.

Hey,

I'm sorry to tell you, but you need to hear this early. You can't just pop out of nowhere and propose a 1m DOT spend for a project like this. This will get declined.

Don't be discouraged. It's a great idea and you will have an easy time finding private investors to fund it. Which will be even more profitable for you.

Thank you for playing! Goodbye!

PS: If done correctly, the reading time can be cut down to 3 minutes.

PolkaWorld votes NAY

While we acknowledge the ambition behind Polkalotto — combining decentralization, education, and philanthropy — at its core, it appears to be a commercial platform seeking to bootstrap a self-sustaining revenue model through Treasury subsidies. The proposal relies on locked DOT and perpetual staking yields as a long-term monetization strategy.

In our view, initiatives of this nature would be better suited for traditional funding avenues such as private investment or grants, rather than relying on the Polkadot Treasury.

The Treasury was designed to support:
• Public goods that serve the ecosystem broadly, such as infrastructure, developer tooling, and educational resources;
• Efforts that enhance network sustainability, development experience, protocol maturity, or user onboarding.

We also have serious concerns about the incentive structure and transparency in this proposal:
• 100,000 DOT (currently valued at ~$500,000) is allocated to the team with no lock-up, no performance criteria, and no disclosed governance framework;
• This effectively asks the Treasury to provide a seed round to a project without any of the safeguards typical of VC funding — such as oversight, equity dilution, or accountability.

This sets a dangerous precedent: any commercial team could claim to promote “adoption” and request funding, without needing to undergo audits, offer transparency, or accept checks and balances.

The requested budget is exceptionally high and far exceeds our risk tolerance:

•	1,000,000 DOT (~$5 million USD at current prices) — one of the largest asks in Treasury history;
•	A significant portion is earmarked for Spotify ads ($630,000) and legal/infrastructure costs (~$840,000);
•	The team has no proven track record or verifiable past deliverables to justify such an investment.

Funding a high-budget project of this scale with no prior delivery undermines the core principles of responsible Treasury governance.

You can view our full feedback [here].

Dear Proposer,

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

The Medium Spender track requires 50% quorum (at least 5 aye votes) and simple majority of non-abstain votes according to our voting policy v0.2, and any referendum in which the majority of members vote abstain receives an abstain vote. This proposal has received one aye and five nay votes from ten available members. Below is a summary of our members' comments:

Voters expressed concerns over the proposal’s overall value and potential legal complications. They questioned whether the ambitious design could truly benefit the ecosystem, highlighting risks related to cross-border lottery regulations and complexities that overshadowed its purported advantages. Several comments criticized the proposal for its excessive fluff and convoluted approach, suggesting that a simpler lottery platform could have been sufficient. While one voter found the idea intriguingly unconventional and noted it might be better suited for a different network, the majority concluded that the project’s risks and uncertainties outweighed its potential impact, ultimately deciding against the proposal.

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

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JAM DAO votes NAY on the Polkalotto proposal.

While the vision of a “planetary impact engine” sounds ambitious, the proposal lacks the grounding we expect for a 1M DOT request — or even this initial 17K DOT installment.

There’s no visible track record from the team on Polkadot, core documents are locked behind restricted Google Drive links, and even with the proposal content on the Ref page, it’s difficult to evaluate credibility or feasibility.

A decentralized lottery can be an interesting mechanism for community engagement, but we don’t see sufficient clarity, execution capability, or alignment with Polkadot’s priorities to justify treasury support at this stage.