Dear Polkadot community,
With the launch of OpenGov on Polkadot around the corner, we plan to use the knowledge and skills we have gained from Kusama OpenGov to help kick-start Polkadot's OpenGov. Our main goal hasn't changed: we want to make the governance proposals process within the Polkadot community better, more open, and more successful.
This proposal outlines our plan to bring our successful proposal auditing process, first started on the Kusama Network, to the Polkadot Network. It builds on the work of the OpenCommunity Governance project, which has been running on the Kusama network for the past five months. In this period we delivered 80+ Audit reports on Kusama OpenGov treasury proposals.
Problem
With the launch of OpenGon on Kusama, it became apparent that proposals are not very well structured, lack information, and include budgets that seem very hard to defend. Proposals can also be very diverse with a focus on different areas that not everyone can be familiar with. For all these reasons it is significantly time-consuming for voters to truly understand the proposal and cast an educated vote on it.
A significant challenge in the current proposal evaluation process is the lack of constructive feedback during the discussion phase. To address this, appointed auditors will focus on being more involved in the earlier phases of proposal development. This proactive approach will help proposers receive feedback and address potential weaknesses in their proposals before they are submitted onchain, giving them time to evaluate the feedback and make improvements.
Milestone 0: Prepare OpenCommunity Governance documentation
Milestone 0 focuses on adjusting the governance documents currently used in the Kusama network to align with the needs of the Polkadot ecosystem. This involves adjusting the Proposal and Audit templates, updating necessary documents on treasury sites, wiki, and GitHub, and initiating the audit process to improve the quality and transparency of incoming proposals with the set standards and guidelines.
Milestone 1: Implement OpenCommunity Governance
In Milestone 1, the primary objective is to start proposal audits while they are still in the discussion phase and follow up the proposals onchain.
A major challenge in the current proposal evaluation process is the lack of constructive feedback during the discussion phase. To address this, appointed auditors will shift their focus by becoming more involved in the earlier phases of proposal development. This proactive approach will help proposers receive feedback and address potential weaknesses in their proposals before they are submitted onchain, ultimately improving the overall quality of submissions.
Funding
This proposal seeks funding of 2179.57 DOT split into 2 payments between auditors CoinStudio and Abdulbee.
All details can be found in the Proposal document
All the documents, previous treasury proposals, deliverables and reports, audits are stored on our GitHub. We are also maintaining track records of auditor work and treasury proposals on the draft version of Airtable.
We are community oriented initiative and we are open to onboard additional auditors from the community, more details can be found in the following Kusama proposal.
Some examples of audit reports: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3
I am looking for feedback on this proposal so please feel free to ask questions and leave suggestions to help me further improve the presented project. Your suggestions will play a key role in enhancing the transparency and efficiency of our governance process.
Discussion
Thank you!
Threshold
Dear Coin,
This was a good experiment that I supported with each proposal on Kusama. However, having seen the results I don't think this initiative is adding any value. Proposals are still of very poor quality and voting is independent of 'audit score'. I appreciate that the auditors are putting forward an effort but it is imo not sustainable or an initiative I would continue to support.
What might be more sustainable is a rating system built into Subsquare and or Polkassembly. Something that's not too overwhelming but gives the proposer a feel of particular pain points with the proposal.
I continue to extend my respect to yourself and Abdulbee for all the good efforts you've delivered in the past. If this is funding for a hard-stop I would reconsider my vote. I am only one vote in a sea of larger voters, I wish you all the best.
Regards,
Will | Paradox
Awesome to see such a useful community member take the first step in writing up the first referendum on opengov on polkadot!
Personally I have loved the passion + utility of this project, and would be glad to support it.
I do also echo the sentiment of Will above - for truly getting utility of this project, I would like to see a clearer path to integration with the governance frontends that most people use. Thats the 0 --> 1 change thats incredibly significant.
I would also want to end with a question: What has changed compared to Kusama where the audits are paid via small bounties per audit vs. now getting paid upfront?
Dear Will | Paradox,
I appreciate your feedback, and I understand your concerns. Education, as you know, is a long-term process, and it's not always easy to see immediate results. However, I want to say that we have already seen some progress. Several proposers have started to utilize our proposal document template, and we've observed that their proposals are clearer and more structured. This is a positive trend that we believe will continue to grow as more people start to use it.
In terms of the audit scores, you are correct that voting is independent of these scores. But our aim with the audits is not to dictate voting, but to provide feedback to improve the proposal context that could assist voters in their decision-making process.
As for your suggestion of a rating system integrated into Subsquare or Polkassembly, I agree that it would be an excellent feature. In fact, we are currently in ongoing collaborations to incorporate audit reports into Polkassembly, a step in the direction you mentioned. This collaboration extends to other related materials such as including AAG videos in treasury proposals. You can see this under the Audit tab above (example). As for additional user interaction options, while it's too early to go into specifics, we're open to exploring this in the future.
Thank you for your ongoing support and understanding. All feedback is incredibly valuable to us as it helps us improve and adapt our initiative to better serve the community.
Kind regards,
CS
@16f2...7VTU
Thank you for your kind words and support.
To answer the question of integration with governance frontends, I agree with it as it is a significant step forward that we're actively working on. You may have noticed the newly added 'Audit' tab on Polkassembly, where all content related to treasury proposals is now visible. This includes audit reports, community-created content, and AAG videos. This content is pulled from a jointly administrated GitHub repository, which is open for everyone to contribute to and utilize. It's an ongoing process, and we're excited to see it evolve. Integration example.
As for your question about payment, this proposal does indeed include payment upfront for 20 audits per auditor. The only reason behind this approach is to help bootstrap the initiative on the Polkadot network. After these initial audits, we intend to revert to the same funding model used in Kusama, with audits paid via tips.
Thank you again for your constructive comments and questions. We appreciate your engagement and interest in this project.
Best regards,
CS
test
Edited