Intro
Dear Polkadot and Kusama Family,
It ain’t, no new drama. It’s a thought and an open door to discussion.
I’m writing this after the 2 summer events (Polkadot Decoded and Web3summit) and the many conversations I had here and there in the community.
I want to express my concerns and feelings that I have and I feel that the alarm should be sounded in the community now.
Polkadot is like Cinderella and midnight has struck, now we must wake up.
Most of the problems are probably known. I just feel that they are NOT being properly addressed, or I feel that we, as a community, are sweeping the issues under the carpet, avoiding discussion of what really matters.
OpenGov is sometimes a distraction, bringing drama that doesn’t matter much compared to the real issues we face.
If you’ve had a chance to step outside the Polkadot bubble, you’ll know that Polkadot is not in good shape compared to our competitors. It’s a reality.
We are probably not alone in this situation, I could say the same for Cosmos or Cardano (and you could name others).
NB: This is my personal opinion, as a DOT holder and Polkadot lover, and has nothing to do with Bifrost. The Bifrost team is happy to be based on Polkadot and will continue to deliver and support the ecosystem.
It’s time to calmly discuss the issues. There are many.
Too much chaos has been unleashed since Kusama and Polkadot went live. And OpenGov has not improved anything so far, quite the opposite.
https://x.com/thewhiterabbitM/status/1824010344756326805
Note: Original “Fact#1” was removed by moderators because it’s against the forum rules.
It alters the meaning of the message slightly, even if the DOT price has never been the main point.
Fact #1: We have the best tech
I do believe our technology is the best, I think we have some of the most talented people in the blockchain industry (Gav, Shawn, Joe, Rob…). I’m just sad to see that we’re slowly sliding into the void.
But how many startups have failed despite having the best tech?
Many, and we don’t remember them. We only remember the ones that do business, even if their tech is far from being the best (you might know a small start-up called Microsoft).
If you don’t convert marketing prospects,
If you have 0 sales,
If you don’t fit industry needs,
Then you just stay where you are. Small. Ignored. A niche.
Apple was like that for years, almost dead at some point, till the moment they started to release the good products and found the good marketing angle.
Do we want to be the next AWS ? The next Apple ? The next Linux ? The next forgotten blockchain ?
We need to choose.
https://x.com/seunlanlege/status/1824042909647180116
Fact #2: honesty in the numbers
Some may not agree on the numbers, but here is the way i count looking at polkadot.js.org
45 parachains/roll-ups, including:
- 5 system chains
- 8 dead/ghost chains or with few activity.
- 2 chains with their core business outside Polkadot (Astar with Sonieum and Manta with Pacific)
So talking about 45 “active” roll-ups on Polkadot is a bit of a lie.
30 active real chains is closer to the truth.
And the whole transaction activity is driven by 10 parachains not more.
Of course, the latest Messari report is promising, increasing numbers, but again, increasing numbers for a very few active parachains. Not for the whole ecosystem.
And Mythical will deceive people again about the health of the ecosystem, with growing numbers for sure in the next quarter, thanks to Mythical for the main part.
So yes, we are small, and we are not the winners so far. We are still small outsiders.
People pushing for DOT ETFs are just ouf of reality, in the twilight zone, there is no demand.
Fact #3: Missed opportunities
1 simple example: Polymarket vs Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist has been around for a long time. The prediction market business was there. So why hasn’t it taken off like Polymarket?
I think you could probably name other similar examples in the ecosystem:
- DydX chose Cosmos and not Polkadot.
- …
We have good ideas (product & technology), but we struggle to build a users base or we are unable to market it properly.
Just look at how the other ecosystems are adopting the scalability that Polkadot has designed in 1st place:
- Avalanche Subnets
- Ethereum restaking
- Cardano partner chains
And others here and there
Ethereum tried to build their ETH L2 narrative, but it’s falling apart, so far Ethereum is unable to scale. And most L2s are just a risky game for users with multi-sig, no fraud-proofs etc.
Restaking is another risky game, reinventing the wheel about shared security, but not natively and with a high risk/high reward narrative.
Polkadot vision ? What is this ?
It has become a meme these days.
https://x.com/irvinxyz/status/1825216720182874223
No one is able to answer this question, especially outside of our own Polkadot bubble.
But even inside it, i’m not even sure we really know what we want to do, just see how Marketing is done on Polkadot. It’s going nowhere.
JAM is a far vision, it’s a grey paper, a piece of theory so far, which will land in 2 or 3 years, a millennium at the Crypto scale.
JAM - Research.
JAM has no short/middle term added value let’s be clear.
- It’s too complex for basic users understanding.
- It’s not answering any needs of fixing any current limits of Polkadot 1.0 (and 2.0):
100 TPS for Polkadot 1.0 - current numbers
100k for Polkadot 2.0 (theory)
1M for JAM (theory)
It’s like we are trying to design a brand new Airbus A380 for 500 people, and at the same time our Polkadot flight company is having barely 10 people per flight.
While doing Research is obviously good, I won’t deny that, we need to focus on the business side in the short/middle term.
