Hi.
First of all thanks for the very good points. I share the opinion that we need an actionable product strategy. I also think that the parachains are definitely a strength of Polkadot and that they did not receive enough attention. Neither in storytelling nor anywhere else.
Where I disagree is on the point that Parity should or even could do anything. Parity has become a pure tech company and has proven to be not so good in marketing and BD. The responsibility is now at the W3F. In the best sense of decentralisation they have set up the DF programme, which funds companies and projects taking care of these efforts. These entities have clear objectives, linked to milestones and it will be easy to detect low performers and cut their funding.
For a product strategy I think the body to speak with would be either the W3F (if you want it centralised) or a widely accepted group of trusted people in the ecosystem. But not Parity.
Hi Hope, where can i find the main discussion on the Polkadot GPS please? Looks v interesting. thanks @HopeClary
Fair point, save for the fact that the DF applications were reviewed by a lot of people with major Parity ties and a lot of the proposal guidance & subsequent funding went to ex-parity employees, with other proposals barely getting feedback or the opportunity to iterate.
Would it not make more sense for either Parity to be involved or not, rather than have one foot in the game and one foot out?
thanks for putting this together ThomasR. A lot of great insights and very comprehensible flow charts adding value. I hope this is another step in the right direction though worry that not as many people will see these sort of efforts as they deserve. Double down and request a slot on AAG perhaps?
I agree! My understanding is, it was shared @ Decoded. I planned on being in attendance for this community discussion, but I had the rare opportunity to attend a portion of the Polkadot JAM The Gray Paper presentation. Since I read the “The Gray Paper”, I couldn’t pass up that opportunity!
All that being said… My understanding is we are awaiting HA (Head Ambassadors) plan. Here is the link within forum that I found Collective-Based, Multi-Asset Treasuries - #39 by tomi
I must say I am anxious because I love this roadmap of sorts! It is easy to see where my personal skill sets are stronger and how I could contribute. I shared it to see who has interest, like myself? The feedback I am receiving is that everyone is awaiting the elected Head Ambassadors plan. Traditionally I am a doer so it’s a bit difficult for me to wait. I am used to being part of a team where people execute. Since I am not part of a team, I am trying to focus on things I can do. Hope that makes sense?
Here is an additional link this came up… If you click on the search (top right of the screen), put in Polkadot GPS and you can see how many times it has been shared here. Seems to go back to December 2023 
Decentralized Futures: Sustained Growth for the Polkadot Ecosystem Community, Developers, & Ambassadors with ThrivEco - #20 by tomi
Hi Hope,
I have looked over GPS and have met with Tomi briefly to understand it. The way I see it, is, this is a great vision and guiding document that helps us understand what the future could (or should) be like. Maybe in a regular company it’s what a consulting firm would give the management, and then the management would try to implement over the next 1-2 years.
It does a great job of categorizing the potential needs and capabilities of Polkadot and putting things into buckets in a sensible way. When I look forward it helps me shape a future state.
There are two challenges in implementation that I see:
First, for an initiative / restructuring to be successful, you need leadership from people who buy in and can bring the organization on board. And you need manpower to implement it. This is part of execution that needs to follow strategy to make it successful in practice. We need to find more leaders who can buy in and own the implementation if this is to be successful in top-down way (as presented), and this is difficult to find.
Second, this is a decentralized organization, not a centralized one. It’s not really possible for someone to declare that this is THE path, by fiat, and then start metering out roles to make it happen. Even if someone were to pass a WFC around this, it would still be very unclear how this would happen in reality. So much of Polkadot’s ethos is decentralized (in order to be more resilient), so it would be better to figure out how to move in this direction in a decentralized way.
Finally, on the topic of waiting for the Head Ambassadors plan, I have a hope and wish that ambassadors can be leaders in the ecosystem that bridge different groups, bring new contributors in and catalyze people to action. But in reality, and even in Tomi’s GPS, the “ambassador program” is a tiny part of the picture - maybe 1% of all the things that are listed there. There is no need to “wait” for the ambassador plan since so much more needs to be done.
