DeFi Infrastructure & Tooling Bounty

Context of the Proposal

This proposal is curated by reputable parachain founders and Polkadot builders who have been active contributors to the Polkadot ecosystem since its inception. With the experience of building in Polkadot and a deep understanding of how DeFi works across other ecosystems, we’ve identified two of the most crucial gaps that have dragged Polkadot’s DeFi ecosystem back; the lack of unified infrastructure and tooling in Polkadot.

Infrastructure

Parity's BD team, which was previously responsible for bringing essential infrastructure to the ecosystem, was tasked with directing those infrastructure teams (i.e CEXs, Onramps, Oracles, etc) to the Polkadot treasury for their integration fees. However, Polkadot doesn’t present the most compelling business case due to its low liquidity and user numbers in addition to the perceived complexity of integrating Substrate compared to EVM chains. The added challenges of navigating the on-chain treasury as an outsider further compounded the problems of convincing them to join the ecosystem.

This leaves a DeFi ecosystem that lacks channels of entry for liquidity and outside users and prevents teams on Polkadot to reach their full potential.

Tooling

In the current state, teams independently approach the treasury through referendums to secure funding for what they believe are the right solutions to the problems they've identified. However, this approach poses numerous challenges such as the unconventional ways to access funding, not implementing the ideal solution to a specific problem, and the misaligned incentives by receiving payment before the work is delivered.

In addition to the above, there are a lot of resources or teams that aren't incentivized to take a stab at solving the biggest ecosystem problems. One example of this is Parity's Delivery Service Partners Program (DSP) which includes more than 15 substrate development teams mostly focused around runtime development and parachain deployments. Unfortunately, their level of activity has remained relatively low given that the parachain pipeline was affected during the bear market. With the right structure in place, these DSP teams could take initiative to tackle some of the most pressing ecosystem gaps with a group of experts that guides them, provides feedback, provides funding and supports them with GTM initiatives to get the tools adopted across the ecosystem. It would help in funnel engineering resources where the ecosystem needs it most and provide the tooling necessary to improve DeFi specific and general UX and DevEx

Proposed Solution

This bounty proposal aims to empower both builders and infrastructure providers by establishing the right mechanisms and incentive structures to streamline the development and integration of key missing pieces. A curator set, predominantly consisting of technical parachain founders, will provide clear development guidelines for tooling and infrastructure through Request for Proposals (RFPs), review and assess milestones/deliverables and subsequently provide retroactive funding from the treasury upon successful delivery. The success of this bounty not only signifies addressing the tooling and infra gaps but also incentivizes teams from outside our ecosystem to come and contribute to Polkadot's growth.

Velocity Labs will support most of the effort for this bounty and will be accompanied by leaders from the following teams:

• Velocity Labs (Nicolas Arevalo)
• Moonbeam (Alberto and Derek)
• Acala (Bryan Chen)
• Centrifgue (Lucas Vogelsang and Jeroen Offerjins)
• HydraDX (Jakub Gregus)
• Novasama Technologies (Leemo)
• Giotto

We think this curator set is well equipped to provide the right expertise and set the right direction for the bounty. They will also play a pivotal role in overseeing the solutions and integrations resulting from the bounty and ensuring the proper allocation of funds.

Please see Link to Full Proposal , and leave your feedback in the comment section below!