2025 August Polkadot OpenGov Report

A new voter is on the block: The Web3 Foundation

In Gavin Wood’s latest interview, he stated that the Web3 Foundation will become active as a voter in OpenGov. A voting council will vote according to guidelines that are currently being developed together with PolkaWorld. Voting will happen in alignment with a new focus on product-development that puts actual Polkadot usage and DOT first. OpenGov shall become much more strategic.

The implications on OpenGov cannot yet be estimated. Up until now, the biggest political factions in Polkadot did not align on a common program or strategy. ChaosDAO, currently carrying a bit less than half of the recurring votes does not have an explicit policy. And the individual DV voters from the current cohort each carry about 7% of the votes. There is no public negotiation of policy between those actors visible. What role will they play, when a much stronger voting bloc enters the game? Will policy be negotiated in the future, and if so, how?

It will be interesting to see how OpenGov priorities will shift. What will happen with bounties? Will they be consolidated and expanded as an extended arm of the product-focused agenda? Will they be reconfigured? How will grants towards software and business development change in light of a Parity policy that focuses on building products themselves. And maybe most interestingly: How will outreach, media, and marketing spends develop?

Supply Cap and Issuance Reduction

The supply cap discussion is largely over, and the hard cap proposal is in the decision phase with strong support. With only a couple of days left in the decision period, it is passing with a 78% approval rate. As a reminder, this is a Wish for Change referendum and does not change issuance by itself. Another proposal must be submitted and passed to enact it later on-chain. Implementation is expected with one of the next runtime upgrades in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, Web3 Foundation economics researcher Jonas Gehrlein published a piece on the link between issuance and the economic resilience of the network. It shows that lowered block rewards correspond with lowered network security. However, those reductions can be offset by other policy changes such as a minimum self-stake for validators and a minimum commission. He also suggests removing the unbonding period and nominator slashing to keep the network secure after the reduction in issuance. Very important points and suggestions to consider.

OpenGov Adjustments

A set of parameter adjustments for OpenGov tracks passed with a Wish for Change proposal, and the focus is on the funding tracks. The intent is increase proposal quality, to reduce voter fatigue, and lower the number of simultaneous proposals in the decision.

The proposal suggests a rise in submission and decision deposits, as well as the minimum support turnout. Meanwhile, the max deciding parameter decreases, which reduces how many active referenda a track can hold at once.

These changes should make it slightly harder to submit and pass proposals on OpenGov. Higher deposits and higher support thresholds raise the bar, and fewer concurrent items improve attention. We support the initiative and expect better diligence from proposers as a result.

Similar to issuance reduction, this does not enact anything on the chain by itself since it's another WfC referendum. A separate proposal must follow to implement the parameters on-chain. But it can be merged with other expected items with the next runtime upgrade.

Departmental updates

Bounty Compliance Audit

We recently published the first departmental audit of OpenGov bounties, based on the bounty standardization accepted in OpenGov #1254. The audit evaluated bounties against the criteria mandated for all bounties. It did not assess execution quality or direct outcomes. We also included brief suggestions for every bounty regardless of compliance status. We intentionally took an outsider perspective and did not leverage personal connections or contact bounty teams. The goal was to test public visibility.

We are happy to see that some bounties improved their compliance soon after publication. Others reached out to flag items we missed, and we have already reflected those in the report. Events, Meetups, and UX bounties set the pace on compliance and now stand as examples of transparency and accountability. We hope to see more bounties improve their workflow in the coming weeks, and we can increase the green flags together as an ecosystem.

Defi Bounty Budget Request

A new proposal to extend the Defi bounty has been submitted with a sizable ask of 1m DOT, about $4m. The team reports results at three times the original goal while spending about half the planned budget per integration, which aligns with feedback we heard from stakeholders. Some compliance items are still pending, and tightening these will make the impact easier to verify and share. We expect the team to address the basics during the vote and align with the compliance standards.

Events Bounty Budget Request

The Events bounty seeks 500k DOT to fund six months of operations. As stated earlier, it is exemplary in compliance. It already shows strong on-chain backing well before the halfway point of the decision period, and it looks likely to pass.

Bridge Bounty Relaunching

One of the stagnant bounties, the Bridge Bug Bounty, is coming back to life with a restructuring that brings curators from Parity, Hyperbridge, Snowbridge, and Hydration together. The new team will broaden the scope across the most used bridges, review reward levels and fee structures with a consolidated pool, and raise visibility to attract more researchers. A mirror referendum is running on Kusama since the bounty is on both networks.

Moderation Team Rejected

A recent proposal to extend the operations of the Moderation Team bounty has been rejected. But we do not think this bounty should disappear, as it fills a vital role in the ecosystem. Instead, the bounty management can shift to people who have proven themselves in community management, such as Greenhatter, who we know from his successful work on Polkadot Reddit. In any case, a complete restructuring with a clear plan is needed, which could include taking over community management operations from the Marketing Bounty and bringing these efforts under one umbrella.

Notable mentions

DV Cohort 5 Announced: A new DV term began in early September with two main categories. DV Light guardians hold a 200k DOT delegation each. They are a small set of subject matter voters who weigh in where they have expertise. They are not paid upfront, and the community can retroactively fund if there is clear value at the term end. DV DAOs are resized into more teams with smaller individual weight, with 2m DOT per team in delegations, so no single group can steer outcomes alone.

There are also new guardrails in place, such as one delegate entity per person, mandatory recusal on conflicts of interest, and a two-strikes rule. The community has a direct line at dv@web3.foundation to report misconduct. You can follow the live progress of DV’s voting behavior at Helikon’s DV report website.

PCF Director Election Process: A proposal was submitted to define the PCF director election process. Two of the five PCF directors must be elected through OpenGov, but this step has been delayed and overlooked for the past year, which makes it difficult to engage with the PCF. The proposal is currently failing. The need remains to set a clear process for electing these directors, and it is better to resolve it sooner rather than later.

Stablecoin Acquisition: A new proposal for the next stablecoin DCA has been submitted. The DCA program has worked well and largely ended the old top-up cycle during price swings. This item continues that practice. The initial draft included a third leg that would allocate 1m DOT to Hydration’s money market to supply the borrow feature for extra yield. Shortly after submission, the preimage was pulled, and a new proposal now covers only the DCA for USDC and USDT.