Polkadot governance news #9: OpenGov Spreads Across Ecosystem, Empowering the Community

Welcome to the latest edition of Governance News, your trusted source for updates on decentralized decision-making across the Polkadot ecosystem. In this edition, we’re thrilled to highlight the expansion of Polkadot OpenGov’s influence, offering a decentralized approach that’s reshaping the governance landscape.

OpenGov has not only taken root in Polkadot Relay Chain itself but has also spread its wings across Kusama, Bifrost, Moonriver, and Moonbeam. This dynamic platform introduces a groundbreaking shift, moving away from centralized authorities like councils or technical committees. Instead, it empowers the entire community, enabling token holders to play an active role in shaping the network’s future.

As you dive into this edition, you’ll discover the latest strides made in governance. Collectives parachain is already making waves, and exciting discussions are underway regarding fellowship referenda and proposal whitelisting on Polkadot OpenGov, paving the way for enhanced inclusivity and engagement. Mark your calendars for the remarkable progress achieved since June 15th, ’23, and join us in exploring the ever-evolving landscape of decentralized decision-making.

In our governance news, we focus mostly on spending referenda such as Small Spender, Medium Spender, Big Spender and Treasurer with some exceptions on some interesting referenda or heavily discussed ones.

We focus also on the referenda of Polkadot and Kusama parachains, as they are as important as those on relay chains.

1. Polkadot Referendum 105 for OpenZeppelin x Polkadot Ecosystem Growth has passed. It aims to create a dedicated open-source development team that will work with Parity and the Polkadot community to define and then deliver new Polkadot parachain runtimes, and improvements to underlying pallets as necessary.
2. Polkadot Referendum 98 for POLKADOT INSIDER — 28 WEEKS OPERATION & GROWTH FUNDING (AUGUST 2023 — FEBRUARY 2024) has passed. The goal is to promote the brand, latest content, and information in Polkadot communities in general, and expand the Asian community.
3. Polkadot Referendum 93 for Infrastructure Funding for Polkadot Asset Hub — Migration of Kusama NFTs has passed. The aim is to facilitate the secure transfer of assets to Polkadot Asset Hub and provide continuity for existing Kusama NFT creators and owners.
4. Polkadot Referendum 86 Substrate, XCM rust technical practice videos was rejected. The aim of this referenda is to sponsor 10 education practical videos about Rust & Substrate.
5. Polkadot Referendum 85 DOT holders 🤝 & The Kusamarian 🤖❤️ was approved. Kusamarian requests 59k DOT as 42-week order of regular programming with 60% upfront. Kusamarian is one of the most visible content creators in the Polkadot ecosystem with projects such as AAG, Space Monkeys, Friday Dump or Alpha Shots, focusing on YouTube video content.
6. Polkadot Referendum 82 OnFinality High-Performance Public Infrastructure (Q2 2023) was approved and executed.
7. Polkadot Referendum 81 Bounty to back Apillon Web3 development platform as a common good infrastructure was rejected.
8. Polkadot Referendum 78 Blockops Network — Grant Proposal for the development of One-Click Parachain Deployment was rejected.
9. Polkadot Referendum 77 Smoldot development financing Q3/2023 was approved and already executed. This treasury proposal concerns the continuation of the financing of the development of Smoldot, a light client for Polkadot.
10. Polkadot Referendum 71 Wasm Smart Contracts Bounty #19 was approved and already executed.
11. Polkadot Referendum 70 Finsig SDK for Apple Products [Common Good Treasury Proposal] was rejected.
12. Polkadot Referendum 68 Treasury proposal for the development of DEX UI for Asset Conversion pallet (prev. DotSwap) was approved and already executed.
13. Polkadot Referendum 67 Security Audit of trustless Ethereum 2.0 Light Client, developed as a Substrate Pallet was rejected.
14. Kusama Referendum 243 OpenGov Community Voting Discord Bot by ChaosDAO was approved and already executed.
15. Kusama Referendum 238 Polkashots.io Cloud Costs January-April 2023 was approved and already executed.
16. Kusama Referendum 236 KSM liquidity subsidy for KSM liquid staking token — vKSM was approved and already executed.
17. Moonbeam OpenGov Referendum 4 to Convert aUSD to aSEED is currently passing.
18. Moonbeam Referendum 106 Multichain bridge xcEQ and xcEQD tokens recovery was approved and already executed.
19. Moonriver Referendum 27 to Convert aUSD to aSEED was approved and already executed.
20. Moonriver Referendum 24 Register Bifrost Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) xcvKSM, xcvMOVR and xcvBNC on Moonriver was approved and already executed.
21. HydraDX Referendum 61 to Add BNC & WETH (Moonbeam Wormhole) to the Omnipool was approved and already executed.
22. HydraDX Referendum 53 to Add CFG to the Omnipool was approved and already executed.
23. Basilisk Referendum 24 HRMP channel openings with Bifrost, Shiden, Calamari and Kintsugi was approved and already executed.
24. Bifrost Referendum 62 Restore vDOT, vGLMR commission rate to 10% was approved and already executed.
25. Bifrost Referendum 61 Supporting BNC Listing on HydraDX Omnipool replacing referendum 59 was approved and already executed.
26. Interlay Referendum 66 to Register Wormhole Assets DAI, TBTC, WETH, WBNB, USDC and WBTC was rejected.
27. Interlay Referendum 64 to Enable qDOT and qUSDT as collateral for lnterlay Vaults was approved and already executed.
28. Litentry Referendum 6 Support Token Rescue due to Ledger Incompatibility was approved and already executed.
29. Litentry Referendum 5 Maintenance Cost for Subsquare/Statescan in Q3-Q4, 2023 was approved and already executed.
30. Phala Referendum 48 Open HRMP with Polkadex & AssetHub (2nd try) was approved and already executed.
31. Phala Referendum 46 to Move 4M PHA from ChainBridge to SygmaBridge [4th round] was approved and already executed.

