePhunky1
Leemo works for Novasama Technologies. They develop software on Polkadot (like Polkadot Vault and Nova Wallet), but saying he works for Polkadot is like saying I work for Tim Cook because I write software on a MAc. https://x.com/LeemoXD
Similar with lolmcshizz. He is a founder of Hydration, a parachain, and does not work on developing Polkadot itself. https://x.com/lolmcshizz
Giotto bought some DOT tokens and later sold them, according to him. I don’t know what sort of business he runs or if he is employed by anyone, but he certainly never had a paid position working on Polkadot. https://x.com/giottodf
You are more level headed than I. I appreciate you and your response. I just want Polkadot to win.
In other words, Lemo is being funded by the Polkadot treasury.
Additionally, I believe he also serves in some ambassadorial capacity for DOT, doesn’t he?
That might be the disconnect OP was referring to.
I still think OP’s point stands: there appear to be very few genuine advocates - more mercenaries than missionaries - with limited trust (or perhaps just a sober view?) of Polkadot’s future.
This might be the consequence of Open Gov and its limitations.
That is what I am referring to. There is something seriously wrong with staff working to open new avenues of self enrichment when holders of DOT, the community, are pushed to the side and told to look at the long term.
I do not see equal or more value returning to Polkadot from what it spends and that is a very easy thing to fix. All spending that isn’t accruing more value than paid should be burned. Unless DOT becomes deflationary it will continue to rapidly fade from relevance.
You need users to be deflationary and to have users you need a value proposition; financial return or a product service the users need. Polkadot focuses its spending on essentially trapping new holders in an inflationary hellscape that spends to an extreme extent on things like JAM which Gavin admits anyone can copy, improve, and sell for the benefit of holders.
The losers are the people that buy DOT in this ecosystem. It shouldn’t be that way but it is and it will lead to a dead ecosystem with any modicum of long term thought.
Oops, I Mentioned [REDACTED] 
Sorry!
So let me try this again… in a totally regulation-safe format:
There’s currently no visible path to sustainability — and even less discussion about how we might ever get there.
The protocol is currently generating approximately [DATA REDACTED BY THE MINISTRY OF ACCEPTABLE DISCUSSION] each year. But that’s fine, because if we had 100 cores, each one would just need to bring in [SERIOUSLY, DON’T SAY THAT] every month to offset that.
Totally doable. Just like turning lead into gold.
Of course, those who’ve been around long enough are fully aware this isn’t going to happen — and are acting accordingly. Let’s just say… they’re reallocating their exposure at light speed.
Anyway! Sorry for mentioning The Topic That Shall Not Be Discussed.
Just wanted to mention here the JAM TOASTER actually was built as a cost-saving measure. It may sound extravagant (which I like to talk up a bit, because it’s fun), but in fact it was explicitly engineered to be as inexpensive as possible with the resources that were available. Cloud compute is very expensive, which is why the datacenter was a better option (and actually saves millions over a period of years), and we had access to alternate cooling solutions which were actually the best tool for the job.
Im genuinely glad to see that this post is still up and hasn’t been automatically removed. Maybe the Polkadot community is finally ready to face reality — which could be the first step toward a real rebound. I’ve published a detailed critique of DOT’s current situation in response to Gavin Wood in another thread. I strongly encourage you to read it.
We’re clearly living beyond our means. It’s urgent that we implement a results-based culture, especially in key areas like marketing. Goals must be clearly defined in advance, and DOT bonuses should be created and designed to reward performance, provided that the clearly established goals are met — just like in professional sports, where players receive bonuses based on their results.
Let’s take The Kus as an example. He reportedly earns $1 million a year funded by the Treasury for running a YouTube channel with just 30,000 subscribers. Let’s be very clear: I believe that all DOT, whether funded by Web3, Parity, or marketing bounties, is essentially treasury financing. All investors think the same way. It’s time to stop fooling ourselves by pretending that if the money doesn’t come directly from the official treasury fund, then it’s not treasury money. Is it his private channel? If so, is he receiving double compensation — one from the community and another through personal monetization? Granted, his content is high quality (short videos, strong storytelling, good thumbnails), but why isn’t this being published on Polkadot’s official YouTube channel with 600,000 subscribers? That would serve the common good, instead of personal interests.
