Social Contract Polkassembly 2025 (Q3–Q4) : Fellowship & Transparency Infrastructure

This proposal seeks funding from the Polkadot Treasury to implement comprehensive Fellowship integration and transparency infrastructure. Building on the 2025 Social Contract delivery, we add Fellowship workflow optimization, public dashboards, and transparency infrastructure to bridge technical expertise with governance participation.

Summary

Following our 2025 Social Contract (Ref. 1463), Polkassembly continues to be the primary place for governance discussion and coordination. With this proposal we are building:

Fellowship Integration: dedicated workflows, RFC tracking, technical proposal categorization, and Fellowship member coordination tools.
On-chain accountability: IPFS documentation attached to proposals; OG-Tracker deeper-integration for search and citation.
Identity improvements: unified registrar views and sub-identity flows.
Delegation tools: Alignment statistics and explorer views
Oversight dashboards: Treasury, Fellowship, Judgement/Registrar, and Delegation statistics.

Key Stats

140K+ monthly active users(Source: Cloudflare)
92M+ API requests monthly(Source: Cloudflare)
95.66% of Polkadot governance discussions
82.66% of Polkadot governance comments
52.22% of identity judgements(Source: On-chain)

Platform Links

🔗 Polkadot Polkassembly 🔗Github Repository, V2 🔗Twitter | Telegram | Discord

Proposal Scope

Transparency & Analytics Foundation

Feature	Function	Outcome
Judgement Explorer (Development complete)	Judgement request tracking and unified flow for list of available registrars, Associated fee and turnaround time tracking	Transparency on expected time span to receive judgement for usersUnified dashboard for request management for registrars
Coretime and Spends Dashboard	Comprehensive treasury transparency dashboard	Real-time balance tracking, Historical spend analysis, ROI metrics, efficiency trends, Spends and coretime analytics
Delegation Statistics	Enhanced delegation transparency with insights	Unified flow for delegation and vote tracking, Tracking performance metrics, impact analysis, Delegate - delegatee match scoring
Bounty Analytics	Complete bounty ecosystem analytics	Completion rates, Curator performance, ROI analysis, Category effectiveness & automated categorisation

Identity & Verification Infrastructure

Feature	Function	Outcome
Sub-identity Flow	Streamlined sub-identity creation and management system	Simplified process for creating and managing multiple sub-identities. Improved user experience for identity hierarchies
Account Relationships	Comprehensive account relationship mapping and visualization	Clear visibility into account connections, proxy relationships, and identity linkages.Enhanced transparency for complex account structures
Proxy Explorer (Development complete)	Integrated flow for proxy related actions	The Proxy Explorer will extend visibility to include full support for creating and managing different proxy types directly from the dashboard. Users can set up governance, staking, identity, and other proxy types, while also managing linked profiles and account associations in one UI. This upgrade turns the Proxy Explorer into both a monitoring and management tool for complex account setups.

Documentation & Accountability Infrastructure

Feature	Function	Outcome
Apillion integration for Document Management	On-chain proposal documentation	Immutable storage & decentralized access via our APIs in partnership with ApillionSupport for offering defined by UX Bounty : https://forum.polkadot.network/t/ux-bounty-enhancing-referenda-feedback-loop-introducing-section-based-voting-and-feedback-mechanism/12790/10
Document Versioning	Interface will highlight the latest version of each document while preserving full access to older versions	Display the markdown files for any given referendum, creating a standard and visual cue for voters to see the latest version of the proposal, as well as any previous versions.

Fellowship Integration & Coordination

Feature	Function	Outcome
Task Management System &Workflow	Salary Management , Evidence Management with submission and review, Member demotion and off-boarding	Unified management interface for Fellowship and Ambassador collectives with streamlined tracking
Business Intelligence & Warnings	Automated alert system for critical collective actionsEvidence submission deadline notificationsMember rank status visibility componentsSalary cycle registration and claim remindersPromotion/demotion period alerts	Reduced missed deadlines and accidental rank changes through proactive member notifications and status visibility
Enhanced Member Profiles	Voting interface with eligibility display,Votes history for ProfileQuick evidence viewing and votingPublic Salary History for profilesCreate Rank RequestAbility to reserve and request salary paymentAbility to submit evidence for retention or promotion	Complete member journey visibility enabling informed decision-making and transparent collective management
Collective Analytics Dashboard	Statistical insights for collective performanceTotal salary expenditure across collectivesMember distribution by rank and earningsPromotion/demotion frequency analysisPerformance benchmarking tools	Data-driven collective management with clear performance metrics and resource allocation insights
Advanced Referenda Tools	Display of all eligible voters for each referendumIPFS content fetching during indexingReferendum creation	Streamlined collective decision-making with contextual information and improved member participation tracking

Development Hours

Development Phase	Task Breakdown	Hours	Resource Allocation
Fellowship	- Task Management System - Business Intelligence & Warnings- Enhanced Member Profiles- Collective Analytics Dashboard- Advanced Referenda Tools	1200	3 FTE × 10 weeks
Transparency & Analytics	- Judgement Explorer- Treasury Analytics- Delegation Statistics- Bounty Analytics	600	3 FTE × 5 weeks
Identity Infrastructure	- Sub-identity Flow- Account Relationships- Derived Identity for Pure Proxy	540	3 FTE × 4.5 weeks
Documentation & Accountability	- IPFS Document Management- Versioning	320	2 FTE × 4 weeks
Total Development	2660

Budget Breakdown

Link : Proposal Budget 2025

Category	Amount (USD)	Description
Development Team	$131400	Full-stack developers, Product Manager, UI/UX Designer, DevOps engineers
Fellowship Development	$108000	We estimate fellowship work to take no less than 14 weeks , but the billing to treasury has been capped to 10 weeks to align better with budget restraints on the treasury.
Total	$239,400

2025 Budget & Optimization

Community-Driven Scope Evolution

Initial Roadmap & Community Response Our initial 2025 roadmap projected approximately $968k to address comprehensive governance infrastructure needs identified through platform analytics and user feedback. However, community discussions revealed concerns about scope breadth and delivery risk for simultaneous development across multiple complex features.

