Announcing PolkaDAO: Fund Your Project!

We believe that community-led projects are the the most beneficial initiatives for an open-source ecosystem. Anyone can create a project in an open-source community, leading to a higher level of creativity and serving as inspiration for others to get involved. PolkaDAO is a user-led platform for the Polkadot community, offering funding for projects and ideas that would otherwise not get built.

Join the community discussing PolkaDAO on Discord↗ and DAOtalk Forum↗.

Background

Web3 Foundation is endowing a community-led decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with $10,000 in DAI to fund proposals related to Polkadot. Anyone in the world can create a proposal for something they want to build, and DOT holders and early contributors vote on whether or not to fund the proposal. DOT holders will have voting power (Reputation) proportionate to their DOT holdings. Additionally, the DAO can choose to assign additional reputation to early adopters and projects so that more than crowdsale contributors can vote on proposals.

Potential Ideas

The goal of the PolkaDAO is to fund community projects. We propose that the maximum amount of funding per proposal be $1,000 in DAI, so PolkaDAO will not be used to fund large applications (check-out W3F Grants↗ for that), but rather smaller projects that could include:

An aggregation websites (a list of projects building on Polkadot, such as Polkaproject.com↗, or an Infrastructure Directory↗ of projects in the ecosystem)

• A user interface to show what Polkadot is capable of (a UI that lets you visually architect multi-chain DApps)
• A tool for prototyping and architecting multi-chain DApps via a UI and scripting interface
• Cool visualizations of the different actors in Polkadot and how they interact to run the network (explaining the relay chain vs. parachain, a nominator vs. a validator)

Why DOT Holders & Early Contributors?

DOT holders have been HODL’ing for 15 months. The PolkaDAO is a fun way for them to engage with the Polkadot ecosystem and get involved with the community if they haven’t been. 80% of the reputation for voting on proposals will be designated to DOT holders, proportionate to their contribution in the crowdsale. This can also be thought of as a trial run for the future Treasury DAO that will be funded from block rewards on the Polkadot relay chain and voted on by DOT holders.

Web3 Foundation also recognizes that there are many individuals and projects who have contributed to the Polkadot ecosystem who may not have participated in the October 2017 crowdsale. As a recognition of their work and a token of appreciation, Web3 Foundation is designating 20% of reputation l to these community members. Web3 Foundation will be in touch with you to claim your reputation, however if you believe you deserve some reputation and want to participate please do not hesitate to reach out.

The Back-end

PolkaDAO is operated by DAOStack. DAOStack’s native token is called GEN, which is staked to make predictions on what will or will not get funded. If you’re interested in making predictions, read this↗.

Get Started

PolkaDAO will launch early April. Instructions on how to redeem reputation will be published prior to the launch.

Here↗ is a list of the contributors in the public sale.

How to Interact

PolkaDAO is one of the first DAOs launched on the Alchemy Earth interface, the upcoming interface for DAOs powered by DAOstack. Once it is launched we will share a tutorial on how to interact with it.

Join the community discussing PolkaDAO on Discord↗ and DAOtalk Forum↗.