Hey Polkadot fam! We are excited to propose the referendum for the curators of the UX Bounty.

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TL;DR:
The bounty will be managed with a 6/9 multisig, which is being created as we speak.
We are missing 3 curators in the multisig but they will be added soon.

Pure Proxy: 16YDgheHwtmQ9UsmiuZEeVgFzdGF8rnctoEj5NHVTsQonBwe

Multisig: 1fK6bvwDhLFtJ2WyvrGGC8AX3N8X6AbZZSTkydg9WHxidMJ (will change)

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We wanted to take the time to address the recent concerns about bounty management and explain our approach to mitigate conflict of interests.

1. Measures to manage conflict of interest

We have debated for a long time about the curator/executor conflict of interest. One of the main points we need to be conscious of is that finding UX expertise is more challenging than finding marketing expertise.

Removing the capability for our curators to work on tasks would be counterproductive, as our set of curators holds a big part of the UX expertise in the ecosystem.

To address this, we’ll be following those measures:

1. Curators who are also executing tasks will abstain from voting on their own proposals.
2. Projects executed by curators will undergo higher scrutiny, ensuring rigorous evaluation and validation before approval.
3. All votes and decisions will be documented and made publicly accessible to maintain transparency and build community trust.

2. Multisig Structure

With the Bounty Operator role, we are proposing a new setup that hasn't been used before. Braille, in this role, will need to be part of the multisig to expedite the signing process.

Without this, we rely on the Curators to handle this task, which (a) isn’t in their scope, and (b) is a significant time commitment, as we've seen in multiple discussions regarding bounty management.

Braille will act as an automatic approver for all transactions, which won’t impact the results of the curator voting, as it will be accounted for in the multisig threshold.

3. Illustrations

Structure with an Operator:

• The multisig is composed of 8 Curators and 1 Operator (Braille).
• To get approval, 5 out of 8 Curators must approve a spending.
• This is what we call a 5/8 multisig.

⇒ With the Operator included, the multisig becomes 6/9, as the Operator will always approve every transaction.

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Structure when Curators are abstaining because they are also Executors:

• When a curator proposes to be an executor, they abstain from voting and are removed from the multisig threshold.
• The multisig passes from a 6/9 to a 6/8.
• The Curator still needs 6 approvals but has fewer possibilities as their vote is removed.

⇒ This change represents a 10% increase in difficulty.

4. List of Proposed Curators

A table recap of each expertise brought by the teams.

Below, the bio of every curator.

SubWallet (DJ)

A summa cum laude graduate from Washington and Lee University, DJ Hà Trang now works as Research Lead at SubWallet and contributes to making SubWallet one of the leading wallet in the Polkadot ecosystem with over 1,000,000 active users on 3 platforms: browser extension, mobile app and web dashboard. She also co-founded Dotinsights where she wrote in-depth quarterly reports on the Polkadot ecosystem.

At the forefront of user and partner support, DJ works closely with the product team to constantly exchange feedback and improve the user experience in SubWallet, which translates to better experience in the Polkadot ecosystem overall for new users.

Nova (Anton)

Anton has been designing and building user-focused products for over 10 years and has been building for Polkadot since 2019. He holds a Master’s in Software Engineering and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science.

Anton is working on the leading mobile app for Polkadot, Nova Wallet, as well as on Telenova, Polkadot Vault, and Nova Spektr.

Anton's main focus is the success of Polkadot.

Talisman (Nobyte)

Nobyte is the head of product at Talisman, passionate about good user experiences, and has more than a decade of experience in software design, user research, product management, and engineering.

Talisman Wallet has a track record of approaching product design in Polkadot from first principles, pushing a multi-chain portfolio abstraction that has led the standard for the ecosystem.

Apillon (Nino)

Nino sources from interdisciplinary expertise in academic UX research and extensive professional experience at IT powerhouses such as Microsoft, Telekom, Sailbrace, Iconomi (CPO), and Futourist (CTO) to develop and perfect the Apillon platform. Nino maintains a strong focus on user perspective and experience, as well as the technological capabilities and opportunities of the space.