I don’t know how it works elsewhere, but in France there is a mechanism of an automatic annual bonus paid to every employee. This bonus, which justifies a lower base salary, is locked in a dedicated account for five years. It serves both as an incentive for loyalty and as a form of forced savings: you cannot withdraw it immediately without losing the benefit it represents.
On Polkadot, one could imagine a similar system: each employee would have a certain amount of DOT “locked” (staked) for a set period. These DOT would generate an annual return through staking, and the difficulty of unlocking the funds — as well as the loss of potential returns in case of early withdrawal — would naturally encourage them to be kept. But it’s up to the ecosystem to create the economic and structural conditions that make people want to hold onto their tokens. That’s not happening right now.
There is no moral or logical reason to approve a certain number of proposals just because the treasury has funds. As a teacher, I know firsthand that humans are unconsciously inclined to validate a quota — for example, approving three out of ten projects just to feel balanced. But this kind of bias has no place here. Just because the treasury holds $100 million doesn’t mean we have to spend it.
Why do we never see low-budget proposals? Why is it always about asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars? In another thread, a marketing team achieved solid results with a much smaller budget. That proves it can be done.
Why are we only hiring developers in the U.S., where salaries can reach $21,000 a month? A developer in France or Asia would cost two to five times less. Polkadot is a global project — it is absolutely possible (and necessary) to cut costs drastically.
Some might say: “We work with whoever applies.” But that’s precisely the problem — the method needs to change. We need a completely new approach for handling proposals on OpenGov. Here’s one idea: Team X submits a proposal, which is then shared on a dedicated public discussion channel. Other teams (Y, Z…) can submit competitive counter-proposals at the same or lower cost. All proposals are then put to a vote, and the best one wins. This would introduce competition, encourage innovation, and ensure more efficient use of community funds.
Thank you for your thoughts, including your post on Polkassembly from a few weeks ago. I don’t think your wrong in your intentions. I think you’re bringing up points that can and should be discussed, as a form of oversight. This is the process of democracy.
One important thing I would like to express, and maybe you will agree, maybe you will not. I will try not to relate this to the forbidden topic. I put a few thoughts more freely here
But the main point is: the DOT token is NOT the product of the network. It is a facilitator to interact WITH the product.
Coretime is the product. It is the final, material resource which the Polkadot network delivers as a useful, valuable good. You must USE the DOT tokens to permit allocation of Coretime by purchasing bulk Coretime resource.
In that regard, Cores were being renewed just last week for negligible DOT and the recent General Sale of a core saw an increase orders of magnitude higher.
Elastic Scaling will be rolled out this year which is very likely to drive Coretime demand by unlocking the supply of the ability to use up to 12 cores. Considering this is a very new feature and we find ourselves in uncharted territory on how the systems and teams will choose to act, it may be a case where you may be focusing on the wrong things.
I don’t know if there’s a saying in French (you mentioned France) of something like, “It’s hard to see the forest from the trees.”
What you’re saying is extremely insightful and valuable. You’re absolutely right: Coretime sits at the very heart of our offering. As a retail operator, I often feel like I’m working with information diluted across the entire ecosystem. On closer thought, Coretime really is the product itself—but no one yet perceives the difference between a chain running on Coretime and one that isn’t.
From my retail perspective, Coretime only seems useful during peak activity periods. Since overall activity is currently very low, the average investor assumes it only matters if the network is drawing significant traffic—so without that influx, it feels like a waste of time.
I have a few fundamental questions:
What interests us as investors is the depth of the potential market — will parachains need to buy Coretime in order to survive?
Our narrative around the solution is unclear: investors don’t know whether JAM is the end product, whether Coretime is, or if the two are inseparable. Our initial messaging around Coretime was clumsy. Consider example:
Reframing these numbers makes the situation far more obvious.
To win over investors, we need to ditch the technical jargon and simplify: a clear, concise pitch resonates more than a dense, academic presentation. For example:
“Polkadot will soon have 100 Coretime nodes, each valued at 5 000 DOT. At today’s rate of 1 DOT = €5, that represents a potential monthly revenue of € 2 500 000. Over the next ten months, we project reaching € 2,5 million in monthly recurring revenue.”
