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2025 March Polkadot OpenGov Report

DV new term​

Exactly one year after the launch of the Decentralized Voices program in March 2024, we now welcome the fourth cohort of delegates.

Kus DAO and Hungary DAO, who joined in the previous cohort, continue into the next term with another four months of delegation. Saxemberg and ChaosDAO, two of the original delegates who had been part of every cohort until now, are rotating out in this new phase of the program. PolkaWorld is also making a return after a break. William and Kukabi, from the first cohort, now reappear as part of Permanence DAO. Jam Implementers and Trustless Core are two new names joining for the first time.

We congratulate all the new recipients and wish them a good term in which merit is valued over clientelism.

Stables Shortage and Budget Signals​

There aren’t enough stablecoins in the treasury to fully fund the latest proposal from PBA, which is why the proposers themselves have asked voters to reject it.

The original ask was for 3.7 million USDC, but the treasury currently holds only around 230k USDC, which makes it not possible to payout. A renewed version of the proposal has since been submitted, this time requesting USDT instead, split into three scheduled payments to ease pressure on stable liquidity.

Meanwhile, a new DCA proposal is underway to refill the treasury’s stable reserves, as the remaining USDT balance is also down to around 3 million.

These stable acquisition proposals are quietly shaping up to be OpenGov’s own form of internal budgeting. As more teams request stables, we may soon be able to forecast the network’s yearly budget more clearly by simply summing the allocations across bounty and collective sub-treasuries and stable acquisition totals.

Department Updates​

Developer funding picks up: The curator sets for two bounties have been approved this month, expanding support for builders. The Fast Grants bounty is now live, offering rapid funding for early-stage projects, with up to 10k DOT available per project in 5k DOT milestones and a 72-hour decision window. Meanwhile, the Rust Bounty is now also active, focused on supporting core Rust engineers contributing to the Polkadot tech stack. Both bounties signal a stronger, more targeted push for developer engagement.

Paseo funded for another year: The Paseo testnet received 650k DOT to continue operations for another year as Polkadot’s dedicated test environment.

Operational Funding: Infrastructure budgets are being renewed with major proposals. A 172k DOT budget was approved for RPC service providers with a clear example of a well-documented proposal. Meanwhile, the Infrastructure Builders Program (IBP) is requesting a much larger 1m DOT to continue its work. While the ask is high, early signals suggest support from the community,

Tech Support Bounty closed: The Tech Support Bounty has been officially closed due to inactivity.

Notable mentions​

  • Pooled DOTs can vote now: The latest runtime upgrade to v1.4.2 has been executed on Asset Hub. This update allows DOT held in nomination pools to participate in governance.
  • Cloud website failed by a landslide: A proposal to fund the development of a Polkadot Cloud website, intended to showcase services like execution, settlement, and data availability, was rejected by a slim margin of 2%.
  • Bounty Manager retroactive ask faces rejection: A retroactive proposal for the Bounty Manager UI is now live and already signaling strong disapproval. The project was initially about a year ago, but a follow-up proposal seeking additional funding was recently rejected.
  • Talisman requests reapproval for expired payout: Talisman has submitted a new proposal to recover funds from their previously approved mobile app referendum, which expired before the payout was claimed. The team admits the miss was due to an internal oversight and is now asking the network to reapprove the payout so they can continue delivering on the original scope.
  • Strengthening Bridge Operations: A series of proposals have been implemented to improve bridge operations. These include recognizing Snowbridge stablecoins as sufficient assets, incentivizing liquidity in ETH pools, and funding liquidity to support fee swaps for wrapped stablecoins, ETH, and KSM–DOT bridging.

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