Support for businesses building in/around the ecosystem

[rich]

Hey @SamSam thanks for the comment.

@SamSam

Firstly, charging fees or setting margins on treasury proposals is a contentious issue for good reason. The purpose of the Kusama treasury is to fund projects that benefit the ecosystem as a whole, not to generate profit for individual proposers. While I understand the need for some reimbursement to cover expenses, adding fees or margins to proposals can create conflicts of interest and incentivize proposers to prioritize their own financial gain over the common good.

1. Purpose of the kusama treasury is to fund projects that benefits the ecosystem as a whole.

Yes, absolutely. My overall contention with existing treasury spend across the whole ecosystem is that there is is no quantitative assessment or on-chain metrics that actually enable us to ‘value’ contributions. Worse, this has until recently not even been a topic of discussion.

Right now there are generally three metrics that crypto folks are obsessed by:

• Price
• PRs/number of devs
• Social media

Each gives some signal, though all are flawed since there is clearly a disconnect between these figures and objective on-chain metrics. This is not a polkadot problem, this is an ecosystem problem.

2. Adding fees or margins to proposals can create conflicts of interest and incentivize proposers to prioritize their own financial gain over the common good

Currently people construct proposals and costs ad-hoc - there is always some margin included, its just not transparent and up front. For example there is a general trend for a 10-20% volatility margin - if a team is unfortunate with price swings, this margin insulates downside somewhat. In the opposite scenario, it means they make a larger margin on the spend. People are keen to ask for top ups when proposals lose money, but are unsurprisingly less keen to return the counter.

As a result market timing can be the difference between success of a proposal and failure.

@SamSam

Secondly, while I agree that there should be clear guidance for teams submitting treasury proposals on VAT, tax, and legal status, I am wary of proposals that aim to circumvent or avoid taxes.

Additionally when I talk about ‘fees’, it should be intuitive that projects/teams/individuals and indeed businesses able to shift the dial on the metrics that matter for the ecosystem (the metrics that matter is a separate thread here All metrics are imperfect, but many are useful. Let’s make them more available), should be rewarded in line with performance.

@SamSam

while I agree that there should be clear guidance for teams submitting treasury proposals on VAT, tax, and legal status, I am wary of proposals that aim to circumvent or avoid taxes.

Agree. I’m arguing for this position… we’re aligned.

@SamSam

Proposals that primarily benefit individual businesses, rather than the broader community, should be carefully evaluated to ensure they align with the goals and values of the Kusama ecosystem.

Bringing everything together -

• People should be able to be upfront about costs and indeed we should be understanding that not all businesses operating around DotSama are the same. For example, some teams receiving funding from the treasury are venture funded, and therefore are not cashflowing projects. There is a definite requirement for businesses that can inteoperate between fiat and crypto-economies.

• We need to assess proposals based on outcomes, not just output, this leads us on a path to pricing and rewarding spend irrespective of proposal content / context. As I keep saying, busy ≠ effective.

• Current metrics (dev numbers, price, social media) used to assess ‘value’ are disconnected, and even distracting from the real metrics that matter.

• We need to stop thinking about individual symptoms, and start discussing the deeper issues that create this misalignment - this is at its core the common good problem you are focused on.