Summary

This proposal is for retroactive funding for individual ecosystem agent activities over the 18 week period from July 1 through Nov 1, 2024. During this time, I dedicated myself to working to move the Polkadot ecosystem forward by identifying unmet needs and bringing solutions forward. This includes activities such as BD, workgroup coordination, events, education, customer onboarding, support and other similar activities. Note that none of these activities were funded by other organizations (e.g. not by the W3F, other grants, etc.).

During this time, I was selected as a Ref. 487 Head Ambassador, but I am not including any activities related to managing or setting up the Head Ambassador program operations, as the program has not been successful (except to provide “lessons learned”). I am also excluding any time spent on projects that I advise, as well as time spent helping out with the operations of the Asia Blockchain Summit.

This proposal is for retroactive funding estimated at 25 hours per week, amounting to $45K USDT (18 weeks @ 25 hours per week), using a rate benchmarked to other internal service providers in Polkadot (both the UX bounty and Marketing bounty curators are paid $100/hr). During this time, I have chosen to focus on Polkadot and have not had other sources of income. On average I was working 50-70 hours per week for Polkadot. I will not apply for additional funding for the period May 15-Dec 15 (during which I have been fully focused on Polkadot), so this can be seen as ½ year of work for Polkadot.

Despite a healthy dose of drama during the past four months, I have greatly enjoyed working for Polkadot and contributing to moving the DAO forward, and hope the DAO sees the value of this work.

Highlights

Polkadot Handbook v1.0

https://polkadothandbook.com

The Polkadot Handbook is the “missing manual” for Polkadot. It’s aimed at users/participants in the ecosystem, including: a) Individuals who are new to the ecosystem and want to contribute, b) Experienced users looking for a reference for how to do common activities like use multisigs or issue proposals, c) Polkadot representatives (trade show attendees or BDs) that need to have a quickly accessible reference for Polkadot information, or d) New teams that are entering and need help to quickly get up to speed to find partnerships, use the blockchain or issue proposals.

I created this, because, as I was representing Polkadot at various conferences as well as helping new companies enter the ecosystem, I encountered the same questions over and over again, and wanted to create a knowledge base that can be updated over time. It is more application and solution oriented than existing references, such as the Polkadot Wiki, the support page, the ecosystem resource center, the polkadotecosystem.com, etc.

The initial version of this has resulted in feedback that it can be better oriented to individual use cases / personas. I have been updating it since creation, and plan to refactor it to tailor it to support the following persona types:

Enterprise & Project Teams - External teams looking to bring their products or audiences onto Polkadot. They need a way to quickly get up to speed on the ecosystem, identify potential users or partners, understand the ROI of integrating/deploying and apply to funding opportunities.
Ecosystem Agents / Users - This includes community organizers, ambassadors and other individual contributors actively participating in the ecosystem. They need to understand the resources available in the ecosystem, and need help performing operational actions like staking, governance and other blockchain operations (e.g. bounty claiming, multisig usage, etc.).
Builders - This includes developers, development teams, systems integrators and external enterprises looking to build on Polkadot. They need to understand the different technology decisions they have to make and the inherent tradeoffs. They may need help with infrastructure selection or need to understand what integration partners are available. This reference is meant to complement, not replace existing DevRel or documentation efforts.
Ecosystem Representatives - This includes ambassadors, BD reps, community representatives or meetup hosts who need to represent Polkadot externally. They need comprehensive ecosystem knowledge, an understanding of the latest news and developments, and need to quickly search for information to help external parties.

Highlighted pages:

Polkadot Exit Interviews & Builder Success Program Catalyst

This report examines the experience that a set of six teams have encountered building in Polkadot. It is based on interviews with one team that is considering to join Polkadot and five teams that have exited the network in the past year. It speaks to their challenges in building in the ecosystem, including:

Operational maintenance,
Investment climate, and
Ecosystem relationships / communication

To see the report, check here: Builder Experience: Why Teams Join or Leave Polkadot

I believe it’s an important time to consider how we create great relationships with builders, because retention is incredibly important to ensuring our marketing, BD and outreach efforts create ongoing value. Builders are the lifeblood of the ecosystem and the direct consumers of Polkadot’s core products (blockspace).

