Polkadot Grant Tracking Platform

This proposal outlines the development of a Grant Progress Tracking Dashboard for the Polkadot ecosystem, designed to provide the community with a transparent, user-friendly platform for monitoring the progress of funded proposals. The tracker will offer detailed milestone tracking, real-time updates, and automated early warning systems for deviations or delays. The goal is to offer unified access to all past and active grants along with their statuses, while proactively identifying risks before they become failures reducing poor ROI on grants.  

Problem

Currently, tracking the progress of Polkadot's grant proposals is fragmented, with updates scattered across various channels and platforms. This lack of cohesion creates dangerous blind spots that hinder the community's ability to effectively oversee projects, evaluate progress, and address potential issues before they become costly failures.

Critical gaps in the current system include:

• Silent Failures: Projects that go months without updates, burning through funding with no visible progress
• Scope Creep: Deliverables that drift from original proposals without detection or approval
• Milestone Manipulation: Vague progress reports that mask actual development delays
• Fund Misallocation: Unusual spending patterns that go unnoticed until audits reveal problems
• Communication Blackouts: Extended periods of grantee silence that historically predict project abandonment
• Cross-chain Blind Spots: Activities spread across parachains that escape centralized oversight

These gaps lead to inefficient allocation of DOT resources, failed projects consuming treasury funds, and erosion of community trust in the grant system. The Polkadot ecosystem needs a unified, transparent, and intelligent early warning system that identifies problems before they become expensive failures.

Proposed Solution

SafeGuard is a real-time, AI-powered treasury tracking dashboard purpose-built for Polkadot's multi-chain ecosystem. It transforms fragmented data sources into intelligent early warning systems, giving stakeholders not just visibility into current status, but predictive insights into emerging risks and potential failures.

SafeGuard introduces a proactive accountability layer by combining automation, community verification, and AI-driven pattern recognition to catch problems weeks or months before traditional oversight methods would detect them.

Early Warning System - Core Innovation

WatchDog's primary value lies in its ability to surface problems before they become failures through intelligent gap detection:

Automated Risk Detection

• Communication Pattern Analysis: Flags projects showing historical warning signs (8+ weeks without updates, declining engagement frequency)
• Milestone Deviation Detection: Identifies when actual deliverables don't match proposed timelines or scope
• Spending Pattern Anomalies: Detects unusual fund movements or allocation patterns that deviate from approved budgets
• Progress Velocity Tracking: Measures development pace against similar successful projects to predict likely outcomes

Predictive Failure Indicators

• Silence Score: Quantifies communication gaps and correlates with historical project failure rates
• Scope Drift Index: Measures how far current work deviates from original proposal commitments
• Engagement Health: Tracks community interaction, GitHub activity, and social signals
• Financial Health: Monitors burn rates, milestone-to-funding ratios, and spending transparency

Proactive Alert System

• Red Flag Triggers: Immediate alerts for critical warning signs (30+ days silence, major scope changes, unusual fund activity)
• Yellow Flag Patterns: Early warnings for concerning trends before they become critical
• Stakeholder Notifications: Automated alerts to relevant governance participants when intervention may be needed
• Community Dashboards: Public risk scores and trend indicators for maximum transparency

Features

Primary Features (Risk-Focused)

Early Warning Dashboard: Real-time risk scoring for all active grants with predictive failure indicators and intervention recommendations

Gap Detection Engine: AI-powered system that identifies communication blackouts, scope deviations, and spending anomalies before they become critical issues

Pattern Recognition: Machine learning algorithms trained on historical grant data to predict which projects are likely to fail based on early warning signals

Automated Governance Workflows: Triggered follow-ups and intervention protocols when risk thresholds are exceeded

Supporting Features

Milestone Tracking: Dedicated pages for each grant, displaying key milestones, progress indicators (e.g., progress bars, percentages), and completion status

Real-time Updates: Timely updates on milestone completion and overall project progress

Financial Transparency: Mapping disbursements to project-specific activity with anomaly detection for unusual spending patterns

Data Consolidation: Consolidating fragmented data into a standardized, actionable format for voters and stakeholders

Visualizations: Charts and graphs showing not just current progress, but risk trends and predictive indicators

Cross-chain Monitoring: Unified view of activities across all Polkadot parachains and related ecosystems

Who is it for

SafeGuard aligns with Polkadot's values of transparency, decentralization, and verifiability. It serves multiple stakeholder groups:

Grant Administrators: Early warning tools to identify at-risk projects, automate intervention protocols, and prevent failures before they occur

DOT/KSM Holders: Risk-adjusted visibility into Treasury performance with predictive insights into which grants are likely to succeed or fail

OpenGov Voters: Actionable risk intelligence to inform ongoing decisions and future grant approval criteria

Contributors and Grantees: Clear expectations and early feedback loops to course-correct before problems become critical

Community Members: Access to transparent risk metrics and failure prediction data for informed ecosystem participation

Impact and Value Proposition

By transforming reactive grant monitoring into predictive risk management, WatchDog will:

• Prevent Failed Projects: Early intervention based on proven failure indicators
• Improve Treasury Efficiency: Higher success rates through proactive project support
• Enhance Community Trust: Transparent, data-driven accountability that catches problems early
• Reduce Governance Overhead: Automated systems that trigger appropriate responses without manual oversight
• Protect Ecosystem Reputation: Fewer high-profile grant failures due to predictive intervention

Team

Build Union – Aggregate Team of Web3 Builders

Build Union is a collaborative collective of talented developers, designers, strategists, and innovators dedicated to shaping the future of the decentralized web. As an aggregate team of Web3 builders, Build Union brings together diverse expertise to create cutting-edge blockchain applications, DAO services, and other decentralized solutions. We are focused on fostering innovation and accelerating the adoption of Web3 technologies.

We’d love your thoughts as we refine this platform.

MVP Pages

Project list & Recent updates page

List view

Project details page In-depth details on the grant

Organizational view

Stakeholders Control Page

Stakeholders' Organizational Grant Details

WatchDog – Tracking Grants. Exposing Gaps. Empowering Governance.