Polkadot Anti-Scam Team 2025 Top-up

Ok, that’s an important one.
I’m gonna share which is my own position, this is the one I’m defending in Le Nexus DV.

1. There is a double spending position for different members of the Moderation Bounty and the anti-scam bounty.
   If You are moderating Polkadot socials, you are also fighting against scams, which is perfectly normal.
   -> Same mission. Moderation team scope.

2. I’ve been through the phishing list on Polkadot.js.org and I was very surprised to discover that this list is covering not only the Polkadot ecosystem but the entire blockchain industry. The Polkadot phishing websites are not even 1%. And fewer and fewer occurrences of Polkadot can be found in the list over time.
   Is it the mission to cover the entire industry? Are the other ecosystems doing this? No.
   -> Over extended scope.

3. The outreach track. To sum up, it’s not a mission of this bounty, but the Marketing Bounty mission
   -> Marketing Bounty scope.

4. Education.
   I reckon education is important to prevent people falling into scams, but I feel a lack of accessibility for the targeted audience.
   Are newbies able to find the delivered documents and vids? Are the documents available on the support website or wiki?
   The cost to produce the articles are also arguable. These contents should be covered by Wagmedia for instance.
   -> Double spending. Wagmedia scope

Conclusion
I acknowledge that this bounty made a good job in the early days, but it feels like the bounty is trying now to extend its scope and overlapping existing bounties in order to maintain activity.
The maintenance mode, in which the bounty is now, does not require a team of 15 people anymore.
Missions should be restricted to the original scope only, which should help drastically reduce the team and save money for the Treasury.
To continue, the bounty should provide a large cut proposal and simplify its mission compared to the requested amount.
A 66% to 75% cut would be adequate for the maintenance. And work only on Polkadot scams, not the whole industry.

Cheers.

Hey 12WeN...,

If you had looked at our transparency sheet, you would know that all of our videos haven't even cost $9k since Bounty started, that's an average of $3k per year, which is <1% of our total budget.

A fun fact you may not know, did you know that most victims are scammed by bots?

Cheers and thanks for your valuable feedback!

Hey everyone, my name's Alina. I'm a member of the Polkadot Anti-Scam Team and an implementer in the Reactive track. I provide support to scam and hack victims, help them secure what's left and increase chances of recovering what's stolen.

I reached out to some of the Polkadot users we helped and asked for their feedback. Not all of them want to post their story here and have it associated with their Polkadot address. I'll post the feedback we received from those who chose to remain anonymous:

**“The dot anti scam team had supported me through some incredibly difficult scenarios with regards to a compromised wallet. Without the absolutely incredible support of the team I would’ve lost a substantial amount of money to my own ignorance. 10/10 we need to expand this team and make my experience the norm for those who are victims of malicious actors on forums, app stores, and friends who can’t be trusted!!”
**

They helped me save over 2k from a compromised wallet where the DOT was staked and the scammer didn't know how to fast unstake :)

I had my wallet phished by downloading a app store app, It was the manta wallet i reached out to manta messeged kenny him self and he didnt help me at all here is the conversation.
🤓Kenny.manta
Hey Kenny could i get some support with my wallet i got phished off the apple app store. i downloaded the manta wallet not knowing it was fake.
Sep 22, 2024, 6:43 AM
·i got 11000 manta the i need saved.
Sep 22, 2024, 6:43 AM
Hey I’m really sorry to hear that but I can’t help, there isn’t anything we can do.

Then i realized that manta was on the polkadot network and they showed my how to code and front run the transaction to save my funds..

Thanks Team

It is surprising and disheartening to me to see such negative sentiment against one of the first, most efficient, diligent, effective, and transparent bounties we have. Having spearheaded the creation of the Anti-Scam Team and this bounty I can personally attest to how much this team cares about making our ecosystem safe for its users and helping those unfortunate enough to fall victim to scams. Without drama or fanfare they are doing the work behind the scenes to ensure all stakeholders are as safe as possible. This is an unprecedented initiative in the industry, a service unique to Polkadot, as so many other unique things we do around here.

But instead of supporting them and saying "thank you", people choose to nitpick the proposal and focus on one thing they don't like to shoot the whole thing down. They focus on the price, without considering the value it brings. Has anyone considered how detrimental it will be to the ecosystem if the Anti-Scam Team ceased its operations? Almost 11,000 scam sites targeting Polkadot users just in 2024 that would be active in the wild, waiting for people to fall for them. All these victims that would have had no support, like they have no support in other ecosystems, and would have lost even more of their funds. More than $160,000 that would have been lost to scammers; this is 1/3 of the requested amount. All these users that came across their educational content and learned something new that helped them avoid a scam.

