Curator Reinstatements & Bounty Housekeeping
As the title suggests, this proposal aims to address two things:
First, curators were automatically unassigned from several active bounties due to missed expiry extensions. Unfortunately, this opened the door for an anonymous account to step in and manually unassign curators with trollish remarks (see: https://polkadot.subscan.io/extrinsic/26285556-2, https://polkadot.subscan.io/extrinsic/26273900-3, https://polkadot.subscan.io/extrinsic/26180790-3) likely not in good faith.
To restore continuity and avoid any further delays in bounty ops, this referendum proposes reinstating the same curator addresses for the following bounties:
- Open Source Developer Grants Program (Bounty 59)
- Games Bounty (Bounty 38)
- Polkadot Pioneers Prize (Bounty 10)
All three teams have been contacted and are aligned on restoring the original curator setup. Going forward, this issue should no longer arise: a runtime upgrade will eventually allow bounty expiry to be set to 0, removing the need for curators to manually renew their role every 90 days.
Secondly, as part of this referendum, I am also taking the opportunity to do some light housekeeping by closing down bounties that are no longer active, to reduce clutter. The following bounties are proposed for closure due to prolonged inactivity, lack of funding, or insufficient information:
- https://polkadot.subsquare.io/treasury/bounties/42
- https://polkadot.subsquare.io/treasury/bounties/60
- https://polkadot.subsquare.io/treasury/bounties/61
- https://polkadot.subsquare.io/treasury/bounties/65
- https://polkadot.subsquare.io/treasury/bounties/66
- https://polkadot.subsquare.io/treasury/bounties/68
Comments (11)
Proposal Passed
Summary
0%
Aye
0%
Nay
Aye (61)0.0 DOT
Support0.0 DOT
Nay (20)0.0 DOT
What is going on with the Pioneers Prize bounty? This bounty has ~750k DOT in it but is rarely used. Maybe it's better to let these funds be reallocated? It would be great to get an update on that bounty, how it works, it's current purpose and goals.
https://polkadot.subsquare.io/treasury/child-bounties?parentBountyId=10
@0xTaylor
+1 To what Taylor said, we were going to include the Pioneers bounty into the bounties eligible for closure due to its low activity, the fact that most activity happened 3 years ago, that there is now a 50M push for ZK research (overlapping activity) and non-compliance with: https://polkadot.subsquare.io/referenda/1254 but we didn't just because it was created by Parity and that it's still advertised on the main site.
https://github.com/z-prize/2022-entries/tree/main/open-division/prize4-msm-wasm/yrrid
https://github.com/z-prize/2022-entries/tree/main/open-division/prize4-msm-wasm/mitschabaude
https://github.com/z-prize/2022-entries/tree/main/open-division/prize4-msm-wasm/Manta-Network
Previous solutions seem to have not been used or developed either. Also, how would people feel if a referendum about closing bounty 10 was to be posted.
Any plans or concrete updates for this bounty would be highly informative.
I'll post here the same thing I commented on KusDAO:
I don’t want to sound too harsh, but when curators forget to renew the expiration of a bounty, it naturally raises questions about how they’re managing the proposals and the overall initiatives linked to that bounty. To me, it’s a troubling sign and a clear nay.
There are highly active contributors engaging with the ecosystem on a daily basis, eager to help it grow, while others seem to be sitting in their curator roles without a clear purpose or visible contribution. Apologies for the bluntness, but I felt it needed to be said.
@The White Rabbit I hear you. In this case, the expiry was missed due to an outdated manual renewal system that’s easy to overlook, especially for bounties that aren’t cycling proposals weekly and work mainly off-chain. That’s on us as curators, and we fully own the slip.
But to be clear: this referendum isn’t about covering for bounty inaction.
It’s about restoring functionality to active bounties that were halted, not by the community, but by an anonymous actor acting in bad faith.
If the community wants to reassess specific curators based on visible impact or engagement, I fully support that conversation. But a missed expiry caused by outdated system rules shouldn’t be mistaken for a sign of curator disengagement.
The 90-day expiry rule is a technical legacy that’s already being addressed. As discussed previously, the plan is to allow expiry to be extended longer, and eventually removed entirely, because it doesn’t meaningfully reflect curator performance and creates unnecessary governance overhead.
So, for now, this referendum is a practical fix: restoring curators where needed, closing bounties where justified, and keeping the system running while we improve the bounty pallet.