Polkadot Moderation Team Bounty Top-up - 2025
Dear Polkadot community,
This proposal requests a top-up of the moderation team bounty to continue incentivizing authorized Polkadot Moderators for their round-the-clock contribution and community support. The rates used for payment and number of hours paid in the previous top-up apply here, and the number of moderators has reduced by 2, compared with the last top-up.
Note that the amount requested goes into bounty 24's account - 13UVJyLnbVp9RBZYFwHYxa8eRNp4fdda3zTNHF9RnfBBAnbv. You can confirm this by checking here
The post for this proposal was originally made 8 days ago here
The bounty was last topped up 10 months ago here and currently has a balance of 6,271 DOT ($43,000). The bounty account can be checked here
The team currently comprises Eleven (11) members with significant involvement in the ecosystem, covering five media channels. This ensures that they can keep abreast of recent advancements in the ecosystem and effectively assist the community as needed. You can find the list of members here as well as in the proposal document
With the new Community Management initiative led by the Marketing Bounty, community moderators will be spread across Polkadot media channels, and will work closely with Community Managers to maintain the Polkadot community.
This proposal requests a one-year top-up of USD 191,040.00 (27,330.5 DOT) to continue funding the Community Moderators.
Details of the proposal including changes since the last top-up, analytics of servers and channels under our moderation umbrella, etc can be found in the proposal document
Data on previous spends can be found in the team's Airtable Base
We look forward to your participation and input.
Thank you!
Comments (5)
Requested
Proposal Passed
Summary
0%
Aye
0%
Nay
Aye (81)0.0 DOT
Support0.0 DOT
Nay (13)0.0 DOT
The Polkadot community has so much potential, but let’s address the elephant in the room.
The 'Polkadot Watercooler' channel on Element is largely inactive, with even basic questions often going unanswered. The same applies to the 'Polkadot (Official)' channel on Discord — there’s virtually no activity across the board. Even the screenshots provided show only a handful of messages being sent.
I’d genuinely love to see more concrete examples of what this team has accomplished over the past year.
There’s an incredible opportunity to enhance engagement and support within the community, but I’m struggling to see how this referendum or group is driving progress in that direction.
@Flez
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback and for highlighting areas where improvement is needed. Your concern about the activity levels is very valid. It’s important to note that the primary responsibility of moderators is to maintain a safe, inclusive, and well-organized environment for discussions—not to drive engagement and in my opinion, this job has been done well. We ensure that scammers are banned, the community is helped when needed, and that discussions remain on topic.
However, the creation of the Community Manager role (which I recently stepped into) is specifically aimed at tackling these very challenges. The role is focused on fostering engagement, improving support, and ensuring that community spaces like Discord and Element are vibrant and welcoming for all members. It is being funded by the marketing bounty if you have any questions regarding that.
As part of the initiative, here are some things I am working on:
I appreciate your passion for our community and just like you, I desire to see it reach its full potential as well. If you would like to talk about specific ideas or suggestions, you can always reach out to me on the Discord server, my username is: Grizzly
Dear @Moderation Team Bounty Curator,
Thank you for your proposal. Our vote on this proposal is AYE.
The Medium Spender track requires 50% quorum and simple majority according to our voting policy. This proposal has received six aye and one nay votes from ten members, with three members abstaining. Below is a summary of our members' comments:
The full discussion, along with individual members' votes and comments, can be found in our internal voting.
Kind regards,
Permanence DAO