Feedback from Rob Holmes (AssetsUnlocked - Polkadot BD):

The point about customer relationship management is key in my view. Since joining the ecosystem a few months ago it has been my view that an Account Management role / team that kicks in after BD teams bring new builders to the ecosystem has been missing. There’s a risk that new builders fall into a black hole after opting to join the ecosystem. For example, after agreeing with an RWA project called Unergy to integrate their protocol their first comment was that the ecosystem as a whole, with it’s many L1s and various teams wasn’t easy to navigate and felt complex. So I’ve been doing this sort of post-“sales” support for them. Introducing them to parachain teams and others that can help with co-marketing & PR. There’s certainly more to keeping builders happy in an ecosystem than just technical support and funding, and often the most important thing to builders is how will this ecosystem support me with growing my community on their chain.

I plan to continue the learning started here with and work on bringing the Builder Success Program to fruition, if it resonates with the community. Please reach out with feedback.

Various BD Activities and Working Groups

At the beginning of the summer, the ecosystem was in a place where BD was not organized, and while independent groups had been funded, either by the treasury or by DF. In addition to performing BD activities and representing Polkadot externally (e.g. resulting in a CEX integrating Polkadot), I worked to bring the disparate BD groups together and coordinate and share learnings.

5x Open Ecosystem BD Working Group Meetings (link) (join here)
Onboarding calls/discussions with BD teams to orient them to the ecosystem

Working Group Goals:

Community - We need to get to know each other, form links, support each other and break down the natural silos that form. There's a lot of collective intelligence and experience that we can lean on if we can make the right connections between people.
Political - Polkadot BD operates in the umbrella of the ecosystem and is a part of OpenGov. Traditionally the network has been more technically-focused, so it is rather new for "BD" to have a voice, but it's quite important that we not only represent the voices of potential customers but also participate in internal dialogue.
Strategic - We need to contribute to and fit into the larger ecosystem strategy that is being developed now. And as with any other activity, we have limited time and resources, so we need to figure out the best return that we can get as an ecosystem on BD activities.
Operational - And finally we need to actually get things done and see not only in our individual teams but also as Polkadot. We should prove out that we can accomplish great things together as a decentralized BD organization.

Results / Initiatives:

RFI: Polkadot Real World Case Studies, resulting in Polkadot BD Case Bible

RFI: Polkadot Enterprise Products & Services (the “Menu”)

Here is the result of the gathering of BD needs: Dot BD Ecosystem Needs

A lot of future work needs to be done to align BD! This was just the start. I encourage anyone looking to reform and improve the BD/Sales effort to see this post by Alice and Bob: https://opengovwatch.notion.site/Sales-a6308086d08e4b85b6827be9e7252153.

Detailed Activity List (July 1 - Nov 1)

Business Development

CEX Integration

There haven’t been a lot of BD wins that have come out of conferences this summer, but I engaged CoinEx, a regional Asian exchange based in HK, which led to an integration with AssetHub via Velocity Labs (Sept. 30). https://www.coinex.com/en/announcements/detail/30687418147348

Case Studies

There was no comprehensive listing of Polkadot case studies, which is a detriment to BD effectiveness, I researched and created the “Polkadot BD Case Bible” (link), a collection of 35+ existing case studies from across the Polkadot ecosystem to enable BDs and ecosystem agents to get up to speed with success stories of Polkadot adoption. The list is currently hosted in the Enterprise Case Studies page of the Polkadot Handbook.

Open Ecosystem BD Working Group

I scaled up the Open Ecosystem BD Working Group from a TG group originally started by Polkadot Agent to gather GovTech interest during Decoded ‘24. This includes circulating an onboarding survey, running 4+ monthly meetings (see minutes), cultivating participation and setting the purpose (see screenshot).

This group brings together business developers, ecosystem agents, parachain team reps, ambassadors and other individuals to share ideas and assemble together to do projects. Today collaboration is happening around education, case studies and localized BD. Currently there are efforts to surface unmet needs around BD and explore forming a BD collective.

https://x.com/replghost/status/1815922406537482496

BD Team Onboarding & WG

With the decentralization, the previous BD team(s) were let go from Parity, and efforts needed to restart from the ecosystem. I formed a private working group of full-time non-affiliated BD teams funded by the DF and treasury to coordinate, meeting monthly during this period. The benefit is that wins in one region can be replicated in others, and outreach can be coordinated among the geographically dispersed teams if need be to avoid stepping on each others’ toes.

In addition, I onboard new BD teams to the ecosystem by explaining how the ecosystem works, give an overview of different parties, where to find resources and making intros as needed.