It seems to me that the DV delegates and members of the DAOs that voted "Nay" don't consider these important. Even more disturbingly, it seems to me that they subscribe to the "wild west" notion adopted by other ecosystems where victims "should have known better" and have basically "only themselves to blame" and are not worthy of allocating resources to protect them. And they seem to forget that they themselves were ignorant at some point and it's probably only due to luck that they weren't victimized themselves, simply because they didn't happen to stumble upon a scam before they "knew better."

I would really like to see those that voted Nay justifying their decision to all those people that knowingly or unknowingly have benefited from the existence of the bounty and telling them why they feel the bounty is not worth funding. To the victims that received support during a trying period and had their funds rescued, to all those users that without knowing it were protected by the team, and to those that avoided a scam because they learned to recognize it.

Instead there is not even any meaningful or constructive feedback, at least not in this thread. The only that comes close is from @SuperDupont that focuses on overlap with other initiatives or the scope of the bounty that's perceived as overreaching. But honestly I don't see it. The Moderation bounty's scope it to fund moderating Discord, Element, and Reddit. As part of that the moderation team does ban scammers, but they don't take down scams, which is what the Anti-Scam bounty does. The Marketing bounty and Wagmedia don't do scam prevention education, nor they create content about it, as they shouldn't; it's not their focus. But what they could do is repost the scam prevention specific content created by the Anti-Scam Team, as is their focus, to increase its reach. As for the non-Polkadot sites on polkadot.js, that has already been addressed. What hasn't been addressed is what it says about the ethos of the team that they add to the repo all the scams they find, even if they don't get paid for it.

I sincerely hope that all the people who voted Nay will take the time to seriously evaluate this proposal and reconsider their vote. And if they still feel the bounty is not worth funding, that they at least share meaningful and constructive feedback so that the team can improve their proposal, if it doesn't pass this time around. Finally, I sincerely hope that none of them fall victim to a scam and come to regret their decision.

We wanted to weigh in with a detailed reply to our requests for this bounty.
In a nutshell, we believe that the scope of the bounty should not be extended outside of the core mission which is an anti-scam, cyber prevention line, victim assistance, anti-phishing repositories, etc. which also entails non-increasing budget outside of the core mission.
It's not about the fact that we think it should be closed for good but actually be focused, scoped and contained to not expand into other realms in which it won't have a large impact on. We as a community approved the extension to other realms and gave it a fair shot, it didn't work so it's time to refocus.

We have previously mentioned on previous refill referenda that the information repository was the most important aspect. We also like the victim support and recovery mechanism (even though others think it's too much resources for the result). Polkadot so far hasn't had recoveries that exceeded the amount of the bounty (which could change in the future and by miles) which is one of the points of contention. For us, it's not about "ROI" but more about the fact that such streamlined way to deal with thefts and criminals is worth it for the whole community as we have a way to reach to the appropriate authorities, blacklist stolen funds and make the necessary follow-ups so that our ecosystem can remain as clean as possible from bad actors. Fees/percentage for the recovery service was a suggestion which we don't think needed as this bounty now is mostly common goods but it is an interesting concept for self-sustainability in the far future if it ever gets big enough to do that (even outside the ecosystem).
DART was also a point of contention for us as reports about projects should follow the same logic cyber reports so being reactive to issues, actions, warnings or events.
Victim publicizing is something we rather not do as we would't like to have such traumatic experiences be publicized. An anonymized report or aggregated report like it's been done so far should be preferred.
Media outreach should be left bare-bones, small size and enough to communicate the actions of the bounty just like all other non-marketing bounties do.

Hopefully with these reasons, this bounty scope is improved and the refill referenda gains a better approval rate.

Dear Proposer,

Thank you for your proposal. Our first vote on this proposal is NAY.

The Medium Spender track requires 50% quorum and simple majority of all voters according to our voting policy. This proposal has received one aye and four nay votes from ten members, with two members abstaining. Below is a summary of our members' comments:

The voters expressed significant concerns about the funding proposal, with most opposing the $500,000 top-up for the Anti-Scam team. Critics highlighted issues of transparency regarding the substantial amounts received by key team members and questioned the overall return on investment from the team's activities. While some acknowledged the team's mission in preventing scams as worthwhile, they suggested a reevaluation of the bounty system and called for clearer accountability in the use of funds. A few voters abstained, wanting more information and expressing cautious optimism about the team's potential for improvement.

The full discussion can be found in our internal voting.

Kind regards,
Permanence DAO