Polkadot Ambassador Program

This document describes the mandate for a proposed Polkadot Ambassador Program, to be realized as an on-chain, rank-based, system collective.

Members of the program, Ambassadors, should represent Polkadot outside of its existing sphere and help bring new entrants into the Polkadot ecosystem. In this capacity, ambassadors have a lot of similarity to what might normally be considered business development, outreach, and relationship management. They should introduce new people and organizations to Polkadot, speak at and host events, and facilitate partnership creation.

Although anyone can perform these services in their own capacity, having a program that formally recognizes members makes the work more effective. The recognition that comes with a title like Ambassador helps in building important relationships.

A rank-based, on-chain collective will allow the network to manage membership in a decentralized way, and also allow the organization to manage a treasury for salaries, events, and other expenses incurred in fulfilling its objectives.

Membership

The program will have four ranks, from highest to lowest: Head Ambassador (HA), Senior Ambassador (SA), Ambassador, and Candidate Ambassador (CA).

Head Ambassadors

Head Ambassadors are the highest ranking group of ambassadors and correspondingly hold the most power within the group. Head Ambassadors can only be appointed (or removed) via general token-holder referendum on a new, Ambassador Admin track. This track should be configured in a similar fashion to the existing Fellowship Admin track.

The role of Head Ambassador should necessitate activity on par with a full time job. Besides their capacity of leading the program, HAs should be able to represent Polkadot effectively to new people and businesses and be able to speak fluently on the philosophy underpinning Web3 technologies, on Polkadot and its high-level design decisions, how Polkadot compares to other blockchain tech stacks, and typical user stories like staking, participating in governance, or building parachains. They may not be (and probably are not) developers, but they should demonstrate sufficient skill, understanding, and communication ability to be trusted to work autonomously in the best interest of Polkadot.

The program should only allow up to 21 Head Ambassadors. Once the number is reached, adding a new HA shall require replacing an existing HA or making a proposal to all token holders on the Ambassador Admin track to alter the program.

Senior Ambassadors

Senior Ambassadors are promoted from Ambassador on the Head Ambassador track. The SAs should be experienced Polkadot Ambassadors who have already made substantial contributions to the success of Polkadot. One would expect that SAs have been using Polkadot and are engaged in the ecosystem by for example hosting or speaking at events or participating in a non-trivial way in governance discussions.

Ambassadors

The Ambassador tier is the main level of the program where the majority of people will stand. Ambassadors should be fluent in most end-user applications of Polkadot. They should, for example, be able to show a new person how to stake via a nomination pool or how to set an identity on-chain. Ambassadors may do any number of things, like translate documentation, make tutorials in written or video form, host/attend events, etc. It is up to the judgement of the HAs and SAs to set objectives for the program and decide what is most effective and what should be recognized.

Candidates

All new joiners to the program enter as a Candidate. Ambassadors can induct Candidates, but they will need approval from the Senior Ambassador track to get promoted to Ambassador. Members should generally not stay Candidates for long (as a guideline, no more than six months); it ensures a fast onboarding to the program, but those who are inactive should be removed and those who are active and competent should be promoted to Ambassador.

Treasury and Salaries

The Ambassador Program should have an on-chain Treasury. It is envisioned that this Treasury is used in the following ways.

Salaries

Head Ambassadors shall receive a salary of 10,000 USDT (or equivalent stablecoin) per month. This represents their commitment to representing Polkadot in the equivalent of full-time capacity and their ability to bring high-value entrants into Polkadot. Given that personal circumstances can necessitate periods of lower activity (e.g. vacation, family, illness), HAs can place themselves on a passive 2,000 USDT per month allowance until they are back full-time.

Other members of the program do not receive a regular salary, although they may make proposals to the Treasury to cover expenses or recognize exceptional work.

Proposals

Members of the program at any rank can make funding proposals to the Treasury. These proposals could be to cover expenses related to hosting an event, for rewarding exceptional contributions by members, putting funds into the salary account, or for general Treasury management (for example converting some DOT to a stablecoin or other asset).

The Treasury shall have two main tracks:

1. Spends of less than 1,000 USDT can be approved by the Senior Ambassador track.
2. Spends of 1,000 USDT or greater must be approved by the Head Ambassador track.

Seeding

The introduction of the program to the Polkadot runtime should not include any initial members. Only after the program is included in the Polkadot runtime should referenda be held to appoint Head Ambassadors.

Because the Head Ambassador track is powerful within the group and there will be a seeding phase where there is a small number of HAs, the HAs shall not take any action until there are at least ten HAs appointed. That is, until such point, the program should not be allocated Treasury funds, all remarks from HAs shall be ignored, and HAs who use the track to induct Ambassadors or Senior Ambassadors should have a referendum to be removed as Head Ambassador.

Modifications and Evolution

Much like the Technical Fellowship, the Ambassador Program may want to implement changes to how the group operates. It should do this by passing a remark on its Head Ambassador voting track that states the change. This is similar to the Fellowship’s RFC process.

Changes that significantly affect token holders or Head Ambassadors, like program salaries or how many HAs should exist in the program, should pass referendum on the public Ambassador Admin track.

Tracks

The Ambassador Program should have the following internal tracks:

• Head Ambassadors: A track expressing the voice of Head Ambassadors. As only HAs can vote, each vote is weighted equally.
• Senior Ambassadors: A track expressing the rank-weighted voice of Senior and Head Ambassadors. Each HA shall have five votes and each SA shall have one vote.
• Ambassadors: A track expressing the rank-weighted voice of Ambassadors, Senior Ambassadors, and Head Ambassadors. Each HA shall have ten votes, each SA shall have two votes, and each Ambassador shall have one vote.

All tracks should have a voting period of seven days, with a linear curve such that greater than 50% turnout unanimously in favor can pass a motion at its start and a simple majority of voters at the end (as in, no turnout requirement).

Conclusion

An on-chain group of ambassadors, dedicated to furthering the awareness, adoption, and ultimate success of Polkadot will be a powerful organization. It should have resources and recognition from the network itself that will attract skilled and effective representatives of Polkadot.

============

The format of the remark is taken from RFC-12 in the form APPROVE_COLLECTIVE("{collective name}, {commitment}"), where the collective name is "Polkadot Ambassador Program" and the commitment is the Blake2 hash of the program description, 98dfd4f93660b5858d21d4522f4266484b9bc8303c9db7190200f15086dcf6b7.

To regenerate the commitment and the on-chain call, you can download the attached ambassador-program.md file and run the following python script:

from hashlib import blake2b

fname = './ambassador-program.md'
h = blake2b(digest_size=32)

with open(fname, 'rb') as f:
    h.update(f.read())

print('{}'.format(h.hexdigest()))

# Output: 98dfd4f93660b5858d21d4522f4266484b9bc8303c9db7190200f15086dcf6b7

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17kBUg8Ahrm5UQJf-zBxvFKmqlVAjDeEz/view?usp=sharing