ℹ️ Please view the counterpart proposals:

• Polkadot proposal live at referendum #1879
• Paseo proposal live at referendum #1880

Summary

This proposal is for the global deployment of a progressively decentralized archive RPC network for Kusama and its system parachains. Please view the detailed forum post for the complete background of the initial Polkadot deployment.

DeServe is:

• Global RPC infrastructure - 8 locations across 5 continents, optimized for Kusama coverage
• Geo-steered load balancing
• Lowest latency among all major Polkadot RPC providers
• By a Polkadot-native infrastructure & software builder, ex-IBP Rank-6 member
• Path to on-chain, general-purpose infrastructure (DePIN)
• Launched on March 31st, 2026 as a single-chain deployment, >53M req/24h by day 10
• Testnet live on Paseo, para id 5150 (telemetry), proof of on-chain commitment, currently running a shell runtime with business logic upgrade planned
• 87% cheaper than IBP
• Webpage live at deserve.network
• Developer documentation: docs.deserve.network

This proposal requests 3,003.00 KSM ($12,614.00 at 7-day EMA) as the first payment, first month upfront to bootstrap the global rollout of all Kusama services. Subsequent payments will be requested via 3-monthly retroactive proposals, alongside full transparency reports covering expenses, performance, and request analytics.

Initial Traction & Updates

The following X posts document DeServe's first days of deployment:

• Launch announcement for Polkadot Asset Hub (post)
• >1.7M requests on day 1, Ethereum-compatible RPC deployment (post)
• >45M requests/24h, deserve.network launch (post)
• >50M requests/24h, docs.deserve.network launch (post)
• >53M requests/24h, Polkadot Coretime rollout and public dashboard launch (post)

Over the first two weeks of deployment, DeServe has served over 500 million requests, and is currently serving >36M requests/day.

Live request analytics are available at the public dashboard.

Deployment & Coverage

Current deployment

• Polkadot Asset Hub Archive RPC & Ethereum-compatible RPC (endpoints)
• Polkadot Coretime Archive RPC (endpoints)

Complete Kusama rollout under this proposal

Kusama RPC services will be rolled out at 8 locations across 5 continents, optimized for coverage and budget efficiency for Kusama.

• Kusama Relay Chain
• Asset Hub
• Bridge Hub
• Coretime
• Encointer
• People

Infrastructure

• 8 locations across 5 continents, 5 providers including Helikon
  • İstanbul, TR
  • Johannesburg, ZA
  • Limburg, DE
  • London, UK
  • Mumbai, IN
  • Seattle, WA, US
  • Sao Paulo, BR
  • Singapore, SG
• 1G–10G uplink bandwidth
• Unmetered traffic on most nodes
• 950GB–14.72TB NVMe storage per node
• ECC RAM

Monitoring and High Availability

• Geo-steered load balancing: requests routed to the nearest node
• 15-second health checks: unreachable nodes removed from the pool
• Quick recovery from low-cost backup storage preferred over 2N redundancy for cost-efficiency
• Prometheus & Grafana monitoring and alerting across all nodes 24/7
• Monitoring network (in development): latency checks across the globe
• 99.9%+ effective availability through rapid failover
• Open-source DNS transition planned (see Roadmap)

RPC configuration

• 100 req/s without API key
• 2MB max request size / 7MB max response size
• 256 RPC subscriptions per connection

Performance

DeServe delivers the lowest latency among all major Polkadot RPC providers for Polkadot Asset Hub, verified via Compare Nodes, a global RPC performance inspector.

Full benchmark runs:

• DeServe vs IBP: Run 1, Run 2, Run 3
• DeServe vs OnFinality: Run 1
• DeServe vs LuckyFriday: Run 1
• DeServe vs Dwellir: Run 1

Cost Comparison

IBP is currently the only other provider offering a global geo-steered RPC service, making it the most appropriate reference for cost comparison.

Note that IBP operates on a 2N redundancy model, while DeServe operates on a single-instance model with rapid failover through backups, as detailed in the Monitoring & High Availability section.

Given the current cost constraints of the Polkadot ecosystem, we find that single instance per location with backup mechanisms in place should be sufficient under a highly responsive load-balancing system. DeServe’s current setup monitors endpoints every 15 seconds, immediately removing any unreachable endpoint from the pool.

The compared numbers below are taken from IBP dashboard billing view.

