Proponent: 12mP4sjCfKbDyMRAEyLpkeHeoYtS5USY4x34n9NMwQrcEyoh
Date: April 8, 2025
Requested USDT: PolkaWorld is applying for 266,652 USDT to support its operations for the upcoming year (April 2025 – March 2026).
Short description: After successfully delivering on Referendum 573, PolkaWorld is excited to submit a new proposal for the next year of operations (April 2025 – March 2026)!
In this proposal, we once again commit to delivering:
But that’s not all — this proposal also includes a full breakdown of our 573 delivery, as well as additional contributions, such as:
As long-term builders in the space, PolkaWorld has never stopped contributing to Polkadot — in bull or bear markets. In just two months, we’ll be celebrating six full years of building for the Polkadot ecosystem!
We hope to continue receiving support from the community so we can keep bringing real-time updates to Asian users, while also acting as a bridge between Asia, the Americas, and Europe—fostering greater mutual understanding and collaborative growth.
This proposal also comes at a crucial time: as Polkadot Hub and Polkadot Cloud begin to take shape, and interest in JAM grows rapidly across Chinese-speaking regions following Gavin’s recent JAM Tour in China. We believe now is a key moment to strengthen regional engagement and build momentum across the ecosystem.
Let’s keep building — together.
You might already be familiar with PolkaWorld, or perhaps not, but I'd like to share our journey in the Web3 world. In 2017, I (Xiaojie) joined a tech media company in Silicon Valley. Together with my teammate Kiko, we were responsible for the "Blockchain from 0 to 1" online course, a collaboration with Huobi exchange that sold over 200,000 copies online. Through this endeavor, we established one of China's early blockchain communities and nurtured numerous key opinion leaders (KOLs).
In the bear market of 2018, I left the company, and Kiko and I embarked on creating a blockchain education community brand. We collaborated with Dr. Bai Shuo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chao Pan of MakerDao China, and Ben El-baz, head of the ecosystem at Hashkey, to produce a series of blockchain-related courses. These courses received endorsements from key figures like Xiaofeng of Wanxiang Blockchain, MakerDao founder Rune Christensen, and Kathryn Haun, a partner at A16Z.
During this journey, we recognized the immense gap and importance of community education. However, we also realized that broad education didn't generate the cash flow we needed to sustain our team's ambitions. Then we meet Polkadot. On one hand, Substrate's significance at the time and Polkadot's inherent complex concepts made it an ideal platform for community education. On the other hand, we received consistent support from W3F. So, PolkaWorld has been in operation for almost 6 years since its establishment in June 2019.
So, who is PolkaWorld — in short?
The Largest Polkadot Community in Asia Since 2019
The Only Recipient of Web3 Foundation Community Grant
Initial Governance Council Member of Polkadot
Delegator for Web3 Foundation’s Decentralized Voices Cohort 1
12 Consecutive Approvals of Polkadot Treasury Proposals
Dedicated to Polkadot Community Education & Support
• Hosted 50+ Offline Meetups
• Interviewed 60+ Polkadot Ecosystem Projects
• Produced 150+ Educational Short Videos
• Hosted 270+ Live Streaming Sessions
• Published 1500+ Articles in Chinese
• In just 2 months, we’ll be celebrating 6 years of building for Polkadot.
PolkaWorld Is Always Focused on the Polkadot Ecosystem!
As mentioned above, our primary focus has always been on community education. This has ingrained in our team a DNA for content creation, repackaging, and channel distribution. Additionally, over the past 8 years of experience in community education, we have developed a set of core values that also reflect our areas of expertise and strengths:
Long-Term Commitment: We believe that community education is an ongoing endeavor. Regardless of market conditions, bullish or bearish, the Chinese-speaking market always needs access to information about Polkadot.
More than Just PR: We strive for a deep understanding of the ecosystem and the industry at large. Truly grasping the various mechanisms and changes within Polkadot is crucial, and we're committed to continuous learning—not just about Polkadot—to elevate our industry awareness.
Educational Approach: Our community education efforts go beyond merely parroting complex jargon. We aim to understand the logic behind the terminology and convey it in a manner that is accessible and easy to understand.
Opinionated Outputs: We focus on articulating well-formed opinions rather than verbose, unhelpful discourses. This approach provokes thought within the community and keeps the dialogue engaging.
Independence and Decentralization: We maintain our independence and decentralized nature, which allows us to always approach issues from a neutral standpoint.
