Referendum: Community Building Fund for Bend-PVM - Attracting Developer Contributors to the PolkaVM Ecosystem (500 DOT)

This referendum proposes allocating 500 DOT from the treasury to establish a Community Building Fund for Bend-PVM, aimed at expanding the contributor base and fostering an active developer ecosystem around this innovative smart contract language optimized for PolkaVM.

Community-Driven Development Model

Rather than funding a small core team, this proposal takes a decentralized approach by creating incentives for a broader community of developers to contribute to Bend-PVM's evolution. The requested funds will be strategically deployed to nurture a thriving contributor ecosystem through:

• Contributor rewards for merged pull requests and significant improvements
• Hackathons and coding challenges with DOT prizes for specific feature implementations
• Bug bounty program to strengthen the language's security and reliability
• Educational resources and workshops to onboard new contributors

Funding Allocation

The 500 DOT will be distributed as follows:

• 60% (300 DOT): Direct contributor rewards for code contributions
• 20% (100 DOT): Community hackathons and development challenges
• 15% (75 DOT): Educational content creation and developer workshops
• 5% (25 DOT): Administration and transparent fund management

Strategic Community Goals

This community-centric approach addresses critical ecosystem needs:

1. Knowledge Distribution: Prevent single points of failure by spreading expertise across multiple contributors
2. Innovation Acceleration: Harness diverse perspectives to solve complex language design challenges
3. Ecosystem Growth: Create pathways for Ethereum developers to become active Polkadot contributors
4. Sustainable Development: Establish a self-reinforcing community that outlasts any single funding round

Expected Outcomes

• Increase monthly active contributors from current baseline to 25+ within 6 months
• Achieve 10+ educational workshops/events to onboard new developers
• Complete 3 targeted hackathons addressing specific language features
• Establish a transparent contribution tracking system with clear reward criteria

Governance Transparency

All fund distributions will be publicly recorded and verified through a designated multi-signature account. Monthly reports will detail contributor rewards, event expenditures, and development progress metrics.

Community Benefits

This community-first approach will:

• Accelerate Bend-PVM development through parallel workstreams
• Create a sustainable pipeline of skilled PolkaVM developers
• Strengthen Polkadot's position as a developer-friendly ecosystem
• Demonstrate the effectiveness of treasury funds in fostering grassroots innovation

Social

• https://bend-pvm.aipop.fun
• https://github.com/developerfred/Bend-PVM

We invite all stakeholders to support this referendum to build a vibrant, community-driven development ecosystem around Bend-PVM and position Polkadot as the home for next-generation smart contract innovation.