That’s the kind of investor-ready pitch that builds confidence—and it’s exactly what we want to hear coming from Mr. Wood, not talk of giving our technology away for free.
I can answer a few questions based on my understanding.
Every parachain (L2, rollup, etc.) needs at least one core to be connected to the Polkadot network. Soon, parachains will be able to purchase more than one core and split their computational load across up to 12 cores. This enables a very high throughput of computation as well as reduces the block time of when the parachain can author a block. Some benefits arise from this:
If a parachain does not have at least 1 core, then they can purchase blockspace on-demand. That might not be a bad solution for SubSocial as a last resort, but Hydration would be crippled. If they have no method of getting blockspace, then they might choose to relaunch on Kusama if a core is available (which they currently are not). No core, no blockspace, no blocks.
I’m not going to speak to the cost and price, as that is still up to the larger market to decide. However, with the additional cores being opened as a recovery option - I believe that ultimately falls to RegionX not being fully live and enabling secondary market coretime sales in a trustless way. More information on that whole (ongoing) event can be found here
As for the sales pitch and Gav’s role in “selling” Polkadot. I think he’s been pretty clear that he is distancing himself from that kind of CEO role. Even stepping away from leading Parity and W3F. I think people should respect that decision as I’m sure he’s a lot happier tinkering on cool stuff than trying to run a company or organization. Parity and W3F have leadership and are doing their parts to support Polkadot. As for Polkadot’s leadership, that is OpenGov. It is not perfect, but it does demonstrate the capacity to change and adapt to new situations. In the long-run, I believe it will evolve into a more optimized system.
I think this ability for Polkadot to change and adapt to external (and internal) stimuli will ultimately be the reason why Polkadot will survive: because it is resilient from the world, including from the will of the people who created it.
I’ll need to spend half a day at least writing a response here. I will more than likely end up saying something that will get the post pulled so I will leave this here for now.
Hello, ser.
Let me correct the record on several of your glaring misconceptions:
I am not “Polkadot Head of Community”; I am the Head of Protocol Partnerships at GlobalStake (or as we are more commonly known as our community brand here in the ecosystem, Lucky Friday) I am not directly compensated by “Polkadot” in any way shape or form.
I earned those DOT from yapping about the ecosystem, yes. Does that mean I need to keep that DOT? No. This is like someone handing you cash for your hard work and then someone else telling you how to spend it. Anyone who knows me also knows that I am primarily a Bitcoiner. This is my 3rd cycle. I’ve seen this movie one too many times to not realize how alts of every stripe struggle to keep up with the king of digital assets. Bottom line: don’t you dare sell shame me.
Read the post again. “That’s only slightly less than what I keep STAKED in DOT” (which, FYI, means I have MORE than that number). I have a lot more DOT than that. I strategically keep that amount staked and always vote with 2314 DOT at 3x conviction to have a nice round meme number in 6942. The rest of my DOT is parked in Hydration, where it earns much more than I would if I simply staked. Who wouldn’t want to earn more yield?
The rest of what you said about my friends is also patently false. After having these ridiculous comments pointed out to me by my friends, I wanted to come correct the record. Hope this helps you get your facts straight, fren 
It does, in fact, appear that you are being directly compensated by Polkadot in some capacity for representing them, as shown here:
Nice to see that your job as Head of Protocol Partnerships at GlobalStake leaves you plenty of free time for side quests.
Fun fact: it doesn’t.
I have to make up all of my work on flights to and from events, during weekends and nights, AND I work another job on top of that, but thanks for passing judgment and making assumptions about how assiduously I give effort and provide value to any of the organizations I work with or alongside.
Again, “Polkadot” (you speak as if it is some sort of centralized “team” or entity) did not directly compensate me. The token holders did. Via our community treasury. Through OpenGov. Hopefully you exercised your right to vote NAY against my proposal.
Even then that was paid retroactively, not ahead of time. Not sure what else to say at this point other than be well and take care, ser 
I am not directly compensated by “Polkadot” in any way shape or form.
→
I am not compensated by Polkadot because it’s retroactive and goes through the treasury.
Have you considered a political career? Oh wait — working for Polkadot might actually count as one.
thanks for passing judgment and making assumptions about how assiduously I give effort and provide value
? Of course I’m judging. As a token holder, I’m supposed to finance your contributions.