Our cost model is illustrated in detail in the initial forum post. DeServe also provides GeoDNS services for free as part of the package, whereas IBP charges $1,200.00/month for this service. DeServe also comes without curator payments, which add further overhead to bounty-based programs. IBP curator payments add approximately $3,400.00/month in additional overhead (reference).

Operation & Payment Details

Payment model

• First payment: 3,003.00 KSM ($12,614.00 at 7-day EMA): first month upfront to bootstrap the Kusama rollout
• Second payment $25,228.00 in KSM at 7-day EMA: months 2-3, requested at end of month 3 alongside the first transparency report
• Subsequent payments $37,842.00/quarter in KSM at 7-day EMA: 3-monthly retroactive proposals alongside full transparency reports

Payment terms

• KSM: due to stable coins not being held by the Kusama treasury
• No lock-in: the treasury can cancel anytime
• Via regular spends: no long-term bounty top-ups or commitment
• Monthly transparency reports: expenses, performance, and request analytics
• Public monitors: service health and performance, live at public dashboard
• 99.9%+ uptime SLA: basis for payment validation

Labour costs

Labour costs for the current alpha phase are excluded from this proposal and covered by Helikon. As DeServe matures, operator labour costs will be standardized through protocol governance.

Roadmap

First 3 Months

• All Kusama services live within week 2 of proposal approval: Kusama Relay Chain, Asset Hub, Ethereum-compatible RPC, Bridge Hub, Coretime, Encointer, People
• Monitoring network: real-time latency and health checks across all regions
• DeServe website: live node map, performance data, endpoints, and developer documentation (live at deserve.network)
• Open-source DNS: replacing Cloudflare for geo-steered load balancing, integrated with the monitoring network
• Polkadot-native provider onboarding: begin replacing cloud providers with native Polkadot infrastructure providers, onboarding criteria to be published
• Governance alpha phase: managed and governed by Helikon
• DeServe Unpaper: protocol design and vision document

First 6 Months

• Complete Polkadot-native operator onboarding
• Governance beta phase: network committee of >3 native operators
• On-chain service provision: on-chain payments, proofs, and governance, built on Polkadot

Submerge Commitment

Submerge is a data and compliance platform for Polkadot SDK chains, currently in development by Helikon. Submerge has received treasury funding and is behind schedule. Its two main components, Crystal (a chain indexer), Mycelium (a cross-chain indexer), along with their APIs for all supported chains will be delivered before any further on-chain submission for DeServe.

About Helikon

Helikon is a Polkadot-native infrastructure and software development collective based in İstanbul. A regular contributor to the Polkadot ecosystem at both the development and governance levels since late 2020:

• 5 active Kusama & Polkadot validators, former 1KV & Decentralized Nodes member
• Rank-6 ex-IBP member: infrastructure services for 26 blockchains
• Two-time Decentralized Voices delegate, once as founder of Permanence DAO
• Recently saved and revived Multix (post 1, post 2, post 3), a >$500K investment funded through Polkadot treasury proposal #236 and referendum #120, and child bounties 36_10 and 36_3054.
• Maintaining SubVT (iOS & Telegram Kusama/Polkadot), Chain Console, Chainviz/alpha, followthedot
• Built dv.report - analysis dashboard for the Decentralized Voices program cohorts 4 and 5
• Developing Submerge - data & compliance platform for Polkadot SDK chains

Contact

• info@helikon.io
• @helikonlabs
• @kukabi_
• Helikon GitHub
• kukabi GitHub
• Forum

Track: MediumSpender
Requested: 3,200 KSM ($13,500 USD at current 7-day EMA)
Period: April – December 2026 (9 months)
Cost: ~$1,500/month

1. Summary

Encointer is Kusama's second system chain, registered via Referendum 158. It provides Proof of Personhood, Sybil resistance, community currencies, and democratic governance tooling. It is the only system chain unique to Kusama – it does not exist on Polkadot.

This MediumSpender proposal requests funding for basic infrastructure operations of the Encointer system chain for 9 months (April–December 2026). The scope is strictly limited to keeping the chain running reliably: collators, RPC nodes, indexing, explorer, and accounting frontend. This is not a development or community growth proposal.

