Context
Over the past few months, there have been numerous discussions surrounding treasury spending, particularly concerning the return on investment (ROI) and the value generated from these expenditures. We recognize that these metrics can sometimes be subjective. However, we have identified a specific treasury allocation that was granted, marked as lost, and subsequently re-awarded by the Polkadot Council.
Initial Treasury Request
For clarity, this discussion is not related to the content of the proposal or the team receiving DOT but is solely focused on the funds marked as "lost”.
In February 2022, the Supercolony team requested 6,011 DOT ($128,000) to host an online event dedicated to Polkadot smart contracts called the "WASM Conference." You can find the Council Motion and treasury proposal here.
It is worth noting that the majority of the Supercolony team are from Ukraine, and in March 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine took place. Understandably, the Supercolony team had to leave their home country.
This situation led to treasury proposal 96, which can be viewed here. The team stated that they lost access to the funds while leaving Ukraine. They then established a new account identity and were awarded an additional 6,011 DOT to host the WASM Conference.
Current Situation
An account containing approximately 6,000 DOT, awarded by the treasury and marked as "lost," now exists. You can see the account here.
The Polkadot Council, and by extension our ecosystem's treasury, has paid twice for the same project (WASM Conference).
The team was re-awarded the necessary amount due to the political situation in Ukraine. The funds were allocated specifically for completing tasks outlined in their proposal and were granted twice.
ChaosDAO strongly believes that it is inappropriate to allow these DOTs to remain in this account as the team were reissued the original allocation of tokens subsequent to the first payment being lost.
Due to the factors above, we are proposing the following extrinsic be initiated:
- balances.ForceTransfer
This extrinsic will transfer 6,011 DOT from the lost Supercolony account to the Polkadot treasury.
We would like to remind the community that each referendum is unique and discrete in its scope, and every individual referendum should be evaluated on its own merits prior to voting. There should not be any precedent set by approving the aforementioned extrinsic. This should never be used as a basis for approving future uses of the balances.ForceTransfer extrinsic haphazardly.
Ultimately, we believe that the fate of these lost funds should be decided upon by the DOT token holder DAO, as they belong to the treasury. Whether the outcome of the decision is AYE or NAY, we believe that it is of the utmost importance that this decision be decided by the collective token holders, and not retroactively by the council with no community input.
To reiterate, this discussion is not about the Supercolony team or any specific individual; it is solely focused on addressing accounts claimed to be "lost" that have received treasury rewards.
| callIndex | 0x0502 | ||||||||||
| section | balances | ||||||||||
| method | forceTransfer | ||||||||||
| args |
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