Velocity Labs (Nico)

Nicolas Arevalo (Nico) is the co-founder and CEO of Velocity Labs. He’s been in the Polkadot ecosystem since 2020 when he joined Acala as its Director of BD where he was responsible for pushing Acala’s DeFi primitives to both internal Polkadot builders and external ones. End of 2022, he joined Parity as the DeFi Lead for the EcoDev team where he oversaw all DeFi BD initiatives both at the parachain level as well as support parachains teams at the dapp level. Nico also looked after infrastructure pieces like Oracles, Bridges, Stablecoins and others.

Now as CEO of Velocity, he’ll be supporting the ecosystem with a more hands-on approach and by not only building, but helping builders build. Velocity is also the operator of the DeFi Infrastructure Bounty.

DHNN (Valeria & Rocio)

DHNN is a UX/UI design & development agency.

Valeria

With a strong background in product development and entrepreneurship, I am now a business developer specializing in the Web3 space. I have been involved in the Polkadot ecosystem for the past three years, collaborating with the Web3 Foundation, Parity Technologies, and various projects in both development and security audits for the runtime and pallets, as well as ink! smart contracts. The company I have supported has become a member of the Polkadot Assurance Legion (PAL) as auditors and the Polkadot Alpha Program as developers. We have lever lo aged our expertise to create Scout, a bug detection tool for ink! smart contracts. Currently, we are preparing for a new cybersecurity research challenge focused on automatically detecting security bugs in pallets and the runtime.

Rocio

As a UX leader and Sr. Product Designer with a deep passion for the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, I have dedicated the past seven years to advancing DeFi solutions. My journey includes leading the UX team at Buenbit, a crypto wallet serving over 1 million users, and designing ambitious NFT and DeFi projects from the ground up. Additionally, I've collaborated as a designer and consultant on several DeFi and NFT projects with renowned crypto artists such as PAK and Cryptomotors, and engaged with various LatAm communities, evangelizing and teaching best practices and user-centered design to drive massive adoption of blockchain solutions and interfaces. My goal is to foster blockchain and cryptocurrency adoption by infusing my enthusiasm and expertise into projects and overcoming adoption barriers by solving the common UX pains and frictions we usually find in blockchain platforms and ecosystems.

OpenGovWatch (Tommi & Ugur)

Tommi

Tommi Enenkel, commonly known as Alice und Bob (Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn) co-founded ChaosDAO and OpenGov.Watch. He is a Web3 strategist specialized in ecosystem development, governance, analytics, and crypto-economics. In the past, he held CIO and CMO roles and has a background in systems software architecture and political communication. He holds a MSc in Knowledge Management and IT Security. His master’s thesis explored agile software development in open-source environments.

Ugur

Ugur (Jeeper) has a background in the research of autonomy and digitalization of various types of organizations since 2014, with a focus on political science, civil organizations, and social movements. He holds a BA in Political Science, with a thesis on the digital public sphere and social movements, and an MSc in Sociology, where he explored crowdfunding practices in the context of network society. Ugur has five years of academic research experience and has worked as a content strategist in Web3 for two years. He is currently working with Tommi Enenkel on Opengov.Watch.

Parity (Remy & Francisco)

Remy

Having been part of the Polkadot Ecosystem for many years, Remy has gained valuable professional experience working for both Parity & other project teams, more specifically, Interlay & Kintsugi. Currently he works alongside his colleague’s in the Success team at Parity, where their main focus is to significantly enhance the usage, functionality and development of the Polkadot-SDK.

Remy also brings over his expertise from previous roles within the Polkadot Ecosystem, leading the marketing for the Interlay team alongside his current role has allowed him to better understand the needs and wants of both the developers & users within the ecosystem.

Francisco

Francisco has a background as a full-stack web2 developer and graduated from the first wave of the Polkadot Blockchain Academy. There, he learnt about all the inner workings of blockchain and the Polkadot SDK. After the academy, he wanted to use his newly gained knowledge but found that building on the Polkadot ecosystem had a lot of friction. Now in Parity, he's working on improving UX, currently focusing on XCM.