1. Polkadot Referendum 135 for Moderation Team Bounty to provide an incentive to authorized Polkadot Moderators for their round-the-clock contribution and support to the communities, is currently passing.
2. Polkadot Referendum 134 for Proposal: Building a better understanding of blockchain across mainstream global media is currently failing.
3. Polkadot Referendum 133 for Election of curation team — bounty 19: Wasm Smart Contracts Bounty is currently failing. This proposal is to assign a set of Curators for Bounty 19 which consists of six people from different community teams and whose qualifications and Polkadot addresses can be found in the original post for Bounty 19.
4. Polkadot Referendum 132 for Unbrick Nodle is currently passing. The Nodle Parachain is bricked after its last upgrade failed. This referendum proposes to use the forceSetCode functionality on Polkadot to ensure the prompt restart of the parachain.
5. Polkadot Referendum 131 for Polkadot @ SXSW 2023, Austin, Texas on March 12th-15th 2023 which increased Polkadot brand visibility and connections to a Web2 audience of startups, enterprises/brands, thought leaders and influencers, media, and consumers, is currently failing.
6. Polkadot Referendum 129 for Encointer Treasury Proposal (budget halving) is currently passing. It aims to fund a secure and decentralized sybil-resilience protocol that enables communities everywhere to generate their own, autonomous local currency, and use it to stimulate the local economy.
7. Polkadot Referendum 128 for Allocate DOT Loan for Use Amongst Cross-Ecosystem DeFi within the Cosmos Ecosystem is currently failing.
8. Polkadot Referendum 126 for RadiumBlock: Retroactive funding for High Performance Public Endpoint Service for Polkadot (Q4 2022 and Q1 2023) is currently failing.
9. Polkadot Referendum 125 for Nova Spektr Milestone 3 Proposal: Dynamic Derivations, WalletConnect v2, Proxy accounts, Cross-chain transfers, Fiat values, EVM addresses & more, is currently passing. The team is focused on enterprise adoption and this proposal will provide a one-stop-shop for stakeholders with advanced needs, enterprises and DAOs, and individual users in the entire ecosystem.
10. Polkadot Referendum 124 for Magnet Proposal: Polkadot’s Smart Contract Docking Station using DOT as Gas Based on the PAYG Model is currently failing.
11. Polkadot Referendum 122 for Register KSM on Asset Hub is currently passing. Enacting this proposal will register the asset { parents: 2, interior: GlobalConsensus(Kusama) } on the Polkadot Asset Hub, and KSM will be a sufficient asset with a minimum balance of 0.01 KSM. This registration by governance is part of the initialization of a Polkadot <> Kusama bridge.
12. Polkadot Referendum 121 for Crypto-Friendly Substrate Scaffold Pallets for Every Parachains to realize privacy and scaling functionalities is currently passing.
13. Polkadot Referendum 120 for Multix — Further development and Cypress Dapp testing plugin is currently passing. Multix is a simple interface to manage complex multisigs, making it easy even on mobile or with the use of pure proxies.
14. Polkadot Referendum 119, funding the development of an open communication layer for Polkadot, is currently passing.
15. Polkadot Referendum 118, funding Supercomputing the maintenance for the substrate-api-client, is currently passing.
16. Polkadot Referendum 117, funding the development of Societal (a potential parachain for building on-chain communities), is currently failing.
17. Polkadot Referendum 116, funding the operation and maintenance of PolkaWorld, is currently failing.
18. Polkadot Referendum 111, proposing a curator for the Polkadot Assurance Legion Bounty, is currently passing.