Instead, can I ask you to step up as a leader and take forward whatever part of this you can bite off and you’re personally motivated to solve? We need to instill in the culture of Polkadot the practice of seeing problems and then taking ownership of solving them. Would love to work on some of these open problems together, will DM you.
Thank you for the open discussion @ThomasR and @HopeClary for your excitement to move ahead.
Here is an extended version of Polkadot GPS that goes into a bit more detail:
I like the accountability, responsibility and exexution division. However, I disagree that Parity is accountable for anything anymore.
As mentioned above, the ship has sailed with Parity calling the shots. We should let them focus on the tech. As for W3F, they can help activate the ecosystem, incentivize action and coordinate progress but we still shouldn’t expect them to be the bosses that come save the day.
Having said that, I have found it painfully difficult to be an effective ecosystem agent without representing some company or otherwise having some formal authority.
Ideally OpenGov would be Accountable, the Fellowships Responsible and Individuals/Teams would Execute.
Without a formal structure in place, OpenGov will continue to have issues and things will just get nastier as informal “leaders” dominate.
I hear you 100%. I have gone to several people and hear the same thing that everyone is awaiting the HA’s.
I will disagree regarding the structure of the document as it can be reimagined that the fellows categories are ambassadors. Its not black and white.
There are processes that are simple for team to facilitate direction and strategies. I would be happy to share these processes when on a team. For now it appears the HA is the team.
To @Tomi’s point below it has been extremely difficult as a new comer here. I have spend a lot of time on my love for Polkadot. At this time my focus will not be to develop this program on my own and not being compensated for my work. I appreciate you providing me my answer that a comprehensive strategic plan for Polkadot will not be part of the HA initiative.
All the best!
Today I read this post again to be able to give an opinion. In recent months I have read several posts here that are so good and really add a lot of value, they mention good ideas but now, they just stay there, nothing more is mentioned about it until another person makes another post and the cycle repeats itself. I wouldn’t want it to happen again with this one,
That is why of all the points that you have highlighted, I would like to highlight this one and know if it is possible to start a conversation that leads us to expand this point in order to bring it to OpenGov for a vote and it can be implemented.
I understand your feelings and frustration - Also actually I enjoyed reading the public markets part, which sounds like an extension of the “request for proposal” approach, recently mentioned in the Heavy Hitters episode from the Kusamarian.
Let me try to answer marketing topics as one of those “marketing agency” representatives.
We are a chicken with no head.
Starting here, I think the problem is that information is unevenly distributed and that you don’t know how Parity and Web3F influence marketing direction. They don’t do it as the boss rooster in the chicken coop, but as a larger member in a school of fish.
Yes, in a hierarchical organization, having a boss who is leading the way could create more certainty about the marketing strategy, but this would counter the overall goal of decentralizing decision-making and execution. It would be like having a micromanaging boss who promises you on Monday to have more autonomy, but on Thursday, he would take back the reins.
From how I see the current trends, we have approached the end of decentralization turmoil and have entered the re-organization stage, such as with the different BD teams coming together, bounties being restructured and OpenGov spending the summer with reflections on HA’s and marketing. Among the re-org was also that Distractive received the DF grant and the job to realize the website, among other things.
I can share the insight from our day-to-day work that Parity and the Web3 Foundation are taking a joint leadership approach by setting targets to achieve and allowing independent execution.
A hands-off approach was probably needed for Parity/W3F not to get heavily involved because we might not have finished the website in <6 months if we’d discussed every page or design decision.
Your expectation of having a global marketing strategy is also unattainable if Parity and Web3 Foundation owned marketing 100%.
How could someone in Berlin or Zug decide what’s best to do in Brazil, Indonesia or Singapore?
Instead, each marketer has to choose one aspect of the grand set of marketing tools and apply it to the audience they see that could benefit from the Polkadot ecosystem.
An even better approach would be if a bounty would apply your Public Markets approach, sync with us and our plans, and choose the best next steps, campaigns, and service providers to complement our work.
Some of our work also empowers every other marketer in our ecosystem to make better decisions in their local market.
Our Ecosystem Resource Center was developed together with Web3F & Parity to deliver the marketing tools to whatever campaign you might have.
