Hi Irena you said “With zero accountability there can be no trust.”
I get your point, but Polkadot works very differently from traditional systems.
So I’d really like to understand your view better.
Can you explain, in practical terms, how you think accountability should work on Polkadot?
Not in theory, but concretely, considering how bounties, curators and on-chain processes actually function.
To keep it simple, here are a few questions that might help clarify your idea:
What exactly should people be accountable for? (delays, quality, missed deliverables?)
Which roles do you think should be held accountable? Curators, proposers, teams?
What kind of proof or evidence would you use to decide if someone did or didn’t do their job?
Would your accountability system be on-chain or off-chain (legal contracts, external audits)?
How would you prevent abuse, false accusations, or political attacks?
I’m not trying to challenge your point, I’m genuinely trying to understand how you imagine accountability fitting into a system where everything is permissionless and curators aren’t employees.
I’m waiting for the moderators to call out your post of breaking the Code of Conduct.
But jokes aside, I personally think the accountability issue is simple – exactly because treasury recipients aren’t subject to traditional accountability guardrails in the real world, they should be more open to answer all accusations and questions in more details than “ordinary people”. This is similar in the real world – in many countries, politicians will have a much higher bar if they want to accuse others “defamation”, because it’s in the public interest that they get questions, and they are “public figures”.
Those answer seeking activities are exactly what many community members were doing for the past few weeks in the marketing bounty deep dive. And this very activity, which is honestly one of the only activities right now we have that ensures some accountability on Polkadot, is exactly what moderators are censoring, with potential collusion.
If you haven’t read the original thread, I highly recommend you do. That was what eventually triggered the closure of the marketing bounty:
There needs to be a closer and more systemic collaboration between the product teams and coordination subjects. And this should not be just for control and communication, but also support. The ecosystem growth efforts need to be aligned with the product teams and supporting where possible, including initiating projects necessary for the success of current funding strategy. This includes operational accountability and I believe initial funding should be staked with parts released only after achieving set milestones.
The curators need to be accountable to the community - htf is it possible, that the Marketing bounty team just disappeared into thin air? They made sure the payments went out, but the last report is from September 2025 and no one cares? (not even mentioning that there are no data, no links, no proofs in the report, just ‘enhanced A, supported B, …) There was zero presence of anyone in the referendum, they didn’t even tried once to argue their work being done well. The current system apparently doesn’t work.
The argument that it’s impossible to objectively judge whether job was done well or not is honestly only based on an opinion of folks who never worked in larger organisational structures. There comes the borrowing from the traditional systems, the wheel doesn’t need to be reinvented. And yes, it’s KPIs and it’s reporting cycles, status updates, documentation, audit trails and all that boring but honestly necessary steps.
The accountability system should be both offchain - legal contracts with a clear scope of responsibility (people cannot be accountable for something that is unclear) and onchain, with parts of payments staked and released/slashed based on the work (not being) done.
The data also needs to be regularly evaluated to be able to verify program contribution to outcomes, with the data driven rationale for changes being communicated to the voters. - Is that possible now? Are there actually data available from the bounties? Who will drive the evaluation? At least this could be a mistake to learn from.
We can’t prevent false accusations and political attacks - but we can aim for objective outcome as long as there are data available proving one or this other side being in the wrong. If nothing gets done, we’ll forever cycle in the ‘I won’t say anything against you because i might need you later’ and if so, only grifters will stay here.
I have some ideas on how to make everything more efficient, given that the PCF exists, but the effort to create a functional framework for all OpenGov processes must be a joint effort. I’ll probably start a thread about it.
Not here to repeat what has been discussed many times in other threads.
Simplifying my thoughts:
There was not direction until very recently. At least now, if a proposal is not aligned with W3F, 130 million votes are going to vote NAY. Maybe is not a direction but a “don’t go this way”. A bit of civilization entered the system. A set of rules and shared codes are needed for every society/community to prosper: the wild west favors early movers, political players and abusive actors. Reminder here, that the pool of resources is not privately owned by these actors, but it is shared - as a digital common - to every DOT holder.
