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Helping Supercolony Recover Funds From Treasury Proposal

rtti5220
3 years ago

As many of you know, Supercolony requested funding from treasury to organize the first Smart Contracts on Polkadot - WASM conference and bring the community together to discuss this particular topic. The proposal was approved, after some discussions regarding budget and platform for online event, by motion 152 a few days ago (more information on budget, milestones, roadmap and agenda can be found there).

The conference website can be visited HERE.

Given recent events, and since the main organizers of the conference are located in Ukraine, they had to move from Kyiv for safety purposes. The holders of the beneficiary multisig for the proposal (16PtCn76c7SB8mMDnuWsq5BjtaDetH8apZh5hRrHtLA3ce1W) unfortunately lost access to the address while going away from Kyiv and have asked me what the alternatives to recover the funds, given they are still working to deliver the conference to the community.

I want to present two alternatives to the community for feedback, for action:


  1. The Council cancels the scheduled transfer ( approved proposal 82 - to be executed in approx. 6 days) and opens a new proposal for the exact amount to an address that is controlled by the party (after on-chain identity verification by a Registrar). This could be designed as a batch call containing both actions.

  2. Motion 152 is executed next week: after, the community can vote in referenda queue for a forceTransfer call that moves the funds from the old multisig to the new one (after on-chain identity verification by a Registrar).

We will work with Toma, from Supercolony, to ensure the new beneficiary address for any of the alternatives above is verified for security purposes. And to make sure they have the safest setup possible. Other alternatives the community would like to present can also be included on this post. This proposal is opened for the community to give feedback.

Comments (2)

3 years ago

A follow up on the alternatives described above:

Some councillors and community members have expressed their preference for alternative 1: the cancellation of the queued treasury proposal and a new vote on the proposal with the new address as beneficiary. I also think the 1st alternative is the cleaner option.

However, our issue is that there is not a call that allows governance to cancel a queued treasury proposal. Shawn opened an issue to have a function that is callable by Root or the RejectOrigin in the Treasury Pallet which allows us to remove a previously approved treasury item that is waiting in the approval queue, so it wont be ready in the next days if we want to get this moving.

The team recommends a forceTransfer call after the fact. It seems then that the viable solution in this case is option 2: voted by council and the community - feedback from the community is appreciated.

3 years ago

I am proposing a third option: continue the funding of the old wallet and also fund the new wallet from the treasury. Here are some rationale:

  • force_transfer is an eminently tricky and controversial topic and should be avoided whenever possible.
  • The loss of 6011 DOT, while a large amount, is not deeply impactful to the treasury. Although such waste should not be encouraged, it seems acceptable in this case due to global events.
  • I very much doubt that the SuperColony team would lie about losing access to the multisig and I expect they have bigger things to worry about right now. However, in the case that the multisig is recovered, we should set an expectation that the funds are returned to the treasury. If they move elsewhere, then this would likely indicate a breach of trust and would make it harder for SuperColony to operate within the community.
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Comments (2)

3 years ago

A follow up on the alternatives described above:

Some councillors and community members have expressed their preference for alternative 1: the cancellation of the queued treasury proposal and a new vote on the proposal with the new address as beneficiary. I also think the 1st alternative is the cleaner option.

However, our issue is that there is not a call that allows governance to cancel a queued treasury proposal. Shawn opened an issue to have a function that is callable by Root or the RejectOrigin in the Treasury Pallet which allows us to remove a previously approved treasury item that is waiting in the approval queue, so it wont be ready in the next days if we want to get this moving.

The team recommends a forceTransfer call after the fact. It seems then that the viable solution in this case is option 2: voted by council and the community - feedback from the community is appreciated.

3 years ago

I am proposing a third option: continue the funding of the old wallet and also fund the new wallet from the treasury. Here are some rationale:

  • force_transfer is an eminently tricky and controversial topic and should be avoided whenever possible.
  • The loss of 6011 DOT, while a large amount, is not deeply impactful to the treasury. Although such waste should not be encouraged, it seems acceptable in this case due to global events.
  • I very much doubt that the SuperColony team would lie about losing access to the multisig and I expect they have bigger things to worry about right now. However, in the case that the multisig is recovered, we should set an expectation that the funds are returned to the treasury. If they move elsewhere, then this would likely indicate a breach of trust and would make it harder for SuperColony to operate within the community.
PleaseLogin to comment
    Polkassembly - Helping Supercolony Recover Funds From Treasury Proposal #904