I don't know if this is possible, but is there any reason we can't have the unused Treasury DOT that will get burned at the end of each period automatically moved to an escrow account or community wallet and distribute those DOT to the community?
This is a lot more appealing than hearing bounty creators try and justify their spending waste or unaccountable DOT expenditures as better alternatives since the Treasury will burn it anyways...?!?! I'd much rather watch it burn than go to those that do not deserve or did not earn the DOTs.
There could be a variety of rewards based on intitiatives to activate the community, such as governance participation (number of votes, number of referendums, consecutive referendums, and totals for that quarter), devs + coretime marketplace (various tasks related to developers and purchasing coretime), supporting parachains by rewarding users to use or participate in a parachain's product launch, or traffic drivers rewarding users with verfied IDs on Polkadot People or contributing or using AssetHub. There are plenty of oppotunities to leverage the DOT from getting burned to reinvigorate and show how a blockchain can take care of its community.
While all of the various themed programs mentioned above will require community approval, a default distribution can be in place any time a program is not in place. Instead of the standard distribution based on wallet and amount of tokens, inactive wallets or new wallets will not qualify, large staked DOT holders would have a cap, and other rules can be in place to avoid gaming by grifters and the like — and to really focus on how to make the smaller DOT holders excited to participate in the community and be recognized for their contributions and efforts.
I would nominate a founding committee, council or curator group (depending on how it would be setup) of trusted candidates that have shown they have the best interest of the community and Polkadot — and have them take the lead or advise this opportunity. A portion (example: 10%) of the DOT would need to be allocated for the costs to manage and implement voting and setting up the programs — as well as compensations. Unused DOT would be added to the following month distribution pool.
I would recommend Anaelle to align participation with OpenGov, Bill for his technical knowledge and expertise to make this work, and Saxemberg for the integrity in protecting and informing the community. There are a few more that qualify and fit with their contributions — which I am sure they will be involved at some point.
It would be great to hear reasons why anyone would object or say no — lets discuss!