These core values serve as the foundation of our commitment to the Polkadot community, and they guide each action we take and the proposal we submit.
As of April 2025, over the past year, we have published 324 articles within the WeChat ecosystem—exceeding our original commitment of 288 articles stated in Referendum 573. These articles have generated a total of 232,164 reads, excluding additional distribution from third-party Chinese media platforms (to which we do not have access to analytics data).
To better understand the relationship between content performance and market conditions, we conducted a comparative analysis between PolkaWorld’s article views and the monthly average price of DOT during the period of April 2024 to March 2025.
1. General Trends
Between November and December 2024, a significant price surge in DOT coincided with a noticeable spike in content views, providing preliminary evidence that market sentiment has a positive influence on content engagement.
Interestingly, from January 2025 onward, although DOT prices entered a steady decline, article views remained high. This indicates that audience interest has started to decouple from token price performance, shifting instead toward ecosystem developments and project-related news.
2. Correlation Analysis
Using the Pearson correlation coefficient, we found a score of 0.55, indicating a moderate positive correlation between DOT price and content engagement.
This suggests that while DOT price increases do positively affect viewership, they are not the sole driver of content performance.
3. Key Takeaways
In the past year, we hosted 71 online livestreams, exceeding our commitment of 60 livestreams as stated in Referendum 573. These sessions collectively attracted a total of 39,027 unique viewers.
We produced 48 educational short videos, which garnered approximately 65,000 views within the WeChat ecosystem. You can also find these videos on our YouTube channel.
In addition, our WeChat video channel—which includes a broader range of content such as interviews and highlight clips—has accumulated a total of 153,656 views over the past year.
We conducted 13 interviews, which received nearly 24,000 views in total. We’ve observed that Chinese-speaking users show strong interest in this type of content—Maybe we will conside expanding our interview series in the future!
In addition to the deliverables outlined in Referendum 573, PolkaWorld officially launched its bilingual Twitter (X) presence in April 2024. Over the past year, we have consistently maintained a posting frequency of at least 3 tweets per day in both Chinese and English, carefully curating and sharing the most valuable information for our audience.
Here are the results of that effort:
The chart below illustrates the posting and reply activity of PolkaWorld’s English X account over the past year. We maintained a steady content output, with noticeable spikes in May 2024, November 2024, January 2025, and February 2025.
Highlights include:
These metrics demonstrate that PolkaWorld’s English X account has become an important and trusted source of information in the Polkadot community.
Additionally, looking at data from the past three months, we’re excited to see that PolkaWorld’s English content is gaining traction not only in China, but also among users in the United States, Germany, Canada, and India!
On the Chinese side, despite having fewer followers and a smaller overall scale, the audience loyalty and quality of engagement on the Chinese account rival those of the English account—and in terms of engagement rate, it actually performs slightly better.
In terms of content cadence, the posting frequency has remained consistent throughout the year—with a clear uptick starting in November, which was followed by a noticeable increase in metrics. Engagement levels remained steady in the latter months, suggesting that higher posting frequency had a positive impact on overall performance.
Additionally, it’s clear that the majority of our Chinese account’s audience comes from Chinese-speaking regions.
One of the most milestone contributions this year was that PolkaWorld, in collaboration with Pala Labs, co-hosted Dr. Gavin Wood’s four-city JAM Tour across mainland China!
It was a tremendous honor for us to welcome Dr. Wood back to China, and we deeply value the trust placed in PolkaWorld to help make it happen.
Here are some key highlights and data from the tour:
Other attendees included representatives from traditional enterprises such as Alibaba, Tencent, Microsoft, Huawei, ICBC Blockchain Research Team, Haier Group, CoinSummer Capital, Zhejiang Commercial Bank HQ R&D Center, Nokia, Zheshang Securities Investment Fund, SDIC UBS Fund Management, CITIC Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, CICC Global Research, and Vertex Ventures.
From the Web3 industry, we welcomed participants from Binance, Wanxiang Blockchain Labs, OKX, AltLayer, Aptos Labs, Axelar, RedStone, Conflux, HashKey Chain, imToken, MEXC, OpenSea, SNZ Capital, and MicroStrategy Capital, among others.
We were also joined by Web3 media outlets such as Odaily, BlockBeats, PANews, Foresight News, Bitpush News, and Decrypt.
