Polkadot OpenGov Referendum 70 post-mortem

Ecosystem
1

Continuing the discussion from Poll: Real-world applications on the App Store:

TL;DR
I was interested in contributing my subject matter expertise to Polkadot in exchange for reasonable compensation. As noted in the problem statement of the proposal, opportunity cost is a significant barrier to entry for successful independent developers. The community does not believe a best-practice focused Apple product SDK is important for the success of Polkadot.

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*Subscan API data does not contain 46 delegated votes. Subsquare tally indicates 232 valid votes, with 55 Ayes (39.6%) and 177 Nays (60.4%).

Funding model
Upfront work for retroactive funding, partial funding to move forward.

Timeline
Began learning/coding/building February 2022
Began participating on the Polkadot Forum May 23, 2023
Discussion phase began June 2, 2023
Referendum submitted July 23, 2023
Referendum failed Aug 7, 2023

Major challenge
Soliciting feedback from existing developers and community stakeholders.

Efforts

  • AAG

    • #40 (595 views)
    • #47 (325 views)
    • #51 (375 views)
    • #53 (203 views)

  • YouTube

    • 8 explainer videos (49:43 minutes total) with 110 lifetime views, average view duration of 0:59

  • Substack

    • Why Polkadot (6 views)
    • BUIDL on Bedrock (17 views)

  • Polkadot Forum posts

    • Rust, TypeScript, Swift, and Kotlin codegen and front-end SDK (129 views)
    • Finsig SDK for Apple Products [Common Good Treasury Proposal] (123 views)
    • Native vs cross-platform frameworks for mobile app development (97 views)
    • Developing for the WebKit browser engine (263 views)
    • Poll: Real-world applications on the App Store (130 views)

  • Twitter
    My personal Twitter account has 52 followers. The most viewed referendum thread received 537 views.

    The Finsig Twitter account has 15 followers. The most viewed thread received 1864 views.

    Twitter traffic was driven by The Kusamarian/AAG.

  • Markdown notes

    • One-page proposal summary (221 views)
    • About Finsig (99 views)
    • Why Polkadot? (73 views)
    • User experience (82 views)
    • Realistic expectations (74 views)
    • Referendum 70 Clarification (16 views)
    • #70 Finsig SDK for Apple Products [Common Good Treasury Proposal] (26 views)
    • The case against abstention (57 views)

  • Nay voter survey
    3.8% click through rate (3 respondents). Respondents asked about Android support.

Helpful resources and tools

Fin

4 Likes
2

Truly epic journey Fin. Sorry it didn’t work out. This post mortem is brilliant though. Could be a useful model to follow.

1 Like
3

You had my AYE and I hope this doesn’t stop you from continuing to build with Substrate.

I strongly believe that blockchain adoption hinges on mobile-first apps, and I hope you continue to explore how to make Polkadot more accessible on Apple devices.

4

Had to abstain mostly because of information overload plus time constraints (so many proposals and a new baby at home). I just couldn’t make an informed decision on this one.

5

a worthy writeup.

if you could get to a point where your proposal (or your proposal becomes a part of) an initiative that can directly shift the metrics that matter - those metrics are debatable, but lets just say coretime demand - then things will become more objective.

RFC: Incentive Pools is directionally right, but is optimising for a fairly narrow outcome, rather than a more general ‘public good’.

It is however a promising sign.

The more discussions move in this direction, the closer we will get to something approaching positive, rather than zero sum games.

sadly right now there is no incentive alignment between proposers and token holders, so it’s ultimately all performative.

6

Hi! I missed your proposal (it is vacation time), but you might be interested to know - we do have an SDK for Substrate for iOS. Works now for Unique, but can be extended to any parachain, and we’re working on a coalition to make that (and more, since SDK is for several languages) happen. If you’re interested to collaborate, take a look at Connection tools | Unique docs and contact the devs. Cheers!