Polkadot Games Bounty & Dot Play - Call To Community Action - Passing the Torch

Ecosystem
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Our year as Operators and Curators for the Games Bounty has come to a close, and we are ready to pass the torch! It’s been a year of rigorous experimentation, tireless advocacy, and creative thinking in terms of games publishing, business development and games tools creation for Polkadot. As we transition from this role, we do so with deep gratitude and even deeper conviction about what is now possible. The Dot Play BD / Operations Team (Angela Dalton, Eliza Jäppinen, Keshav Holani, James Purell) will be passing the torch, while the Games Bounty Curator Team (Angela Dalton, Nicholas Douzinas, Chrissy Hill, Bill Laboon, Joe Petrowski) will be stepping down. We are nominating Strindbergman / Daniel to run a Games Bounty, focused on gaming and esports, and to choose new curators. Strind has experience in gaming, esports and business development, the three most important ingredients. Bonus - he also knows Polkadot. Special shout out to James Slusser, who joins our Game Souk every single morning, and whom we nominate to continue in his passionate work for Polkadot gaming.

Signum Growth | Dot Play (aka Pop Dot Play, AD8 Dot Play) will continue as an Ecosystem Agent as one of many voices of Polkadot Gaming. This is not an ending. It’s a handoff. The team will continue to focus on managing the games publisher that we set up for the bounty - in other words, we will continue to manage the Roblox games, Nitro Nation, and others. Also, the Sortium tool, Powered by Polkadot, is up and running, with Undergraphics at the helm as an incredibly valuable Polkadot ecosystem agent, both in building new game development pipelines using his 3D art skills. Ilya has a vision for a simple tool set that enables speedy and beautiful 3D art creation and he plans to demonstrate S.A.G.E for easy game development in Polkadot. While the Signum Growth Dot Play brand will continue under Angela Dalton as a representative of Polkadot Gaming as needed, she will step back so that new entities with fresh leadership can emerge in Polkadot.

Specifically, the Signum Growth Dot Play and team will continue or transition in a few key areas:

  1. The Games Publisher initiative - continue to assist game studios as they navigate difficult game industry waters

  2. The Experience Exchange for Gaming in Polkadot, in collaboration with Mythical Pulse - transition the heavy lifting of building a community hub in Polkadot, while continuing to assist Mythical as needed

  3. Tools (S.A.G.E., Sortium) and The Polkadot Avatars Project - transition. We believe that S.A.G.E., built by Cedric Decoster of Ajuna Network, Polkadot Avatars, built by Ilya of UNDERGRAPHICS, and Sortium, Powered by Polkadot, for 3D generation are key tools in the toolbox to onboard mass market game developers. See our recent video here that we plan to spread far and wide in advance of a hackathon, ideally led by WebZero.

  4. Signum Growth Dot Play Polkadot representation - transition but continue to help, as needed. The GAMING DAY 2025, in collaboration with WebZero and Distractive at Permissionless, is an example of what we can achieve. We had an incredible line-up of 27 active participants—investors and game studios - and we discussed and debated for two hours and 15 minutes!

What we delivered, and why it matters.

Conferences and Creator Onboarding
Our team represented Polkadot at 15 conferences. From Slush to the Game Awards to investor dinners and teach-ins, we embedded the brand and mission of Polkadot Gaming in the minds of creators, investors, and studios. These were relationship-building moments, and the seeds planted are now yielding real traction across the board.

Game Publisher Business Model Implemented for Polkadot Treasury - See more detail below
The Dot Play publishing model brought 11 indie game studios into active development, each with revenue-sharing potential, aiming to return value directly to the Polkadot Treasury. Our goal was to tap into the high cash flow business model of games publishing to drive cash flow back to the Treasury, and effectively, return initial capital employed to the Treasury. See more detail on the Games Publisher below. So far, SpongeBob Tower Defense has launched to success and generated strong engagement among players. We continue to work tirelessly to do what we can to help our studios bring the rest to market.

The Polkadot Avatars Project

Polkadot Avatars aim to strengthen digital identity, enhance engagement, and integrate ecosystem assets into games, communities, and real-world applications. The initiative is led by Ilya Kurkin, a passionate 3D artist who has worked with Web3 game companies for the majority of his professional career. His specialization is optimizing game models and developing production pipelines. Ilya develops technically excellent 3D models for optimized gaming experiences and can handle pipelines from VR/AR, mobiles, to AAA, and has 10 years of experience in the design field. We have vetted Ilya through the Sortium AI engineers, who specialize in game development. The Polkadot Avatars Project’s next six months include:

  • Web mini-game integrated into the Polkadot Avatar platform

  • Polkadot Avatars collectibles reward system

  • Third-party games rewards to the PA app bridge system

  • Ongoing content (New assets, videos, animations, collaborations)

  • S.A.G.E. - Ilya will be working with Cedric from Ajuna Network to get some UGC games developed directly on Polkadot

  • Sortium - Ilya has been working closely with the technical team to get trained on how to use the tool to create Polkadot games and also how to train others

Community Strategy and Governance Infrastructure
We created a Game Advisory and Technical Advisory Committee structure, ran monthly community meetings, and participated in a community project, alongside Strindbergman, to pre-negotiate deals before they hit the Treasury. That shift—from price taker to price maker—is a subtle but transformative upgrade in how governance meets web3 gaming and esports.

