Proponent: Damsky, Chaotic COO15VmrRmgPhKMfBanjS5ei4dCcVL54GMLCfnVRryynSYzvyys
Date: July 2026
Requested Amount: $80,400 in USDC ($6,700/month × 12 months)
Short description: 12-month maintenance funding for Polkadot's open-source NFT marketplace and NFT data layer: 90,000+ NFTs, 636k+ monthly requests, covering indexers, APIs, IPFS gateway, and platform maintenance the ecosystem depends on.
Project Category/Type: Infrastructure / Open source
Previous treasury proposals:
Key links:
Chaotic is the open-source NFT marketplace for Polkadot. The same core team has built and operated NFT infrastructure on Polkadot and Kusama for over five years.
Beyond the visible marketplace, Chaotic maintains the entire NFT data layer for Polkadot:
What this proposal is about: maintenance only. No new features, no R&D. The purpose is to keep the 90,000+ NFTs on Polkadot and their five years of on-chain history live and accessible. The history stays on-chain either way, but without a maintained front end and data layer, owners can no longer look up, view, or trade their NFTs, and integrators lose the APIs they build on.
Chaotic's previous maintenance funding (#1768) expired in April 2026. Since then, the team has kept all services running unfunded. This is not a new ask; it continues essential services the treasury has funded for years.
The Polkadot NFT ecosystem depends on a small number of contributors maintaining critical infrastructure. Chaotic provides both the marketplace and the underlying services that keep NFT data accessible, collections discoverable, and integrations functioning: indexing, APIs, and metadata delivery.
Under previous treasury funding, the team delivered:
Milestone reports for each funded period are published under the respective referenda on Polkassembly and in our public GitHub repository.
Without continued maintenance funding:
Core Team
The backbone of Polkadot's NFT data layer:
Milestone 1: Infrastructure Maintenance – $8,400 (12 months)
| Component | Deliverable |
|---|---|
| SubSquid Indexers | • Maintain indexers (Asset Hub, Kusama) processing 10k+ weekly requests • Used by Nova Wallet, Dotmemo, and other ecosystem teams |
| API Operations | • Keep Uniquery TypeScript SDK operational • Maintain pricing APIs • Serve 636k+ total monthly requests |
| IPFS / CDN | • Maintain gateway serving 90,000+ NFT metadata files • Process 50k weekly IPFS requests |
| Hosting costs | • SubSquid indexer hosting: $400/month ($4,800 total) • Railway platform deployment: $100/month ($1,200 total) • Cloudflare CDN & DDoS protection: $100/month ($1,200 total) • IPFS server & pinning: $50/month ($600 total) • Monitoring & backups: $50/month ($600 total) • GraphQL caching via Stellate: free tier ($0) |
Milestone 2: Platform Maintenance – $72,000 (12 months)
| Component | Deliverable |
|---|---|
| Ongoing Maintenance | • Daily platform monitoring and uptime management • Bug fixes within 48 hours for critical, one week for minor • Frontend updates and UI improvements • Database optimization and performance tuning • Regular dependency updates |
| Runtime Compatibility | • Polkadot runtime upgrades within 72 hours • Asset Hub integration updates • Kusama compatibility maintenance • Breaking change migrations and version compatibility testing |
| User Support | • Direct user support via Telegram • Bug report triage and response • Feature request documentation • FAQ and help documentation |
| Artist Support | • Artist onboarding and collection launch support • Technical assistance for creators • 90%+ sellout rate maintained |
| Milestone | Effort | Team | Duration | Budget (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Infrastructure Maintenance | Hosting costs | n/a | 12 months | $8,400 |
| 2. Platform Maintenance | 1,440 hrs total | 4 | 12 months | $72,000 |
| TOTAL | 12 months | $80,400 |
| Item | Rate | Volume | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Milestone 1: Infrastructure hosting (indexers, deployment, CDN, IPFS, monitoring) | $700/month | 12 months | $8,400 |
| Milestone 2: Platform maintenance (development, operations, uptime, user & artist support) | $50/hr | 1,440 hrs | $72,000 |
| TOTAL | $80,400 |
The 1,440 hours are split across 4 team members (≈30 hours per person per month). This represents minimum viable funding: hosting at cost, labor at $50/hr, well below market rate for senior Polkadot developers. New features and expanded programs are out of scope and would require separate proposals.
The Hub has been live since November 2025, and Polkadot has consolidated activity on Asset Hub as the center of the ecosystem. Chaotic has served it since day one:
Chaotic's maintenance funding expired in April 2026. The team has covered operations out of pocket since. Without continuation:
This is not R&D funding. It is a working product that needs maintenance to keep serving the ecosystem.
| Metric Category | Target | Measurement Method |
|---|---|---|
| Indexer Performance | • 99.9%+ uptime for all indexers • <500ms query response time • 10k+ weekly requests processed |
Automated monitoring with Grafana dashboards |
| Platform Stability | • Zero critical outages • <48hr critical bug resolution • 99.9% API availability |
Uptime monitoring, incident tracking |
| Infrastructure Efficiency | • Hosting within $700/month budget • 100% data integrity |
Cost reports, performance benchmarks |
| User Impact | • Zero service disruptions • 90,000+ NFTs maintained • 1M+ monthly API requests served • Volume, NFTs hosted, active collections |
Usage analytics, user feedback |
| Metric Category | Evaluation Method |
|---|---|
| Maintenance Quality | Monthly review of resolved issues and system improvements |
| Ecosystem Impact | Feedback from projects using our infrastructure and APIs |
| Documentation | Clarity and completeness of maintenance logs and guides |
Every quarter (four reports over the funding period), we will:
| Milestone | Key Success Metrics |
|---|---|
| 1. Infrastructure Maintenance | • All indexers operational • Zero data loss incidents • Performance benchmarks met |
| 2. Platform Maintenance | • API uptime >99.9% • Security vulnerabilities patched • Bug backlog cleared |
As a public good for Polkadot, all maintenance work remains transparent and open source, allowing the community to verify progress and hold the team accountable.
The total requested amount is $80,400 in USDC, split into twelve equal monthly payments of $6,700. Monthly payments keep progress visible at every step and let the community pause or stop funding at any time via referendum. This funding ensures:
With each quarterly report, we will submit:
The Polkadot account address of the proposer is:
15VmrRmgPhKMfBanjS5ei4dCcVL54GMLCfnVRryynSYzvyys
This account has a verified on-chain identity.
The project manager can be contacted at: [email protected]
The proposer is also available on Telegram: https://t.me/damskyftw