And of course, many Polkadot ecosystem teams participated as well, including PolkaWorld, OneBlock+, Bifrost, Acala, Mimir, OpenSquare, PAKA Fund, Darwinia Network, Harbour Industrial Capital, and Lollipop.
It was an unforgettable tour that showcased the growing energy, interest, and collaboration within the Chinese Web3 and Polkadot community.
Finally, over the past year, we were honored to be selected by the Web3 Foundation as a DV (Decentralized Voices) representative in the first cohort.
While we only voted on 54 proposals, this was a conscious choice. As a first-cohort DV, we took our responsibility to the community seriously and remained aligned with community interests by focusing only on proposals in areas we truly understand—marketing, community, and media.
Being a DV isn’t just about typing in a password and blindly voting on-chain. It requires extensive English reading, Telegram discussions, Google Meets, and publicly sharing key information with the community. It’s demanding work—but meaningful.
At PolkaWorld, we believe this is a critical way to amplify Asian voices in OpenGov. We’re grateful and excited to share that we’ve been selected again for the 4th DV cohort!
This time, we’re taking things further—we’re inviting more members, builders, project teams, and developers from across Asia to join PolkaWorld and help shape a Polkadot Asia DAO that actively participates in OpenGov.
Curious about our philosophy? Click here to learn more.
Since receiving funding from the Polkadot treasury starting in 2021, we have been publishing monthly work summaries. If you're interested, you can check out our reports covering the past 45 months:
Workscope & OKR Breakdown: April 2025 - March 2026
After discussing with the community and reworking our proposal logic, we’ve defined three core objectives that will guide how we measure our impact in increasing Polkadot’s visibility in China:
Reach & Visibility: We aim to expand the reach of Polkadot content within the Chinese WeChat ecosystem. For example, in our previous proposal, the average article view count was around 700. This year, through refined content strategy, we aim to raise that average to over 1,000. (This is a target we’re striving for, though we recognize the market is influenced by many external factors.)
Content Quality & Timeliness: PolkaWorld has always been known for its timely, high-quality, and easy-to-understand content. In this proposal, we will continue to uphold that standard.
Ecosystem Development & Resource Building: PolkaWorld has already established media and university connections in China. We will continue nurturing those relationships and organize more livestreams to help these partners stay updated on Polkadot’s progress.
Based on these goals, we’ve broken down our work into the following categories:
OKRs for the 12 months of this proposal:
Todo each month:
OKRs for the 12 months of this proposal:
Ecosystem Show: Inviting rollup teams to share their latest developments and engage directly with the community.
Polkadot 101:Aimed at newcomers, this series breaks down the fundamentals, key mechanisms, and latest concepts of Polkadot—serving as a gateway for more people to understand and enter the ecosystem.
Ecosystem Perks: Sharing ongoing incentive programs and other community-beneficial campaigns happening across the Polkadot ecosystem.
OpenGov Updates: Providing regular updates on the latest proposals within OpenGov, helping the Chinese-speaking community better understand key ref on the Polkadot/Kusama networks and continuously encouraging broader participation in governance.
Meet New Friends (English livestream): A casual livestream series hosted on X, where we connect with builders across the Polkadot ecosystem—exploring what they’re working on, how they’re contributing to the ecosystem, and how Polkadot is supporting their growth.
Monthly Community Call (English livestream): A monthly roundup on X Live where we invite active ecosystem builders to review and interpret the month’s key developments—technical progress, major proposals, active projects, highlight metrics, and more.
Todo each month:
OKR for the 12 months of this proposal:
Todo in each month:
OKR for the 12 months of this proposal:
Todo in each month:
OKRs for the 12-month proposal period:
Todo in each month:
1. Key Metrics: followers on WeChat official account/X and impression & engagement on X. While we aim to improve these metrics, we cannot guarantee specific figures, as traffic in Web3 is influenced by a wide range of factors beyond our control.
2. marketing means:
Publish a Monthly Review and Report on Polkassembly on the last day of every month, including performance data and all activities and materials created, to be shared with the Direction channel and comments on our original proposals for regular updates.
Based on the budget in the above table, we apply for USD 22,221 per month, which is USD 266,652 in total (from April 2025 to March 2026) for the Chinese community operations and event costs.
Please note:
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding this proposal, feel free to reach out to us via email (xiaojie@polkaworld.org) or Telegram (https://t.me/xiaojie_web3world).
