Good Morning!​

We are OpenGov.Watch.

We are here to help Polkadot Governance grow up and transform Polkadot into the most impactful Web3 ecosystem this beautiful planet has ever seen! We will do this by providing information, leading initiatives, and developing Polkadot governance structures.

We now could talk about the problems we see in this space and how we intend to (help) solve them, and we certainly will in the coming days. But right now we want to use the opportunity to talk about something bigger: Our vision for what Polkadot can become.

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You were born just right...​

"We are the middle children of history. Born too late to explore earth, born too early to explore space."

We were told that we can change the course of history. We watch in awe as AI is writing history. Our lives are enriched by constantly updating technology and watch in fear as the same technology is used in wars to end human lives. We have built a global information network and handed over control to big corporations and nation-states. We are participating in a global economy that is being weaponized without our consent.

And in the midst of all that, we decide to spend our time in the deep in blockchain technology. If you are reading this post, chances are that you think that crypto can be part of the solution to many of those problems. You were born just right for Web3...

What we did this month:​

• Launched OpenGov.Watch Infodesk with guides section
  • Essentials
  • Track
  • Decentralized Voices
• Presentations
  • OpenGov Workshop(report & slide deck at the Polkadot Summit in Bangkok
• Publications
  • Published Polkadot Treasury Report - 2023
  • Published Budget Reporting Standards - Draft
  • Published GpenGov Report - March 2024
  • Published Polkadot 2.0 and JAM Roadmap
• Monitoring Tools
  • Launched Monitoring - Daily updated Governance monitoring mastersheet
  • Published OpenGov Scraper - a Jupyter Notebook to fetch OpenGov referenda data

• Publications
  • First draft release of the Polkadot 2.0 Strategy
  • Monthly OpenGov Report
  • New OpenGov.Watch Infodesk Guide: How to “Prepare and Submit” a proposal
• Activism
  • Spreading awareness for the new spend() extrinsic via Ref 708
• Monitoring
  • Added Treasury Monitoring sheet
  • Added Bounties overview

After delivering a first draft of the Polkadot 2.0 Strategy (a curated summary of many different voices in the ecosystem) in April, May was the first month where we started to put parts of the strategy into action. We focused on two key areas: User Experience and Accountability.

1. UX: We started our first Governance Initiative around User Experience. We refer to “Governance Initiatives” as focused projects where we create more transparency around an ecosystem area and push for better solutions. For this first initiative, we gathered information on what is done to improve UX in the ecosystem. It turned out, that not much is happening yet. To change this, we helped the Braille team set up a bounty proposal. We consulted them through several calls and provided feedback for their process of grooming a UX backlog and regularly calling ecosystem agents to get solutions on the way. We supported them with public exposure by hosting a dedicated Twitter space and worked to raise awareness via several channels. There is lots to do in the UX space and we hope to be able to help the Braille team make the UX bounty a reality
2. Accountability in OpenGov is a big topic and for many, but it is unclear if and how we can move this topic forward. As a first step, we developed the Basic Accountability Checklist. We intend to advertise it with the next cohort of DVs and see if we can establish a standard of what levels of transparency and accountability are being enforced through DV in big-ticket proposals. We are currently in talks with other agents in preparation for a potential audit bounty, that could be following up on big-ticket proposals after they get accepted and in general ensure that better accountability is created for proposers.

Looking forward, June will be a budget month for us and we will analyze the spending behavior of the treasury and for the first time create a balance sheet of the Polkadot Treasury. As a base, we will use our newly developed Polkadot Treasury Reporting Standards.

This month, we published the most ambitious Polkadot Treasury Report so far. It covers 2024-H1 and includes an income statement and balance sheet that starts to resemble traditional accounting best practices. It follows the Treasury Reporting Standards that have been previously established.

We achieved a great success on the Governance Initiatives front. Following our User Experience initiative last month, the UX bounty was approved after intensive community debate and negotiation. The Braille team is getting to work by opening up the backlog to the community to manage the bounty in an open manner.

For this month, work has started on the Developer Experience Governance Initiative and we will present results next month. This month was intense, as new DVs came into office and old ones left and we had quite a few bookable calls dedicated to the topic of learning from the past and sharing with the future DVs.

Next month, we are excited to share the Polkadot 2.0 Strategy we are curating at Polkadot Decoded.

This month started intense, with our Polkadot Treasury Report making waves in crypto mass media and the socials. While the reception was mixed, it put Polkadot back on the radar of several people and entities that had forgotten about Polkadot.

Our monthly OpenGov report for July highlights some of the consequences: A more critical evaluation of the Treasury's spending behavior. The Marketing Bounty 500k refill was rejected as more whales woke up and we hope that more accountability and a better alignment along a shred strategy will be the consequence.

Speaking of strategy, we were honored to share our mental model for how OpenGov can develop a bottom-up strategy at Polkadot Decoded in this “State of the Union” talk. Folks at Parity liked the presentation and mentioned it in their “Emerging Web3 Trends” blog post.

Our main objective for this month was to propose a budget for OpenGov.

This month, we were happy to see many things come together that have been many months in the making. Our highlight was to give a Web3 Summit Talk titled “Do we need Network Constitutions?”, which sparked many discussions around the topic.

The bring Polkadot a bit closer to it, we upgraded our Notion to become a complete OpenGov Portal. The idea is to give people actively participating in OpenGov a portal where they can find relevant links and points of contact. It is accompanied by a list of ecosystem issues and a summary of existing Polkadot Legislation.

From here on out, we will start to implement the theory laid out in past months in BASED Budgeting. Our approach is to push legislation through WFCs, and we start by testing the waters with establishing Bounty Standards through a WFC. If this is successful, OpenGov can in the future delegate certain decisions away from the general tracks towards those bounties, reducing the noise and establishing more structure for on-chain executive bodies.

Mid September through Mid October we focused on two initiatives:

• The 2024-Q3 Treasury Report
• Pushing for bounty compliance standards

This Treasury report had the first shades of routine to it. While it is still a lot of manual work, we at least have one year of experience now in getting it done. To potentially decentralize the process in the future, we also created a playlist of the most essential processes to allow others to replicate the process.

Budgeting is still a big topic, and we are finally making tangible progress in translating theory into practice.