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Treasury Proposal Essentials

This section gives you an overview over the lifecycle of a proposal and its basic structure.

Lifecycle​

Let's look at the lifecycle of a proposal. A proposal is either submitted for work already done or for work to be done in the future. In the following description we will ignore when the work is actually performed and only look at the proposal itself:

The basic lifecycle of a proposal consists of 3 phases: preparation, discussion, and decision.

  • Preparation: In the prepartion phase, you sketch out the scope of the project, write a proposal, and perform some administrative tasks on-chain.
  • Discussion: In the discussion stage, you introduce the proposal to the first people and gather valuable feedback about typical concerns and FAQs. You might also learn that the scope of the project or the suggested implementation does not match how things are typically done in the ecosystem and gives you the opportunity to take feedback and correct course.
  • Decision: Once the proposal enters this phase, there is no turning back. The proposal will come to a decision within the decision period (typically 28 days on Polkadot). Now everything that is left to do for you is to stay engaged in the discussion and get the proposal over the finish line.

Basic Outline of a Proposal​

OpenGov receives a number of proposals everyday, and people have limited time to evaluate these proposals. You should assume that most of the people will just briefly look at your proposal and decide instantly on their first impression. This is why it will be to your advantage to apply following order to your proposal.

  1. An informative and to the point title: Be careful when selecting a title for your proposal. This will be the first thing that many people see when they look into your proposal. Don’t put vague titles. Your title should roughly explain what you are proposing.
  2. Start with an executive summary: It is advised that you start to your proposal with a summary (one or two sentences) of what you are proposing.
  3. Team Who are you? What are your former achievements. Briefly explain this in a paragraph after your summary.
  4. Objective: What are you aiming to do? What are the intended outcomes? What are your performance indicators? Explain these in one or two paragraphs.
  5. Plan: How are you going to accomplish your target? Explain your plan in a concrete sense.
  6. Budget: Explain how are you planning the spend the money that you are requesting from the treasury.
  7. Limitations: You can add or mention the possible limitations and potential problems you might encounter.
  8. Philosophy: You might mention your philosophy and beliefs only after you explain all the important points that are described above.

Proactive vs. Retroactive Proposals​

Retroactive Proposals​

Retroactive proposals are proposals where you seek funding after the work has been delivered.

This can make sense in different situations:

  • You wanted or had to do the work anyways and think there is a good chance that OpenGov will value the work and wants to reward it. (e.g. build a tool for a parachain team, open-source it later).
  • You have the resources to do something and believe the community will value it when they see it and might not understand it before (e.g. host a cool event)
  • There is something like a social contract with the community that ongoing work in an area will be rewarded (often the case for tooling)

Proactive proposals​

Proactive proposals are those where you seek funding before starting the work.

Situations for proactive proposals:

  • High upfront costs: Projects with significant initial investment in people, compute, licenses, etc...
  • Risk mitigation: Avoid the risk of financial loss and understand community buy-in
  • Clear project scope: When the project has a scope, goals, and deliverables that are well-defined and align with the community needs, it is easier to justify and secure upfront funding.

Tips​

  • Read the OpenGov primer in the Polkadot Wiki
  • Clear, open and transparent proposals will increase your chance to win community approval.
  • Proposals are based on trust that promised work will be delivered. If you are new, consider starting with the smaller proposals to prove your ability to deliver on time and budget.
  • The first proposal or initial milestone should be as small as possible.

Set your on-chain identity​

  • Setting up an on-chain identity is a crucial step before submitting a proposal. Proposal submissions without an on-chain identity get rejected by some participants out of principle.
  • You can use multiple ways to set your on-chain identity. One of the easiest way for non-technical users is to use the service provided by Polkassembly. After you connect your wallet, you can start setting your on-chain identity on the Polkassembly UI by following this guide.
  • Suggestion: A doxxed IRL identity will be beneficial for you to gain community trust. It is harder to get a proposal approved if you or your team are anonymous.
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This guide is inspired by and contains elements from Coinstudio's 7 Guidelines for a Successful Proposal document.