Threshold
This proposal is really concerning, with all due respect to your work. I lay down my concerns below:
**1. Salary/Task Double-Counting - **
The proposal allocates $22k/month for both:
Salaries (5 full-time roles at $3.4k-$4.1k/month each)
Deliverables (24 articles, 4 videos, 6 livestreams/month)
This creates redundancy. Why are so many people being paid salary while also getting others to write articles and pay for them? Salaries should inherently cover labor costs for these outputs. The current structure effectively charges twice: once for staff time, and again for deliverables they produce during paid work hours.
2. High Per-Unit Costs
Articles: $925/article ($22k ÷ 24) vs. standard Chinese market rates:
Freelance writers: $100-$300/article (Upwork, Fiverr)
Professional agencies: $300-$500/article (ChainNews, BlockBeats)
Video Editing: $868/video ($3.4k ÷ 4) vs. typical rates:
Basic editing: $50-$150/video (Taobao freelancers)
Premium editing: $200-$400/video (Bilibili creators)
**
3. Unjustified "Media Distribution" Costs
**
$8.3k/month allocated without:
Proof of third-party partnerships
Performance metrics for external platforms
I would appreciate if someone did a competitive study about the value PolkaWorld is providing from a media perspective to the ecosystem and compare it with other chinese platforms like ChainNews, BlockBeats etc...
The PolkaWorld proposal exhibits systemic financial mismanagement and questionable value delivery.
I took the time to look through the March report and here are some observations:
March 2025 Performance Shortfalls
Underwhelming Engagement
Articles: 26 articles → 25,533 total views (~982/article)
Top article: 7,512 views (29% of total monthly traffic)
72% of articles received <1,000 views despite $925/article cost.
Video ROI Failure
4 educational videos: 4,403 total views (~1,101/video)
Cost: $3.4k/month for editing/uploading → $0.77/view
Social Media Decline
English X:
Impressions ↓33% | Engagements ↓19%
Relies heavily on 1.2K verified followers (7.8% of total)
Chinese X:
Engagement rate ↓3.6% despite** "quality over quantity" claims**
Vote "No" to uphold responsible treasury spends. Please
Please take a careful look at our proposal and make the appropriate calculations. Thank you!
Polkaworld has been a leading voice when it comes to community building and media in China and beyond. Their content is informative and timely and brings in a variety of different voices. I think a big problem of Polkadot in the past has been that media spending has been too focused on one single outlet. Rather, alternative Polkadot-native media outlets should be embraced wholeheartedly. Having a native Chinese outlet is incredibly important, given that this is arguably the country with the biggest developer community which we need to reach if Polkadot is to be successful in the long term. And while Polkaworld is a leading voice in the Chinese market, it should no longer be considered restricted to this jurisdiction, as the wealth of new English language content has shown.
Edited
Polkaworld is undoubtedly the largest and most influential Polkadot community in China. Before 2024, it focused on producing Chinese content and media, with most Chinese media citing Polkaworld's content as the official information source. However, as Web3 information sources gradually migrate to X (formerly Twitter), Polkaworld will also place greater emphasis on developing X content after 2024. It will simultaneously produce content in both Chinese and English and gradually gain more attention and influence in English content. A lot of progress has been made.
I support this proposal and hope to collaborate with Polkaworld to amplify the voices of DOT holders in Asia and enable them to participate in OpenGov discussions, proposals, and voting.
Ah, the classic ‘But China is expensive now!’ deflection. Let’s clarify:
Geography ≠ Argument: My critique isn’t about East vs. West salaries, it’s about PolkaWorld vs. ChainNews/BlockBeats rates in the same region. If PolkaWorld’s "quality" costs 3x competitors, show us the receipts (or the 3x ROI).
Monopoly Math: "No alternatives" ≠ justification. If PolkaWorld’s been the only option for years, maybe it’s time to ask: Why? Healthy ecosystems thrive on competition, not loyalty programs.
Transparency Theatre: For $266k/year, we deserve more than "trust us, we’re quality" especially when March’s top article had 7.5k views (roughly $123/view). Even Netflix gives us watch-time metrics.
Keep calm and compare apples to apples. 🍎🔪🍏
We've been working with the Polkaworld team for the last 3 years. They are one of the early supporters of Polkadot and have greatly helped raise awareness of Polkadot in the Chinese and APAC markets. I fully support the Polkaworld team with this proposal. Ryan | SubWallet
Edited
I have concerns regarding the effectiveness of PolkaWorld’s marketing efforts. Based on available data, much of their output appears to focus primarily on translation work. While translation has value, it does not constitute a comprehensive marketing strategy.
