This Social Contract aims to serve as an agreement between Polkascan Foundation on one hand and the Polkadot Network Community on the other hand. The Social Contract should be viewed as an off-chain coordination mechanism to advance the relation between Polkadot Network Community and Polkascan Foundation in its role of external service provider.

Polkascan Foundation is a not-for-profit infrastructure service provider and maintainer of Polkadot Ecosystem Python Libraries. These libraries have been developed over the past 2 years and have so far had our Polkascan Block Explorer stack as primary use-case and form its foundational components. The Python libraries are partly funded by Web3 Foundation grants, they have a generalized nature, suitable for adoption by any Python-based project in the broader Polkadot ecosystem. So far resource constraints have forced Polkascan Foundation to limit providing community support, with a few exceptions. This in turn has served as friction to increase wide-spread adoption of the libraries in the ecosystem. We have had an increasing amount of community requests to provide structural support for new Python-based projects in the ecosystem. Our most recent development update provides an overview of our current libraries' features in section 4: https://medium.com/polkadot-network/polkascan-development-update-7-36b5f814dc8b

Polkascan Foundation has been around from day one in the broader Polkadot ecosystem and has been consistently advocating the use of on-chain treasuries as sustainable source of funding for ecosystem infrastructure components. So far, we have prioritized our treasury requests to fund operational expenses for running the Polkascan.io platform. Now that has been approved, a next logical step for Polkascan Foundation is a funding request for maintenance and support of our Python libraries. Fundamentally we believe that the Polkadot Treasury should be willing to fund maintenance and support of its infrastructure.

Links and further details:
- The Social Contract Mechanism: https://github.com/polkascan/social-contract/blob/master/README.md
- The Social Contract for Maintenance & Support of Python Libraries: https://github.com/polkascan/social-contract/blob/master/polkadot/social-contract-002.md
- Treasury Proposal 8: https://github.com/polkascan/social-contract/blob/master/polkadot/treasury-proposal-008.md

We will be available to answer the Polkadot Council's questions.

Polkascan Foundation Social Contract | Maintenance & Support for Python Libraries

Publication: [https://polkascan.org/funding-request-2022-2024/](https://polkascan.org/funding-request-2022-2024/)

The Netherlands, 18 February 2022

Subject: Polkascan Foundation Funding Request 2022 – 2024

Polkadot Governance,

Polkascan Foundation frames Polkadot Network as an enabler of the Polkadot Economy that spawns diversified economic activity through its permissionless and heterogeneous nature. Polkascan Foundation positions itself as the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Polkadot Economy and seeks Treasury Funding for its 2022 – 2024 activities. Through sustainable funding methods Polkascan Foundation aims to become the first ever Common Good Organization in the Polkadot Ecosystem.

Polkascan Foundation intends to make two requests to Polkadot Governance:

1. The allocation of a 12-month budget of 100.000,00 DOT (~€ 1.600.000,00) for the foundation’s 2022 activities by means of the (Child)Bounty Treasury Spending Instrument. The budget allows for periodic reimbursement of the foundation’s research, engineering, community support activities of its open-source repositories and the budget allows for periodic reimbursement of the foundation’s service management activities of its hosted platform. Future Governance requests are limited to bi-annual budget extensions for subsequent budgeting terms.
2. The approval of a loan of € 800.000,00 (~50.000,00 DOT) through the Treasury Proposal Spending Instrument. This loan will be used by Polkascan Foundation to serve as operating liquidity by maintaining a stable Euro-reserve on its traditional bank account.

With the enactment of these two requests Polkascan Foundation is confident to be able to sustainably fund its entire operation for the foreseeable future. Additionally the foundation is confident that this level of treasury funding allows it to proactively push for a ‘regulatory’- and ‘fiscal’-ruling of ‘Treasury Funded’-organizations within the Netherlands.

Polkascan Foundation has considered a number of avenues as candidate funding sources over the past 6 years. Commercial models (subscription fees or advertisements), venture capital funding, token issuance and these have all been abandoned for various reasons to do with value alignment, incentive alignment and risk appetite of the foundation and its founders. The only remaining path forward is blockchain treasury funding and Polkascan Foundation has proven that this can be a viable model through the foundation’s 2020 and 2021 funding. The foundation has mitigated most of the identified operational risks to move forward with a reasonable and balanced funding proposal. Some risk remains, such as foreign exchange risks to be carried by the Polkadot Ecosystem.

Polkascan Foundation has managed to institutionalize its founders’ ambitions and ideas to add value to the Polkadot Ecosystem and it is ready for a bright future, willing and capable to continuously contribute to the broader vision of Web3.

Polkascan Foundation humbly asks Polkadot Governance to constructively evaluate and to consider the enactment of the foundation’s two requests as one single decision. The foundation’s representatives are ready and available to clarify the overall request and any particular points of interest.

Full details of the request to Polkadot Governance can be found in the following two documents:

- [Funding Request 2022 – 2024](https://polkascan.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Funding-Request-2022-2024-Polkascan-Foundation-v20220218.1100.pdf) | This document provides full details regarding Polkascan Foundation’s funding request to Polkadot Governance.
- [Business Plan](https://polkascan.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Business-Plan-Polkascan-Foundation-v20220218.1030.pdf) | This document provides Polkascan Foundation’s business plan and should be seen as the context and justification for the funding request