Here, you find a narrative, messaging strategy, brand kit, different guidelines for content, events, OpenGov proposals, reporting, etc. You can also get support for reach on X and feedback on whatever you are preparing.
Generally, at Distractive, we focus on explaining what you can currently use Polkadot for TODAY. This means that Polkadot 2.0 and Jam are not yet part of our messaging scope, but the existing dApps, Parachains, and projects are.
You can find out more in our blog!
If you have questions, please reach out or suggest what we can do differently to support the joint global marketing strategy executed by our community & ecosystem.
I’ll skip reading all the above but…
All blockchains are middleware.
You’ll rarely see advertisments for middleware, except Oracle, because middleware itself is not an application, so advertising middleware makes little economic sense. Ergo, advertising should’ve little impact upon polkadot.
Instaed, if you want to promote some middleware, then you must build something cool using it, and advertise that end user application. You can do buisness development for middleware, but you still need demonstrations before people pay attention.
All that matters is to get off your butts and build something that an end user might enjoy using. DeFi does not count.
“Build something that end users might enjoy using” does not necessarily require coding, because one killer blockchain applicaiton is “open world colelctable card games”. If you’re able to think clearly about what makes a game fun, then you can do that instead. If you’re unable to do that, you can still draw art for something who can do that.
We’ve a matrix room foir discussing blockchain games, but we should really open a category here probably. I & others are happy to help explain how to do things, including how VRFs can make the “open world colelctable card game” play pretty smooth. A tower defense game can easily be turnned into an open world collectable card game for example.
We definitely need a reform to OpenGov and rethink the accountability model. Just think about scrum development, you would have scrum teams, meetings, dashboard for task/progress tracking, etc. At least we have to build a system that can track the progress of the project, then the community gets to decide whether or not the project is going on well, whether or not we should spend more money on the project. That is not something new, just very basic project management.
Also, why we rely on OpenGov for almost anything? It’s not the time to sleep in the fantasy bubble of being “decentralized” while we’re thousands of miles away from a truly web3 world. We need strong leadership, even if voted democratically, people need a direction, a path, that can guide us. What is the vision? What is the roadmap?
That’s two biggest problem I see for Polkadot, and needs to be fixed ASAP. The accountability model for treasury funding, and strong leadership.
Hello. In my role heading up external comms at Parity, I thought it might be helpful if I commented on our new status within the Polkadot ecosystem.
All the “go-to-market” initiatives that drive the Polkadot ecosystem are very much NOT part of our remit any more. These effectively include all marketing functions, plus sales (business development), and partnerships.
We have a little over 100 engineers on our staff (and are actively recruiting more), plus less than 50 people covering all other functions, including operations, legal, finance, recruitment, HR. It is a much more agile operation than it was this time last year, and our efforts are confined to directly upgrading the existing Polkadot tech stack, considering and developing future iterations of it (such as JAM), and providing a framework of support to help these fabulously talented engineers go about their jobs in the most effective way.
Of course we communicate with other teams closely, be they recipients of Decentralized Futures funding (such as Distractive, Velocity Labs, BlockDeep Labs and others) or the established parachains.
For you to say “Parity has to be the driver of the car” as you do in your closing remarks suggests you have not quite taken on board what the Parity of 2024 is compared to what the Parity of 2023 is. We very much cannot be seen to be, nor is it in our remit, to “build the vision and define Polkadot strategies”. However, we will continue to help others fulfil their own remits, and as one happy family we will see Polkadot thrive together.
Thanks for opening this thread.
In my opinion our main strength, R&D, may be the root cause of our down spiral. It is understandable, Dr. Wood is an R&D powerhouse on his own, and in the lack of anything else, his thoughts are leading our ecosystem.
We need balance between R&D and go-to-maket to succeed, and it is clearly not there.
What should be our main ecosystem KPIs? Number of Parachains? Number of Commits? or perhaps, new active accounts? TvL? Number of bridged ecosystems? transaction per second?
What are the key use-cases to support, implement or grow? Call for projects?
There is no go-to-market direction, centralized or decentralized. Improving documentation, or developer experience do not qualify as strategic goal.
There is a lot of grey in OpenGov, as was mentioned before, but with a good go-to-market strategy, making better use of funds would be easier.