Why this is justified

Encointer had comparable monthly active accounts to Kusama Asset Hub before the AHM migration. The data below shows that for recent months, both chains served a similar-sized user base – yet Encointer's operational costs are a fraction of what other system chains receive:

Source: Encointer litescan indexer. Subscan has refused to index Encointer as a system chain.

Before the Asset Hub Migration (Oct 2025), Encointer consistently matched or exceeded KAH in monthly active accounts. Encointer is one of the most actively used and still a very cost-efficient system chain in the Kusama ecosystem.

What does Encointer do for Kusama?

Kusama benefits directly from Encointer and should continue to fund it as a common good system chain. Its proof-of-personhood protocol and community currencies are not just theoretical — they are live experiments with active communities of meaningful size in the hundreds, enabling real experimentation with one-person-one-vote democracy that could complement Kusama's existing stake-weighted governance. Encointer also delivers tangible real-world impact: its Nyota pilot in Tanzania multiplied the economic impact of cash transfer subsidies by 240%, while the community in Nigeria are running solar-powered collator nodes that improve Kusama's own geographic decentralization. Encointer makes Kusama more democratic and more relevant.

2. Infrastructure Scope

This proposal covers five infrastructure components required to operate the Encointer system chain:

What is NOT included

• Runtime development and new features (funded separately or by Encointer Association)
• Community growth operations (Nyota, PayNuq, new community bootstrapping)
• Mobile app / wallet development
• Marketing or outreach
• Team salaries beyond basic infrastructure operations.

Fundraising efforts from external sources are ongoing and we see progress. Nevertheless, we may need to approach the Kusama Treasury for additional well-scoped packages on top of this one if we want to do more than mere basic maintenance.

The team commits to keeping the system running and performing minimal maintenance for the stated period even in case no further funding can be secured.

Why these costs are excluded from other bounties

The system chain collator bounty (Ref #643) funds community invulnerable collators only. It explicitly allocates 2 slots for Encointer at $250/month each, paid to external community operators. The Encointer team's own 2 invulnerable collators are not eligible for this bounty. The RPC nodes, indexer, explorer, and accounting frontend are entirely unfunded by any other mechanism.

The Polkadot fellowship does not cover any work or infrastructure which is specific to Encointer although Encointer's runtime is maintained within the fellowship repositories.

Other system chain maintenance budgets are not transparently reported for public scrutiny.

3. Key Achievements

Despite operating on one of the leanest budgets in the ecosystem, Encointer has delivered real-world impact:

• Nyota (Tanzania): 100+ active participants, 15 new businesses created via Kusama Mchezo lending circles, 240% economic multiplier effect on development aid. Published in NextBillion / Association of African Entrepreneurs.
• PayNuq (Nigeria): New and growing community bootstrapped in Zaria, operating a solar-powered collator for the Encointer network.
• LEU (Zurich): First personhood-based democratic decision about community matters.
• Democratic community treasuries: All communities now vote on treasury spending decisions on-chain with approx. one-person-one-vote.
• Blockchain Switzerland InnoBooster Award – third-party recognition of innovation.
• Runtime 2.1.0 upgrade (Ref #637), demonstrating active chain development as part of fellowship repository.

Previous treasury proposals

older proposals linked in all proposal documents

Upgrade to Release v2.2.0
Whitelisted by https://kusama.subsquare.io/fellowship/referenda/131

Replaced by https://kusama.subsquare.io/referenda/601

Deregister paraID 2114: Turing Network

The following proposal is to request Kusama Governance to deregister paraID 2114, corresponding to Turing Network.

Why Governance?

There are technical ways of being able to deregister a paraID, however none of these are currently available for paraID 2114.

First of, the paraID status is locked: true. This means that the only way deregister the paraID is by sending a message from the parachain itself. However, the team can't currently run the parachain, and thus it can't send a message to the parachain to perform the needed actions.

Encoded Key Storage: 0x3fba98689ebed1138735e0e7a5a790abcd710b30bd2eab0352ddcc26417aa1946e9b797315c3ac3942080000

Therefore, the only way to currently deregister the paraID is by governance approval on the Root track.

ParaID Ownership

The paraID is owned by account CmxJEdEniSV6hGWoKfHWLR6h4A1dh5gD1vgzmD12osJvGsk (same storage item as before), which is the account sending this de-registration request.

https://kusama.subscan.io/account/CmxJEdEniSV6hGWoKfHWLR6h4A1dh5gD1vgzmD12osJvGsk