Close the UX Bounty and Return Remaining Funds to the Treasury

This proposal requests the closure of the Polkadot UX Bounty and the return of its remaining funds to the treasury, due to persistent misaligned incentives, poor impact relative to spend, and structural issues in how the bounty is operated.

As detailed in this forum post:
https://forum.polkadot.network/t/a-case-study-in-misaligned-incentives-the-polkadot-ux-bounty/16275

Total spend to date is ~$340k, of which >80% has gone to curator-controlled addresses and “operational” costs, rather than to independent teams or ecosystem-wide UX improvements.
Roughly one-third of all funds have been directed to product-specific UX audits that produce non-reusable reports, with no clear evidence of measurable, ecosystem-level impact.
The bounty structure effectively turns curators into both gatekeepers and primary beneficiaries, incentivising continuous busywork (audits, coordination, internal initiatives) rather than high-leverage public goods.
Initiatives like the Polkadot-UI library were pushed against expert feedback, heavily promoted as “modern Polkadot tooling,” and yet show zero adoption, arguably harming developer perception rather than improving UX.

While some positive outcomes exist (e.g. address format unification, the Turtle grant), they are exceptions in an overall pattern of poor capital efficiency and misaligned incentives.

This proposal does not seek to punish individuals, but to acknowledge that the current UX bounty design has failed to deliver sufficient public good for its cost. Closing the bounty and returning the remaining funds to the treasury is, in my view, the responsible step so that future UX efforts can be funded under better structures, clearer mandates, and healthier incentives.

A Polkadot program to improve user experience is being closed.
It spent a lot of money, but most of it went to the people running it, not to outside teams.
A big part of the money paid for reports that only helped one project at a time.
The people in charge also got most of the money, which wasn't a good setup.
Some tools they built, like a new user interface library, were not used by anyone.
A few good things came from it, like a standard way to write addresses.
The proposal is to stop the program and give the leftover money back.
The goal is to try again with a better plan in the future.

Source

This proposal requests the closure of the Polkadot UX Bounty and the return of its remaining funds to the treasury, due to persistent misaligned incentives, poor impact relative to spend, and structural issues in how the bounty is operated.

As detailed in this forum post:
https://forum.polkadot.network/t/a-case-study-in-misaligned-incentives-the-polkadot-ux-bounty/16275

Total spend to date is ~$340k, of which >80% has gone to curator-controlled addresses and “operational” costs, rather than to independent teams or ecosystem-wide UX improvements.
Roughly one-third of all funds have been directed to product-specific UX audits that produce non-reusable reports, with no clear evidence of measurable, ecosystem-level impact.
The bounty structure effectively turns curators into both gatekeepers and primary beneficiaries, incentivising continuous busywork (audits, coordination, internal initiatives) rather than high-leverage public goods.
Initiatives like the Polkadot-UI library were pushed against expert feedback, heavily promoted as “modern Polkadot tooling,” and yet show zero adoption, arguably harming developer perception rather than improving UX.

While some positive outcomes exist (e.g. address format unification, the Turtle grant), they are exceptions in an overall pattern of poor capital efficiency and misaligned incentives.

This proposal does not seek to punish individuals, but to acknowledge that the current UX bounty design has failed to deliver sufficient public good for its cost. Closing the bounty and returning the remaining funds to the treasury is, in my view, the responsible step so that future UX efforts can be funded under better structures, clearer mandates, and healthier incentives.