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Close the UX Bounty and Return Remaining Funds to the Treasury
This proposal requests the closure of the Polkadot UX Bounty and the return of its remaining funds to the treasury, due to persistent misaligned incentives, poor impact relative to spend, and structural issues in how the bounty is operated.
As detailed in this forum post:
https://forum.polkadot.network/t/a-case-study-in-misaligned-incentives-the-polkadot-ux-bounty/16275
- Total spend to date is ~$340k, of which >80% has gone to curator-controlled addresses and “operational” costs, rather than to independent teams or ecosystem-wide UX improvements.
- Roughly one-third of all funds have been directed to product-specific UX audits that produce non-reusable reports, with no clear evidence of measurable, ecosystem-level impact.
- The bounty structure effectively turns curators into both gatekeepers and primary beneficiaries, incentivising continuous busywork (audits, coordination, internal initiatives) rather than high-leverage public goods.
- Initiatives like the Polkadot-UI library were pushed against expert feedback, heavily promoted as “modern Polkadot tooling,” and yet show zero adoption, arguably harming developer perception rather than improving UX.
While some positive outcomes exist (e.g. address format unification, the Turtle grant), they are exceptions in an overall pattern of poor capital efficiency and misaligned incentives.
This proposal does not seek to punish individuals, but to acknowledge that the current UX bounty design has failed to deliver sufficient public good for its cost. Closing the bounty and returning the remaining funds to the treasury is, in my view, the responsible step so that future UX efforts can be funded under better structures, clearer mandates, and healthier incentives.
Comments (1)
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As Josep is directly mentioning my work with polkadot-ui, some context concerning that from my side:
Many background info can be found in our public PM notion and anyone can make their own conclusions. https://polkadot-ux-bounty.notion.site/UXB-7-Unified-UI-Library-1bae1c2781f3803293a2e13982c6f153
https://polkadot-ui.com/ was one of the best researched projects before starting, and I fully stand behind it, as I think reusable react components is the way forward to outstanding UIs (also in Polkadot). We contacted 13 stakeholders and against what is stated here that it was "pushed against expert feedback" the large amount was in favor of our approach. Josep thinks he is the only expert in the field of frontend libraries, but he is not. I wish we could have worked together, I tried several times in a polite way, and I had great, collaborative, conversations with his two team members but Josep's ego cannot take other actors besides him. He also does not like that we collaborated with dedot which his ego also cannot take. We worked together with dedot very well and had very positive conversations, playing a key role in the development of typink, dedot's hook library. At sub0 there was much positive feedback too and the lack of users is a general problem in Polkadot at the moment not only visible in polkadot-ui. In an ecosystem that is already struggeling, Josep is playing with fire adding more toxicity pretending his actions are well researched and objective while he is deliberately picking enemies which he then bullies. The reason I do not want to work on the library anymore (for now) is him.
@niftesty
Thanks for taking the time to respond and for sharing the Notion link. I’ve gone through it before, and again now.
I want to respond to a few concrete points, because I think some of what you wrote misrepresents both the situation and my position.
1. On “one of the best researched projects”
You wrote:
From my perspective, this is exactly the problem.
A project that claims to be “one of the best researched” should at minimum have:
Neither of these happened:
Despite that, the library was heavily promoted:
That’s exactly the gap I’m pointing at: the research may have involved calls, documents, and stakeholder interviews, but it didn’t validate the actual viability of the approach in real-world code before it was marketed as “the way to build modern Polkadot UIs”.
2. On ad hominem and responsibility
You also wrote:
This is exactly the kind of ad hominem that makes it hard to have a serious, technical discussion.
I’m criticising:
That’s not the same as attacking you as a person. Saying “this design and this process are wrong for a treasury-funded, ecosystem-wide library” is not bullying; it’s criticism of work that is being presented as a public good.
I’d really prefer if we could keep the conversation at the level of decisions, outcomes, and use of treasury, rather than psychoanalyzing each other.
3. On “not being able to work with others”
You imply I “cannot take other actors besides me”, but my actual track record in this ecosystem says the opposite.
Just to name a few:
What I do have very little patience for is:
It’s not about refusing to work with people; it’s about refusing to pretend that something works when all the evidence points the other way.
4. On feedback and stakeholder conversations
You mention:
I don’t think I’m the only expert. I do think that:
It’s very easy, to interpret polite or non-committal feedback as “support”.
The end result speaks louder than any stakeholder call: if after all that supposed support no one is actually using the library, not even you, that’s a much stronger signal than any number of “sounds good” calls.
5. On my stance toward a UI library (and Dedot)
I want to be very clear: I was never against building a UI library.
I was against:
I genuinely gave it the benefit of the doubt:
On Dedot specifically: the statement
…is just false.
When I spoke with your colleague in Bali after the presentation, I explicitly recommended:
That’s the opposite of being upset about your collaboration with Dedot.
6. Back to the core issue
All of this is happening in the context of a treasury-funded UX bounty that:
My criticism isn't against you personally. I mean, I know that you take it that way, but that's not what it is. My criticism is that:
were nowhere near where they should be for something flying under the “Polkadot UI” banner and funded with treasury funds.
You’re free to stand behind the work. I’m free to point out that, by any reasonable standard of actual adoption and validation, it failed, and that pushing it as a default choice for developers was a mistake.
We can disagree on that. But turning that disagreement into “ego”, “bullying”, and “picking enemies” is not accurate and doesn’t help anyone.