Gossamer's Contributions to Polkadot-SDK v2 [Q3/Q4 2025]

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NOTE ON REFERENDA UPDATE:
This is a new proposal intended to replace Ref 1688
Following extensive consultations with Parity and the Polkadot community, we have introduced several key improvements.

• Payouts were split to bi-monthly retroactive milestones
• New sections were added:
  • Payout structure.
  • Detailed milestone delivery description
  • FAQ with addressed and frequently asked questions from previous referenda

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Total Requested amount for 3 milestones: 815 358 USDC
Milestone 1: 271 786 USDC. Payout on: 10/09/2025
Milestone 2: 271 786 USDC. Payout on: 10/11/2025
Milestone 3: 271 786 USDC. Payout on: 10/01/2026

Beneficiary address: 149mJjdQjEBMHHbWDjbLJ7X4e95ps6L35DZVaBzn1raR1EVQ

Short description: Gossamer was originally envisioned as a Go-based implementation of the Polkadot Relay Chain Validator, contributing to the decentralization and resilience of the network through client diversity and broader technological accessibility. Our team, deeply committed to the Polkadot ecosystem, built Gossamer as an alternative full node and validator client to help ensure the robustness of the protocol.
However, as the ecosystem's needs have changed, it's become clear that alternative client development is not currently a top priority. In light of this, we’ve made a strategic decision to shift our focus from developing an alternative client to contributing directly to the existing Rust-based SDK implementation. This change aligns with both the direction of the ecosystem and our desire to maximize our impact on Polkadot’s core infrastructure.
Following consultations with Parity, we have defined a set of objectives that our team will focus on over the next six months. These efforts, in close collaboration with Parity, will leverage our experience to contribute to the Polkadot-SDK's most critical areas, helping to strengthen, optimize, and scale the protocol at its foundation.

Project Category/Type: Software development

Website: ChainSafe

Context of the Proposal

The Gossamer team at ChainSafe is a group of technical experts engaging in protocol-level implementations for the Polkadot ecosystem. The team has formerly received funding from the Web3 Foundation and the Polkadot Treasury and has also been temporarily self-funded through ChainSafe.

This proposal is a request for six months of funding (equally split to bi-monthly milestones) from the Polkadot Treasury for the collaboration of the Gossamer team and Parity to work on the Polkadot protocol's (polkadot-sdk) pressing needs. The ecosystem is rapidly evolving, and a lot of change is to be expected. We are therefore adopting a six-month proposal cycle to maintain agility and responsiveness to best serve the ecosystem.

In this funding period, as detailed in Section 2 (Scope of Current Proposal), we will dedicate resources to the needs of the polkadot-sdk by addressing key technical priorities identified in collaboration with Parity. Our focus will be on areas where our team’s expertise can deliver the greatest impact - enhancing scalability, performance, and protocol robustness. This marks a natural evolution of our role within the ecosystem, transitioning from client diversity through Gossamer to strengthening the core infrastructure that supports the Polkadot network. Our focus will be on areas where our team’s expertise can deliver the greatest impact - protocol development.

Read Full Proposal

Proposal navigation:

1. Context of the proposal
   1.1 About ChainSafe and the Gossamer Team
2. Scope of Work
   2.1 Approval-checking rewards
   2.2 Parachain runtime upgrades off-chain R&D
   2.3 Optimizing the dependency footprint
   2.4 WebRTC transport for browser-based LightClients
   2.5 Speculative Availability
   2.6 Polkadot network chaos testing and DDoS protection
   2.7 Smart Contracts Infrastructure Integration (Foundry-Polkadot)
3. Budget and payout structure
4. Progress, Updates, and Milestones Delivery
5. Contacts
6. FAQ including the community questions and our answers from the previous referenda

Contact:

Kyrylo Pisariev, Senior Engineering Manager, kirill@chainsafe.io, @p1sar:matrix.org
Peter Kalambet, Head of Protocol, peter@chainsafe.io, @peter:dod.ngo
Belma Gutlic, VP of Engineering, belma@chainsafe.io, @morrigan.iv:matrix.org

Progress and Updates:

• Monthly progress reports (GitHub discussions, X, polkadot forum)
• GitHub code progress (Github Project)
• Presentations at Polkadot events
• Documentation updates