Cultural Relevance and Global Positioning
We, alongside our Polkadot Ambassador to Roblox and our Polkadot Ambassador to Fortnite, put Polkadot in rooms it had never been in before, and in front of independent game developers who didn’t yet know how much they needed it. Our work positioned Polkadot not just as a technology—but as a partner that will protect developers in the future of their businesses. Our Roblox studio relationships have all been built on an ‘if blockchain, then Polkadot’ future. We were excited to learn that even some Flappy Wud community members joined from the Roblox community after hearing our arguments to independent game developers on the value of Polkadot, especially in an AI generative world.

The Games Publisher

We provide a wide array of services and funding to a portfolio of projects that demonstrate what the Games Bounty can achieve when aimed at the right targets. Here are the summary profiles of each:

Roblox Games (11 projects) - $640,000

A robust slate of Roblox-native experiences and tools ranging from tower defense to fashion game integrations, each crafted with monetization and community scale in mind. Reminder: Roblox is a platform of thousands of indie game developers that recently reported 111 million DAILY active users (DAUs). On the metric of time spent, it is roughly 2.5x larger than TikTok. Also, Roblox has more MAUs than the entire AAA gaming ecosystem combined - 2x Steam, 3x Playstation, 3x Nintendo Switch, 5x Xbox Consoles sold in the last decade. We genuinely look forward to a day very soon when we can break new ground and deliver on our experiment of building a cash flow model that returns capital to the Polkadot Treasury - stay tuned!

CM Games - Nitro Nation - $500,000

An established mobile racing studio with a proven player base, onboarded into Polkadot via Mythical as its games publisher. The games bounty loaned the studio ‘last mile’ financing to get the game to launch, with a “first position” payback. This means that when the game launches, Dot Play will be first in line to be paid back out of game revenues. Unfortunately, the game launch has been delayed but we continue to work behind the scenes to help the studio reach a successful launch of Nitro Nation.

Visible Realms - $300,000

Virtual Influencer AI Technology. This project built and launched the Polkadot-native virtual influencer “Dottie,” with AI-powered content and perpetual revenue sharing for the community. It’s an early glimpse of creator tooling at the AI frontier. Visible Realms is in the process of pitching the tool to games studios, as a faster and more affordable way to reach community. Dot Play has a revenue share in place with Visible Realms.

Sortium Tools for Developer Partners - $108,000

Developer-grade infrastructure and asset generation tools to support avatar systems, cross-game asset portability, and dynamic experiences. The tools have seeded both B2B and community-facing initiatives.

Evrloot - $75,000

A dark fantasy RPG, built fully on-chain with Polkadot technology. This team set a great example in building an authentic community who supported the studio fiercely. Unfortunately, Evrloot has paused operations until further notice.

UNDERGRAPHICS - $30,000 - see Polkadot Avatars Above

Creators of Polkadot Avatars and the ecosystem’s ambassador to the 3D artist and game design community.

Polkadot Unity SDK Renewal - $25,000

Tooling support to keep the Polkadot Unity SDK up-to-date and creator-accessible. The SDK is a foundation for studio and indie developer adoption.

Blockchain Games Association Membership for Polkadot Broadly - $15,000

Strategic ecosystem presence, networking, and developer visibility at industry events.

Blockchain Games Documentary - $5,000

Storytelling as strategy. This documentary effort brings a Polkadot cultural lens to the forefront of game development in the ecosystem.

It’s a Wrap!

As we look forward, we are energized by the opportunity to continue championing creators, scaling experiences, and opening new doors. Dot Play will live on as an Ecosystem Agent. The Games Bounty will soon be in new hands. Again, we nominate Strindbergman to lead the charge in gaming and esports given his clear industry expertise and knowledge of Polkadot and his ability to build a strong team around him. Make it wilder, bigger, more global. If we had to leave two mantras as our little fingerprints on the Polkadot gaming ecosystem, they would be 1) Merge onto the highway of behavior that is already happening - independent game developers who will love the ethos and purpose of web3 are building on independent game platforms - go there to find them! 2) Don’t just play games - play for keeps!

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I understand that the Dot Play team and current curators are passing the baton, with a new, more gaming & e-sport-oriented direction.

But this change seems to me to be quite profound in relation to the Games Bounty’s initial vision, which was to structure the Web3 gaming ecosystem as a whole (tools, studios, onboarding, partnerships).

For greater clarity and transparency, wouldn’t it be better to close the current Bounty once its commitments have been honored, and then propose a new Bounty dedicated specifically to gaming/e-sports?