It’s less sexy for sure, it’s less cypherpunk but it’s vital.
Where is Parity ?
1 meeting per year at Decoded. Have you ever seen Bjorn being active on socials ?
I would expect the Parity CEO to be more active, engaging the big accounts in the industry on socials, talking more about Polkadot at the main events.
Has Parity defined a clear Polkadot roadmap, showing what we want to do and what Polkadot wants to be ?
Just look at Solana in comparison: they start ruling the industry. They adopt the Microsoft business style. Every small project you win, it’s a win. Every team you support is a win.
Build regional teams in the main population area for sales support.
So yes, Parity is currently part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Parity should be driving solutions.
Decentralized marketing: an initial mistake
Marketing was a dissatisfaction for months, it was shared by many teams, then Parity decided to turn it 100% Decentralized.
Like if Parity was saying: deal with it. Not my problem anymore.
And so it became the community’s problem. But we are not prepared for this, there was no smooth transition.
And more important, WE HAVE NO GLOBAL MARKETING STRATEGY.
We are a chicken with no head.
We have no product to market because we have no vision.
As i can understand that decentralization is good, can everything be decentralized ?
Marketing agencies can, for sure, as executors.
But where is the man in charge ? Where is the man saying we need to market that, we need to target these people more than these ones, we need to push this use case in top priority more than this one ?
Without any clear direction/leader, we are going nowhere.
I tried to sum up the way i see Marketing here below, before, now and after decentralization:
Marketing should still be top to bottom:
- Parity has the lead, Parity build the story, Parity build the vision.
- Community selects Marketing agencies in a competitive manner to implement the story.
- Marketing agencies execute the Plan with KPIs.
Instead of removing the whole Marketing department, they could have keep 2-3 people and sign a proper Marketing leader with a consequent experience.
OpenGov & dramas
I know we are easily giving the excuse that OpenGov is still in its infancy, but let’s be clear with the failures:
- Build constant tension & jealousy in the community.
- Negative image to VCs & projects: grifters heaven but builders nightmare.
- History repeats after Kusama. Treasury is depleted.
- Few expenses on building or tools compared to Marketing.
- No budget/No plan/No Strategy.
- Few accountability: it’s very hard to follow the results of funding.
- “Trust me bro i’m gonna do this” over efficient results accountability.
- No efficiency.
Polkadot Treasury:
I have some hopes in Optimistic funding.
We introduced stablecoins as payment currency for proposals, it’s a good thing.
I also would like OpenGov to have more parameters for the proposers.
Some ideas in my mind:
- Requestor should be able to have a parameter to request a percentage up-front - The rest after milestones or promises are delivered and check by a Collective of people. Funds would be locked and unlockable only after the Collective validate it.
- Tracks should be usable only depending on the age of your account. Meaning you can’t be a newbie requestor and request 1M DOT on the Big Spender Track. If you are a newbie you need to be backed by an older account, meaning this guy engages his reputation towards the community. More community reputation
- Comments should probably be also restricted to accounts older than 1 month minimum to avoid spams and insults by fake accounts.
HAs elections
The intention to reform the HAs programme was good, I think we all agree on that point.
Unfortunately, the new process was started without any plan (again) because we are doing everything in a hurry based on whale orders.
It’s not because one is barking louder than everyone, than the wolf pack dogs should follow him like zombies.
We can all sit down, spend some time to think about the process, write it down, improve and validate it.
Then only you run the show.
Results:
- HAs begged whales to place the decision deposit on their behalf, creating a potential “Deputee-Boss“ suspicious link. No one should be restricted to participate in HAs election, the decision deposit should be reasonable.
- HAs are elected but they have no salary to begin their duties
“Public markets”
I was wondering if it wouldn’t be possible to have “Public markets”.
Of course, it would probably require a plan & a defined global strategy, which we don’t have as described before.
At the end of the day, we are a decentralized blockchain, decentralized means public, in the sense of ‘common good for the people’.
OpenGov is about spending the Treasury’s money, a common good money, not our money, so it has to be spent efficiently. Exactly what we expect when we pay taxes to our national governments.
How do the Public administrations deal with their needs IRL, to avoid corruption and paying extra costs?
They open a Public market where companies apply for. You need competition to have the best deal, in term of rendered services and price.
Let me give some examples.
Ex1: Sports sponsorship - The Car racing/Football cases
Goal: Avoiding the “I would have preferred this sponsorship but we already funded the 2 previous” issue, overpriced services, and “out of Polkadot needs” sponsorships.
Let’s imagine a global Marketing strategy was defined: Polkadot needs a 1-year Sports Sponsorship for brand-awareness and Call-To-action.
- Budget is 3M$ maximum.
- Requirements are: X, Y, Z
- Polkadot proposes Agencies to come to OpenGov and compete on a “Public Market”.
Start Date = 2 months in the future. - Agencies come and propose different sponsorship projects:
- Targeted audiences (anyone, devs, companies, VCs…)
- Markets (Asia, US, LATAM…)
- Price
- Expected growth (KPIs)
- Community starts discussing the different proposals, comparing them.