(from Decoded ‘24)

https://x.com/replghost/status/1814328678333268007

BD in progress

I have been working on various early stage opportunities including bringing an L1 to Polkadot, and referring projects to DotPlay or other parts of the ecosystem.

Events & Representation

Token 2049 SG

Was part of the Polkadot Booth both days, referred multiple projects to DotPlay, and am followed up on other leads.

Asia Blockchain Summit

Manned the Polkadot Booth and spoke on a panel, found a CEX integration for Asset Hub (link), was interviewed for Polkadot in Bitcoin News - youtube, website; referred multiple groups to DotPlay.

I was on the multisig managing funds, and ensured that excess funds were returned to the treasury. Here is the after action report that includes 12 “lessons learned” about the event (doc).

Web 3 Summit

Was invited to the Decentralized Futures mini-summit to promote cross-collaboration with the rest of the ecosystem. This included a meetup of the Open Ecosystem BD Working Group.

Decoded

I volunteered at the PolkaBiz investor event.

PBA SG Graduation

I attended the graduation and connected with graduates. I believe it’s important to get to know them and help integrate them into the ecosystem.

https://x.com/replghost/status/1815567614099476777

Community Development & Support

Ecosystem Mission/Vision Survey

Created the first effort to engage the community to participate in and provide feedback to the shaping of the Polkadot Ambassador Collective; garnered 80 responses from across the ecosystem, including HAs, fellowship members, employees of W3F and Parity and community members. (forum, x, results, summary by Karim).

Voting Bot

Initiated the effort and achieved adoption of the voting bot in a community of over 250+ participants (currently in implementation phase in stealth mode; will be public later). This is not live yet. Here is a summary of voting bot information I created: link

Communications / Recommendations

Shared views and recommendations on leadership and culture as the most important things for long term health and development of the Polkadot DAO

Calling out grifters is not healthy… what to do instead (link)
The missing pieces for Polkadot (link) which engaged leaders in the ecosystem, including Pierre (VP of Engineering at Parity) and Shawn
Unpopular Opinion: The DAO should force HAs to work together and resolve differences (link)
The standards HAs should set (link)
As well as other comments on the forum / gov forums

Multisig Participation

Multisig member executing transactions and stewarding community funds on two multi-million-dollar multisigs (~$10M each initially): Inter Miami, Mythical Airdrop. These have been unpaid positions to help steward the spend of larger amounts of funds in OpenGov.

Research / post mortems on blockchain choice

I have performed exit interviews with some chains/entities that have left Polkadot in a bid to have the network learn from what happened in the past.

To see the report, check here: Builder Experience: Why Teams Join or Leave Polkadot

PBA Podcast - “Life After PBA”

I have started to host the “Life after PBA” podcast in order to help bring awareness to the PBA. It tells the story of various graduates and their journey to build new products and services for the ecosystem.

Oct. 10: R0gue

Enterprise Support

Support for various external companies that are entering Polkadot and need to set up multisigs and/or participate in governance, via email, chat and video calls. e.g.:

Education

Multisig Tutorials

Education: Created multiple bite-sized tutorials to help demystify multisig usage and encourage adoption by showing it’s not too difficult to use multisigs

Connect to any dapp in Polkadot using a multisig (link)
Return funds to the Polkadot treasury from a multisig (link)
Overview of Polkadot Multisig; sending funds, etc. (link)

Explanation Threads / Presentations

Education: Created threads to explain concepts that are important to Polkadot in a more digestible way

Digital Individuality Mechanism (link)
What Polkadot needs from you (link), was also a presentation at the OneBlock hackathon (video)

Multisig and Governance Aid / Customer Service

Helped many individuals on governance, wallet usage, multisig usage
Warning post to help organizations avoid requesting treasury funds to an incompatible multisig (link), resulted in at least two larger requests be aware of the issue before their proposals executed

Polkadot Handbook V1.0

Synthesized information about getting onboarded to the ecosystem into the Polkadot Handbook, including sections on the following topics: “Get Support,” “Get Funding,” “Get Involved,” etc.

This was based on questions I had been answering frequently by new teams entering the ecosystem. Some example guides / articles:

Funding Overview How to Socialize your Proposal Ecosystem BD Teams

There was some custom development performed to enhance the look and feel / UX of the software.

For more details, please see the full proposal.

#88·Retroactive Funding for Ecosystem Activities