Context

Over the past few months, there have been numerous discussions surrounding treasury spending, particularly concerning the return on investment (ROI) and the value generated from these expenditures. We recognize that these metrics can sometimes be subjective. However, we have identified a specific treasury allocation that was granted, marked as lost, and subsequently re-awarded by the Polkadot Council. We seek to address how to handle such situations.

Initial Treasury Request

For clarity, this discussion is not related to the content of the proposal or the team receiving DOT but is solely focused on the funds marked as "lost".

In February 2022, the Supercolony team requested 6,011 DOT ($128,000) to host an online event dedicated to Polkadot smart contracts called the "WASM Conference." You can find the Council Motion and treasury proposal here.

It is worth noting that the majority of the Supercolony team are from Ukraine, and in March 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine took place. Understandably, the Supercolony team had to leave their home country.

This situation led to treasury proposal 96, which can be viewed here. The team stated that they lost access to the funds while leaving Ukraine. They then established a new account identity and were awarded an additional 6,011 DOT to host the WASM Conference.

What's Next?

An account containing approximately 6,000 DOT, awarded by the treasury and marked as "lost," now exists. You can see the account here.

The Polkadot Council, and by extension our ecosystem's treasury, has paid twice for the same project (WASM Conference).

The team was re-awarded the necessary amount due to the political situation in Ukraine. The funds were allocated specifically for completing tasks outlined in their proposal and were granted twice.

ChaosDAO strongly believes that it is inappropriate to allow these DOTs to remain in this account as the team were reissued the original allocation of tokens subsequent to the first payment being lost.

We would like to gather community feedback on the possibility of retrieving these DOTs from the "lost" account.

We would like to discuss the use of the following extrinsics specifically:

1. Balances.ForceTransfer

• The balance can be sent to the treasury.
• This will enable the community to allocate these DOT tokens to more value-generating initiatives, rather than merely hoping they are truly lost.
• We are fully aware that many people might oppose using the Balances.ForceTransfer extrinsic, which is why we are initiating this discussion.

2. Balances.SetBalance

• The balance of this account will be set to 22 DOT (since the team transferred 22 DOT before receiving treasury rewards), effectively burning the DOT awarded by the treasury.

3. Other

• If someone from the community has another way in which we can handle this issue, please explain it in this discussion thread.

We understand that some might argue this sets a dangerous precedent. However, we contend that not taking action establishes an equally hazardous precedent, where future recipients of treasury funds could request additional allocations after claiming an original allocation had been lost. This is a potential treasury attack surface that we think should be eliminated by one of the method proposed here, or potentially in the comments.

To reiterate, this discussion is not about the Supercolony team or any specific individual; it is solely focused on addressing accounts marked as "lost" that have received treasury rewards.

Thank you to ChaosDAO member Mellow Yellow for raising this issue in his recent Twitter thread.