Strategic Milestone Breakdown Responding to community feedback, we restructured our approach through Referendum 1463, focusing $530k on foundational improvements that would enable subsequent feature development:

Core reliability and performance optimization to handle increased usage
Identity system modernization addressing user friction points
Technical infrastructure upgrades (Next.js 15, Node 20, API architecture)
UX audit implementation based on community bounty feedback

This phased approach delivered measurable improvements:

60% reduction in page load times
99% reduction in crash rate
35% decrease in API response times
Stable platform performance supporting 140K+ monthly active users
Enhanced wallet compatibility across hardware and software solutions

Post-Migration Feature Development With platform stability established and technical debt resolved, this proposal targets the next community-priority milestone: Fellowship integration and enhanced transparency tools.

The successful execution of our proposed roadmap from previous proposal, provided the stable foundation necessary for complex collective management features.

All new features being developed as part of this proposal, across fellowship, analytics and identity are all being built as per feature and product requests from the community.

Fellowship Integration Focus

Our goal is to provide OpenGov users with a well integrated smooth UX experience across governance activities. We believe both platforms need to have a complete set of features because platform switching disrupts workflows for users already embedded in our governance ecosystem.

The coordination reality right now, if you're active in both general governance and Fellowship:

You track proposals on Polkassembly
You switch to Subsquare for Fellowship voting
You go to GitHub for RFCs
You use Matrix for Fellowship discussions
You return to Polkassembly for related governance context

This fragmentation exists because no single platform serves both ecosystems well. We're serving our existing users who want integrated workflows.

What we're actually building Fellowship features that make sense within existing governance workflows:

Evidence tracking alongside related governance proposals
Salary management integrated with treasury analytics
Fellowship voting in context of broader ecosystem decisions
Member profiles that show both governance and Fellowship activity

No overlap commitment Ref. 1463 covers platform maintenance and operations for the entire year ( Jan- Dec 2025). As suggested by the community our last proposal was split into milestones covering maintenance(for the entire year) and core product flows. This proposal funds only new development.

We track everything publicly and report progress through our social media channels and in relevant Polkadot forums including ecosystem DAOs, AAG & Element channels.

Q&A

1. Why not defer to Subsquare's Fellowship leadership?

While Subsquare excels at Fellowship-specific features, we believe in providing a UX well integrated with Polkassembly. Rather than force platform switching, we're providing ecosystem choice while learning from Subsquare's proven approaches. We are offering value add in terms of User Experience and automated flows which will also be aided by AI in the near future. Since Polkassembly is the most widely used platform for governance in the ecosystem , having the mentioned fellowship features as part of integrated UX becomes essential. However to ensure effective use of treasury resources, we have capped the billing hours for fellowship

2. What's your track record for complex feature delivery?

Our 2025 Social Contract (Ref. 1463) delivered all promised features including 60% page load reduction, 99% crash rate reduction, and stable performance for Polkadot OpenGov’s 140K+ monthly users. All work is trackable through public repositories, social media and community forums.

3. Will this create platform fragmentation?

Our approach emphasizes integration and interoperability rather than platform lock-in. Fellowship members can continue using preferred tools while Polkassembly users gain Fellowship context within their existing workflows. The feature development now also serves as an essential upgrade for future features.

4. Polkassembly is building some cool AI things. Why are they not included in this proposal?

AI Development Approach: This proposal's scope excludes ongoing AI development costs at Polkassembly. Our AI strategy operates through strategic internal investment with clear community validation requirements:

Proof-of-concept stage: All AI initiatives remain experimental through internal funding
Multi-model experimentation: Testing workflow automations across different approaches and platforms
Community-feedback driven: Requirements adjustment based on user adoption and feedback patterns
Adoption-gated development: Full features built only where demonstrated user engagement occurs
MVP-first approach: AI features (including Klara) continue as experimental prototypes
Retroactive billing model: Only successful features advance to Beta, with retroactive funding for well-adopted MVPs. Subsequent progression of these products and features is driven by the community and treasury, prioritizing proven solutions.

We currently have our governance co-pilot live here for testing : klara.polkassembly.io

Illustration of Klara(Avatar not final yet)

The roadmap for AI feature development will remain community-driven, following our established feedback collection approach through X (Twitter) engagement, AAG discussions, and comprehensive user surveys to ensure development priorities align with genuine ecosystem needs rather than speculative feature expansion.

Conclusion

This proposal scope addresses two critical ecosystem coordination gaps: Fellowship-governance integration & transparency infrastructure. By connecting technical expertise with broader community decision-making, we strengthen the foundation for informed governance while maintaining Polkassembly's proven delivery track record.

The Fellowship integration represents a strategic investment in ecosystem coordination efficiency. Technical proposals will receive appropriate expert review, RFCs will connect to governance outcomes, and community members will access Fellowship insights through transparent interfaces. This bridges the expertise gap that currently limits governance quality.

Implementation Gallery

Proposer: 13SceNt2ELz3ti4rnQbY1snpYH4XE4fLFsW8ph9rpwJd6HFC
Contact: hello@polkassembly.io
Requested: $239,400 USDT
Timeline: December 2025

Find the complete proposal doc here.