It’s also worth noting that WeChat metrics can be easily inflated, making it difficult to assess true engagement. Despite several years of operation, their X
YouTube channels have shown minimal growth in terms of subscribers and viewership — which raises further questions about long-term impact.
Additionally, to my knowledge, the team is not exclusively dedicated to the Polkadot ecosystem and is also involved in operations for other networks. This may explain the size of the team, but it also suggests a lack of singular focus and long-term commitment to Polkadot’s growth.
Overall, the cost-to-impact ratio appears unfavorable. Given these concerns, I recommend voting NAY on this proposal.
It's not the largest community at all, not even a community at all. Because they haven't invested any time in operating the community
Just for the sake of salary, so their quality is lower
Just for Gavin's work, not the community, they focus on pleasing Gavin
The core members are not focused on the Polkadot ecosystem, but also work for many other ecosystems
Given the above situation, this cost is too high
I suggest cutting the fees by 2/5 to match their work quality.
When evaluating PolkaWorld’s contributions, assessing solely based on “content production cost” overlooks its unique and long-term value to the Polkadot ecosystem. While other Chinese blockchain media may offer broader distribution, they often lack PolkaWorld’s deep understanding of Polkadot’s technical roadmap and governance evolution.
PolkaWorld consistently produces high-quality content, closely follows developments like OpenGov and ecosystem updates, and offers meaningful exposure for projects. Notably, its monthly interviews are shaped by community input, creating a rare and valuable feedback loop between users and builders—something blockchain media cannot replicate.
In the Chinese-speaking community, PolkaWorld serves as a primary entry point for many DOT and KSM holders. It has built a strong, cohesive community and continues to be a trusted home for long-term supporters.
In my view, PolkaWorld plays a foundational role in ecosystem development and governance education. I sincerely urge the committee to consider its lasting impact and community influence beyond short-term marketing metrics 🙏
— Yuki Pan
Dear Proposer,
Thank you for your proposal. Our second vote on this proposal is AYE.
The Medium Spender track requires 50% quorum and simple majority of non-abstain voters according to our voting policy. This proposal has received six aye and one nay votes from ten members, with two members abstaining. Below is a summary of our members' comments:
The voters expressed strong support for Polkaworld, highlighting its significant role in the Chinese-speaking community and its efforts to enhance English content for broader engagement. Many praised its dedication and reasonable funding requests, emphasizing the importance of continued growth and development in the region. However, some raised concerns about transparency and the perceived overselling of their capabilities, leading to a few abstentions and a dissenting vote. Overall, the sentiment leaned towards endorsing Polkaworld's initiatives and contributions.
The full discussion can be found in our internal voting.
Please feel free to contact us through the links below for further discussion.
Kind regards,
Permanence DAO
Decentralized Voices Cohort IV Delegate
📅 Book Office Hours
💬 Public Telegram
🌐️ Web
🐦 Twitter
🗳️ Delegate
The sudden change of ticket for '14D', as I mentioned, the fact is that as long as they provide good service to Gavin not Polkadot community, it's enough to make him happy. They also passed it with Gavin's help before, right.
gav's statement on Twitter changed the outcome.
Provide a fair price to a media company that serves multiple blockchain ecosystems simultaneously. They are not missionaries, far from it.
Continue to persist in opposing.
On behalf of Trustless Core DV and as a consequence of the impossibility to issue feedback from that account, the corresponding feedback is presented:
"Dear Proposer,
Thank you for the proposal
Trustless Core voted AYE.
Polkaworld team has been working in the Asian community since the earliest of Polkadot, playing a huge role in spreading awareness across the Chinese and APAC markets.
Some members raised concerns about the cost of the proposal but Trustless Core considers it is important to support this team that are part of the Polkadot ecosystem.
Best regards,
Trustless Core"
Hey community! Here comes the PolkaWorld Monthly Report - April 2025!
Please find more details here.
IDK why they put their proposal behind a Google form that makes you request access. Here is a copy of it for anyone who would like to view it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VVGIKr0DWQsrtlTDDPRdvRhX3YsM3lMvJ82X6pbcGEE/edit?usp=sharing