19. Polkadot Referendum 109 for Polkasafe — Milestone 2 — Retroactive funding proposal is currently falling. The product will enable safe and secure self-custody of assets, and create a dApp ecosystem that supports multisig wallets using the Polkasafe SDK.
20. Polkadot Referendum 107 LayerX — rollout parachain as Trustless Bridge between Polkadot and Ethereum is currently falling.
21. Polkadot Referendum 106 for Community-Centric Blockchain Education: Dacade’s Commitment to Polkadot’s Growth via learning through sharing is currently falling. The goal is to foster 10,000 educators by offering learning materials, challenges, and rewards, with learning chapters supported by Pendulum Chain.
22. Polkadot Referendum 104 for Polkadot journal: A Marketing Proposal for Polkadot/Kusama is currently falling. It's seeking to address the lack of premium merchandise options related to blockchain technology and the scarcity of personalized notebooks for storing seed phrases associated with these networks.
23. Polkadot Referendum 103 for Milestone 3: Polkadot Hackathon Global Series 2023 is currently passing. This request is partly to reimburse operations and service fees for running the APAC hackathon, but mainly to reward the hackathon winners for their hard work and contribution in this edition.
24. Polkadot Referendum 102 for [Retroactive] Polytope Labs: ISMP Research & Development which is designed to improve and secure cross-chain communication and operations, is currently falling. The protocol is inspired by HTTP and aims to become a similar standard for interoperability in the multi-chain environment.
25. Polkadot Referendum 101 for Milestone 3 Proposal: Polkadot x EasyA Hackathons at Harvard and in London (#60DaysOfPolkadot) is currently failing. This was recently completed, with Web3 enthusiasts keen to learn more about Polkadot attending and hacking.
26. Polkadot Referendum 99 for Patron Milestones 2–7 Development for a tool that verifies & builds smart-contracts in one step is currently falling. With Patron, builders can simplify the deployment flow and help make the Polkadot ecosystem more secure.
27. Polkadot Referendum 97 for YieldBay Phase 2 — Reimbursement proposal that was approved as Motion #355 is currently passing. This proposal funded the development of Polkadot’s Yield Farming Dashboard Milestones 2 and 3.
28. Polkadot Referendum 96 for Artificial Intelligence for security monitoring on a network level is currently falling. The goal is to first build a proof-of-concept machine learning tool that enables early warning systems for security issues as they start occurring.
29. Kusama Referendum 261 AIWeb3 Chinese Unit proposal II (爱Web3 中文社区提案 II) is currently passing.
30. Kusama Referendum 259 POLKADOT SAFARI ’23 (Request for second allocation of funds) is currently passing.
31. Interlay Referenda 67 & 68 OnFinality High Performance Public Infrastructure (Q2, 2023) are about to vote.
32. Kintsugi Referendum 123 OnFinality High Performance Public Infrastructure (Q3 & Q4, 2023) is currently passing.

1. Gavin Wood posted the Initial Coreplay draft, a proposal that develops the idea of using cores on the Polkadot Ubiquitous Computer to host smart contract code directly. This is in preparation for the development of Polkadot v2.
2. Interlay discussing Polkadot Parachain Assets Onramp Support Bounty Program. It aims to fund the fiat on-ramp service for 20 parachains and the onramp integration for Asset Hub in the Polkadot ecosystem

• Strengthen Polkadot by nominating your DOT tokens to POLKADOTTERS, community builders for the Polkadot ecosystem
• Support Polkadotters Shrimp and Polkadotters Octopus on Polkadot and be a part of a more secure Web3 future
• Delegate your DOT or KSM to Polkadotters for easy participation in the on-chain governance via Talisman or Nova wallet