This lack of direction, allowed work to be done in random directions and areas. Not doubting if the work was done or not done, the real question is: it was useful? Is this what Polkadot needed? Important to underscore, as it is a propositive system, the providers propose the task to be done ( which favors the provider, not the client).
We lack standarised metrics and objectives ( lack of direction or strategy appears again ), so it is very difficult to evaluate. Also, the system relies a lot on self reporting, which of course it is a trap by itself.
I get your point, but Polkadot works very differently from traditional systems.
Without the aim of entering a flame war, I tend to disagree with this, at least a this stage of openGov. Money was granted to do work, work needed to be done. The problem was nobody was there to check the work and to stablish which work had to be done.
As a decentralised system, without a nominal authority, works by influence and trust. Some actors proposed paths and plans of action - but lacked the political capital or the methods to enforce these plans. Which in these cases of an open-ended ecosystem - without the vertical structure of a corporation or the trust and support structure of a tribe -, starts and ends in project being or not funded. Some can argue that digital identity and cultural belonging can be a factor - but it is matter of time until it falls into the scope of labour, for the topics we are discussing here.
In conclusion, a set of checks and balances ( both on and off chain ) should be introduced to the system - just for the sole survival of the system itself.
It is hard to understand why we need to “rethink” checks & balances framework from the ground up.
OpenGov is not that new, there are hundreds of projects that received money, reported spending and answered questions. This iteration of Marketing Bounty is also not the first iteration. Previous MB reported every single expense and invoice, this one did not.
With that said, we have an internal consensus on how checks&balances are performed.
Projects that are developing super secret technology are typically privately owned/closed source, while there is a consensus that whatever is financed from OpenGov should be either open sourced or in any possible way owned by community. This means:
Every expense is reported, period.
Accountability: with bounties that operate with real world/Web2 businesses and where DOT gets translated into fiat, utilised to pay invoices under contracts and appended tax operate in a regulated world. This means:
Don’t do anything you would not do in fiat or face the consequences.
The main problem we are facing today is not lack of consensus on what should be reported and what shouldn’t. The main problems are:
Recent problematic projects failed to respect the public consensus and did not report all the expenses.
Recent problematic projects executed passthrough transactions deeply in regulated territory (contracts signed, deadlines set, enforceability in actual judicial system)
Checks&Balances appointed community members such as DV’s, notified those projects that reached reporting consensus is not being respected and required additional information.
Additional information was not provided.
Recently problematic projects proceeded to mobilise a body of multiple community members, ranging from media,bigest DAO and Parity representatives to repress the Checks&balances process with excuse of “tone is too harsh”
This same body failed to publicly recognise the fact that problematic projects are not respecting publicly reached consensus on reporting.
Mobilised body then proceeded to utilise their established channels to smear DV’s and individuals, in order to discredit them and use that as an excuse not to provide explanations and reports.
None of the leadership nor from Parity or W3F stood up for DV’s, the smear video is still on youtube.
I would personally be ashamed of that. I would be ashamed to go to forum and talk about “tone” while there are multiple videos posted by a local bully that smear appointed DV’s who are doing their job (for free).
I am ashamed to be part of ecosystem that simply turns the other way. We came to the point where everyone knows where the problems are, but due to self censorship, cannot cast a clear signal of support, because it directly affects their future funding efforts.
What a sh*t show.
Censorship will be the final nail in the coffin for dot. Also using a treasury funded youtuber (Jay) to discredit specific people posting in the forum is abysmal.
I’m out of here.
Maybe I’ll check back in 5 years… but I doubt much will have changed.
The Gini Coefficient has always been a problem with Polkadot, and even I am getting disillusioned from staying in this community.
What’s new with Polkadot? Is there LITERALLY anything new? Like new parachains being onboarded (no of course not). Anything currently on Polkadot is suffering greatly, there’s no liquidity on Assethub, now I come on to find out that Treasury funds are being mishandled and posts are being censored. Okay. So much for decentralized internet then too lol.
There is literally no social media impact and this is literally the only venue to actively talk about stuff. Start censoring this one now and see what happens. People have lost hope and I’m getting there too. You guys can all circle jerk each other about how great everything is going, but it is not. I left here disillusioned and came back needing a rebuff and leaving again disillusioned.