This would provide a clear mandate, an appropriate budget, and avoid any confusion between the two approaches. It would also allow contributors to clearly understand the objectives and focus of the new initiative without ambiguity.

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I love strind and I think he would do amazing work.

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There should be a new proposal for the new idea. Just close the bounty. If someone with the experience, contacts and grind to pull it off wants to – they can put together a new proposal and get token holder approval.

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Thank you for your efforts and hard work.

Unfortunately, tangible progress is absent. Several projects stalled after receiving funding - Nitro Nation, for example. Even the successful title, SpongeBob Tower Defense, still has no Polkadot integration and probably never will.

It appears many developers are happy to accept funding, but feel little obligation to integrate Polkadot. Developers apparently see no benefit in introducing blockchain technology into their projects, which tells you everything you need to know.

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Dear Polkadot Games Bounty & Dot Play, @AD8dots ,
Thank you for the above overview and your work so far.

However, the above does not qualify as a formal report. This is a formal request to provide a report featuring total budget received and spent with reasoning for allocation of above funds to the specific projects.

Please include in the report the following:

  • Budget breakdown: Dot play BD & Operations team fees (can be the total amount but please indicate the FTE number per team member), Internal fees, Other operational fees, Exact project breakdown).
  • Furthermore, clearly state which projects are still active and onboarded on Polkadot, following the allocation of funds.
  • Please provide outcome and reasonable KPI’s per project to measure project success.
  • If certain projects, did not work out, please indicate the reasoning why and how do you think the ecosystem can learn from that.
  • Include a recommendation for the future of the Games & Dot Play Bounty considering the overall success of the program so far.

This report shall provide transparency and trust into the involved members activities and help the community as a whole learn from what went well and how to improve in the future.

Many thanks in advance to contributing to more transparency and efficiency in our ecosystem.

Sincerely.
Less trust, more truth.

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Yes, this is a reasonable approach, which I personally agree could be more straightforward and more efficient in many ways. It seems the future set would prefer the same, which is an important point in terms of accelerating a new leadership to whom we can pass the torch! We will discuss it with the current set of curators and come back shortly.

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Yes - as always, we are decentralized! Anyone can propose a new plan! We were making a nomination of who we thought would do best based on our in the trenches experience both in Polkadot and in gaming. Thanks for your reply.

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Sure, we can work on a report but unlike the future games / esports team, the current team was compensated by a combination of web3 foundation (the DF program) grants, and fully subsidized by Signum Growth. Since the former was paid many months arrears, Signum had to fully fund the upfront cash flow required to pay the team and all of the travel and expenses to conferences etc, followed by reimbursements with grants. The level of reimbursement by web3 foundation was determined after the operating team submitted detailed quarterly milestone reports, which were then challenged and questioned. After this back and forth process, W3F would then evaluate deficiencies relative to initial promises, and pay a quarterly payment based on the original contract.

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The video games business is like any other content business such as TV, film, music etc. It has a very high fail rate due to consumer preferences, and perhaps more importantly, due to the fact that it requires a high amount of cash to fund operations, especially marketing spend.

However, your points here (I think) are different. Nitro Nation isn’t out yet, but when and if it is released, it will be running on the Mythical platform so it will be in the Polkadot ecosystem and will contribute to transaction volume in the Polkadot ecosystem.

EVRLOOT unfortunately had to pause operations, and this was our shot to grow a Polkadot-native team that already had a very strong community and the start of a games business. The goal was to showcase it in the context of Polkadot Hub, as an example of one to follow. Many new studios coming to Polkadot want a home-grown example that worked. I wouldn’t count this team out, especially if, when Hub rolls out, the community can rally behind it!

On the Roblox efforts, I would think of the games publisher piece as an in-the-trenches Business Development team. BD takes time, but our thesis was that this form of BD would take a lot less time if we were helping studios create content by providing both tools and funding. Our target was independent developers with large audiences. All of these initial agreements included a Polkadot component and you can rest assured that they are not going to another protocol. Let’s see as it will take time and again, it will be easier as we can point to examples over time. The main examples we have now are all on Mythical - NFL Rivals, FIFA Rivals and now Pudgy Party!

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Hello @AD8dots,

Thank you very much for the detailed and prompt response.

As for recommendation for future roadmap for Games on Polkadot. Would you then consider the following strategy sensible?

  • invest in more smaller (indie) games
  • provide games studios tools and funding to develop game accessories or extensions on Polkadot
  • only invest in games, which would be running on Mythical platform to increase transaction volume on Polkadot
  • other?
    Furthermore, have there been any estimates on whether such an investment realistically can break even for Polkadot and what the minimum user and daily turnover would need to be? - useful for long-term games BD.

Also a more detailed explanation on why the whole games bounty & dot play team steps down at once would be appreciated, as this can be seen objectively as capitulation. So clarification on that part would help the community understand this decision better.

Many thanks in advance.