Parity is not to blame, but if Parity had delivered the same go-to-market leadership as R&D leadership we would not be here.
JAM is a great example of strong R&D leadership: 10M dot prize for its development, and the funds will probably be “made good”, by how the program is designed: a good spec to start with.
Shouldn’t we have a similar program for the go-to-market strategy?
The problem I fear most with R&D leadership is that usually 20% of your invention delivers 80% of the value. Being the first is very expensive, but being the second is much easier. Other ecosystem are grabbing market share quickly with inferior technologies, it will be much easier to copy the key features from Polkadot later on.
I share the hope that we can make it.
Hey @ThomasR , thanks for this thoughtful and elaborate post - You clearly care.
I’ll share my personal opinion on the marketing & strategy topics, and touch upon the decentralisation.
- We all agree that marketing - and the entire GTM functions - need a strategy.
- Coming up with and executing on a strategy in DAOs is difficult.
However, a strategy also entails saying no (otherwise you end up a) doing everything a little bit, which is no strategy, and b) no following through - a strategy needs time to be implemented, tested, and refined).
Marketing within Parity didn’t work too well either. When Parity’s marketing did more centralised decisions, the ecosystem felt left out and wanted to have a say at the table. When Parity included the ecosystem more, we saw two problems: Firstly, people who complained didn’t show up at the table to actually work on the topic of discussion, and secondly, decision making took forever and we didn’t get anything done. Parity is now engineering-first.
So rather than going back to a “semi-centralised” model based within Parity, we should continue working on creating this strategy within the DAO. It’s not even been a year since the decision, and for work (and strategies) to bear fruit, continuous iterations and improvements work better than big overhauls (at Polkadot, we like the latter though, which is a point I would bring up personally).
I agree that the move to decentralise the GTM functions came a bit quick and the ecosystem wasn’t prepared, but it was the step towards the (decentralised) future that we see for how Polkadot is run, and there are already teams and initiatives working on bringing a strategy into the DAO.
My suggestion would thus be to continue working and iterating on
- the many initiatives that tackle the strategy for the DAO (like like @alice_und_bob’s, @niklabh’s, or @tomi 's GPS - wrote about it in the “Governance” part of this blog from Decoded),
- those projects tackling more topic-based (e.g. marketing, BD) strategies, like Distractive, or the BD Teams
- the “middle management” layers that you have in classic organisations, which could be, in a way, represented by bounties.
By “working and iterating on”, it’s important to
- learn from other DAOs - it’s a new field but we are not the only ones asking ourselves the same questions. Arbitrum is a good ecosystem to look at, as they have a really powerful DAO with their “labs” (Offchain Labs, basically like Parity) and their foundation to be kept to the minimum. Also, SAFE is continuously publishing findings and approaches for DAO strategies, e.g. here,
- participate, as @replghost has written well in this recent forum post: If you see something, do something
- make data- or evidence-based decisions,
- disagree and commit - key for DAOs. We won’t find anything where everyone agrees to, but a strategy is about commitment.
I think we’re on a good path. There are a few gaps to fill, some structures to be implemented, many improvements to make, but I wouldn’t start from scratch and doubt whether or not we want to operate in a decentralised environment or not.
Your example with Sota Watanabe is really good. 
The difference between parity (Bjorn) and Sota’s involvement is a huge hue gap unfortunately.
Sota resonates and is inspiring, not Bjorn.
OpenGov didn’t any kind of progressive implementation, we didn’t have time to learn. We are paying the price of it now.
And Parity marketing decentralization when OpenGov was still in the experimentation phase.
Result: OpenGov was gamed & milked with no competition between requestors.
BitcoinCash? This one hurt me so hard when i saw that 
But let’s avoid speaking about this topic, it’s against the forum rules and i’ll be warned again.
Good point Ingo, you are maybe right.
Replace in all my comments “Bjorn” by “Fabi” then
But yeah, in the end it’s maybe W3F you’re right !
I could amend my doc about this.
Everyone matters believes me. Especially the passionate people.
I liked your intervention at Decoded during the talk with Giotto (i was here a bit hidden in the middle of everyone).