- Agencies adjust their proposal during the voting period, because they see their prop is not the best: too expensive, low outputs, bad community feedback, wrong market.
→ Agencies are competing. - Voting decides the best, winner takes all.
Ex2: KYT - The Chainalysis case
Goal: Avoiding the “I will propose till I pass” issue, and overpriced services.
Let’s imagine a global Financial strategy was defined: Polkadot needs KYT to strengthen financial opportunities for DOT.
- Budget: No maximum.
- Requirements are: X, Y, Z
- Polkadot proposes companies to come to OpenGov and compete on a “Public Market”.
Start Date = 2 months in the future. - Companies come and propose their project to fulfill KYT needs:
- Price for the service,
- Scope
- Companies portfolio
- BD opportunities
- Community starts discussing the different proposals, comparing them.
- Companies adjust their proposal during the voting period, because they see their prop is not the best: too expensive, low outputs, bad community feedback, no enough BD opportunities.
→ Companies are competing. - Voting decides the best, winner takes all.
So what now ?
Polkadot dark sides
We can list some events we suffered:
- Early failures (Moonbeam bridge hacks and Acala aUSD parameter error)
- Projects leaving or already left:
- Nodle → zkSync
- Manta → ETH L2
- Astar → Polygon CDK → Optimism Superchain
- Mangata → Eigenlayer
- RMRK → Base
- Composable → All but Polkadot
- Lack of block space flexibility (Parachain auction problem)
- OpenGov Infancy
- Lack of Interoperability: why don’t we have links with Cosmos and Cardano ? Snowbridge took years.
Parity is accountable for the projects leaving the ecosystem.
They should communicate about it, draw lessons and activate actions.
Have you heard Parity about the projects leaving the ecosystem ?
No, never.
Have you heard Parity activating a plan to remedy the public known issues ?
No, never.
Polkadot bright sides & hopes - Polkadot 2.0
We can still turn the table, yes we can.
Some points i heard here and there (including on Parity side) and points to be delivered soon:
- Introduce Trade-offs about decentralization if needed: 99% of users don’t care about decentralization, they use centralized chains because it’s fast, because the UX is good. Same projects, 99% don’t care about decentralization, they just want users.
If a project doesn’t want to be fully decentralized on Polkadot: why not. Go for it. Use only 1 collator, get 0.5s block time, and forget censorship resistance. It should be flexible.
- Product offering should fit market needs: you want to be Solana ? Go for it.
https://x.com/bkchr/status/1818027282688352591 - Hyperbridge: more interoperability
- We have good projects on Polkadot, we should embrace them and help them to grow: Mythical, Neuroweb, Frequency, Aventus, KILT…
- Defi: we are small in numbers but we are builders, chearish Hydration, Bifrost or Acala (slowly rebuilding trust). The main issue is Liquidity for sure, but we can expand our products and bring more users. We need interoperability.
- Let’s build open-source benchmarks to have more aggressive marketing about the TPS narrative for instance
Polkadot 2.0 introduces many expected changes for the infra:
- Asynchronous backing
- Coretime
- Elastic scaling
- (+ Snowbridge)
Polkadot Pay is coming (and Nova wallet payment too). We should leverage these apps as if it was our last breath: the stablecoins market is huge, not sexy but huge (think of TRON).
Let’s just open the doors for people to on/off ramp stablecoins in the ecosystem, with cheap transactions and UX-friendly use cases.
So, WE NEED TO TAKE ADVANTAGES OF THESE GREAT FEATURES, and bring some business to Polkadot. Projects will bring users. And users will bring activity.
We need to shift our mindset and have pragmatic plans, efficient spendings.
Solana has sales teams, they build their brand over a doubtful infrastructure, but they have a business plan and build trust over companies to start their business on Solana.
Conclusion
No, Polkadot is not dead, but slowly dying.
Do we want to become a “Research Chain” ?
Building the technology that others will use in the future under fancy names without naming it Polkadot.
Or, do we want to have activity and build strong businesses around Polkadot ?
That’s the main question.
Some might say they are fine with the idea of being a research chain, a pure web3 chain with max cypherpunk ethos, but if that’s the case it should be told to the community, because the community has expectations about the DOT price.
A research chain won’t add value. Only business can do that.
We are a small ecosystem in term of numbers, Parity should talk with Cosmos, Cardano, Near, and try to form an alliance.
We are all small in numbers compared to the Ethereum ecosystem. But Stronger together.
Cardano has BABE + GRANDPA, why don’t we have a trustless bridge with Cardano yet ?
Why is anyone building on IBC to connect Polkadot and Cosmos ? (Composable never pushed the logic till the end). With NEAR ?
We should not stay isolated. We need more TRUE interoperability, not only inside Polkadot.
And the most important point, PARITY.
Parity has to wake up.
Yes we are decentralized, but decentralization is not an excuse for Parity’s failures.
They have to be the driver of the car, communicate more, build the vision, have bonds with the community (HAs ?) and define Polkadot strategies that decentralized entities can execute.
Polkadot cannot stay like a chicken without a head.
Cheers and long live Polkadot.
