Treasury Guardian – OpenGov Accountability Layer

The Problem
The Polkadot Treasury suffers from weak accountability, leading to wasteful spending:

• Proposals: Teams often receive large upfront payments (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars) but frequently under-deliver, abandon projects, or disappear entirely.
• Bounties: Curators are given substantial lump-sum payments upfront, yet many deliver poor results at high cost, with minimal transparency or reporting back to token holders.

Result: Without real accountability, treasury funds are spent inefficiently.

The Fix That Already Exists Today
Scheduled payouts. Instead of one big transfer, we can approve many small future payouts in a single referendum and tie them to real milestones or monthly reporting.

The Missing Piece
Someone actually has to watch and act when a milestone is missed.
Right now → almost nobody does (no-one is incentivised to).

Treasury Guardian = Decentralised Enforcement

• One dashboard showing every upcoming scheduled payout + linked deliverables.
• Anyone spots a missed milestone → a few clicks to propose delay/cancel payout referendum on the Treasurer track.
• Proposer must put up (or convince someone to put up) a 1000 DOT decision deposit – fully slashable.
• If OpenGov approves the cancellation/delay, the guardian gets a small capped reward taken from the saved payout (skin in the game + aligned incentives).

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Key Facts

• No special permissions – anyone with a wallet can be a Treasury Guardian.
• No new powers – final decision is still 100% OpenGov conviction voting.
• Delivering teams feel zero extra friction. Late teams get their payouts delayed to ensure delivery before payout. Abandoned projects get payouts canceled to protect the Treasury.

Treasury Guardian vs OG Tracker

• OG Tracker = passive monitoring (expensive and no teeth).
• Treasury Guardian = active enforcement (anyone can trigger real consequences).

The 600k+ funding OG Tracker has received in their last proposal pays for their services for a few more months only. OG Tracker has been the “accountability layer” till now. Has it worked?

This is the new era of OpenGov
Monthly scheduled payouts for bounties + milestone-based payouts for normal proposals are already possible. Treasury Guardian turns that technical possibility into actual accountability by incentivising more eyes on milestone delivery.

Recent Changes Based on Community Feedback

• Removed the last milestone → lower total ask. We will deliver a solid product with engagement first before reassessing future viability.
• The requested reward caps for Treasury Guardians have been implemented and are live.

• AssetHub Migration has been completed and is live.

Something that hasn’t changed

• The proposal remains fully cancellable at every stage if value isn’t delivered.

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Milestone Delivery Deadlines:

Milestone 1 (MVP): Dec 20 2025 -> Scheduled Payout: Feb 8 2026

Christmas Holiday (Dec 20 2025 -> Jan 3 2026)

Milestone 2 (Refinement): Jan 31 2026 -> Scheduled Payout: March 22 2026

Milestone 3 (Growth): Feb 28 2026 -> Scheduled Payout: Apr 19 2026

We are passionate about leading the charge to de-risk the Treasury, enhance its efficiency, and better align the interests of token holders and proposers to drive a new era of accountability. We eagerly look forward to collaborating with the Polkadot community and new + existing ecosystem teams to achieve these goals.

Read our full proposal here.

Point of contact: treasuryefficiency@gmail.com

Vote YES if you want real accountability in OpenGov.