Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author: Azuma (@azuma.eth)

Today, the news that Polkadot "spent $87 million in half a year and its treasury is only enough to last another two years" sparked widespread discussion within the community.

As community sentiment intensified, many projects with Asian backgrounds, including Manta Network, DIN (formerly Web3 Go), and Oneblock+, spoke out one after another, pointing out that there are serious political struggles and discrimination within the Polkadot ecosystem. Asian projects have long suffered from unfair attitudes, while high-cost proposals from some other regions were easily passed, indirectly leading to the forced outflow of many high-quality projects.

The following is Odaily’s summary based on the opinions of various parties (including Odaily’s own experience in applying for Polkadot funding proposal).

Manta Network: Polkadot is toxic, run!

Today at 17:18, Manta Network co-founder Victor Ji posted on X:

As the founder of the largest (non-DOT) project in the former Polkadot ecosystem by TVL and market cap/fully diluted market cap, I have to say that we have absolutely no desire to engage with the Polkadot ecosystem and its team anymore. This ecosystem is highly toxic, has no real value for Web3, and is not focused on users or adoption at all. We are simply too busy to reveal the many facts of discrimination we as Asian founders have experienced in this ecosystem (a sentiment shared by all Asian founders).

The Polkadot team is incompetent and not truly decentralized. If they were willing to put in some meaningful effort to support ecosystem builders, we wouldn’t be as disappointed as we are now. Many community members have asked us about the roadmap for our Atlantic (Polkadot parachain) project, and I would like to say that there is no roadmap and we are now fully focused on Manta Pacific because the entire Polkadot ecosystem is basically dead.

Regarding the accusation that the Polkadot team discriminates against Asian developers, you can understand it by comparing how much funding European/US projects have received compared to Asian projects.

DIN (formerly Web3 Go): The deeper the love, the greater the disappointment

At 18:09 today, Harold Yu, founder of DIN (formerly the Polkadot ecological data analysis platform Web3 Go), posted on X:

Agree with Manta Network co-founder Victor Ji that as an Asian-led project, it is quite difficult to build in the Polkadot ecosystem.

In the Polkadot ecosystem, you need to face and solve many additional problems, such as politics, relationships, and cliques. I remember the Web3 event held in Hong Kong in 2023. Polkadot did not hold any official events at the time, so I applied for a $10,000 grant on behalf of the community. The application process was too painful and the reporting requirements were too cumbersome. I don't want to go through it again. But at the same time, I saw many projects from Europe and the United States easily get hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in funding, which is very unfair.

Because of this, although the technology and vision of the Polkadot ecosystem remain impressive, we are gradually moving away from Polkadot.

The deeper the love, the harsher the criticism.

PolkaWorld: Get rid of the scammers

At 21:14 today, PolkaWorld, the Chinese community of Polkadot, posted a message on X saying:

PolkaWorld opposed most of the so-called proposals to increase Polkadot’s exposure during its time as a DV (governance voting delegate) in the first half of the year. Polkadot currently does not lack so-called advertising exposure, and money should not be spent on advertising exposure that does not have any conversion. Any advertising and exposure should be based on the product, otherwise it will be invalid exposure and invalid expenditure.

PolkaWorld added that there is an essential problem that has not been solved in the Polkadot ecosystem at present - how to fight against whales? Especially when the intentions of whales are inconsistent with the interests of the entire community, what can the community do... Why can a proposal worth millions of dollars without any detailed instructions, transparent budgets and financial reports be passed despite strong opposition from the community? Why does a proposal that applies for tens of thousands of dollars and is very helpful to the community have to be opposed by tens of millions? In the past six months, how many drama proposals have been passed on Polkadot? At present, what the Polkadot community needs most is: 1. Empower teams that have already built great products, give them liquidity incentives, and attract users to use these great products; 2. Continuously cultivate and discover new teams, new products, and new applications; 3. Only when a user-friendly unicorn application comes out can a large number of users be attracted to the Polkadot ecosystem and stay in the Polkadot ecosystem.

Finally, we want to call on all DOT hoders that the Polkadot community should not support more advertising exposure proposals, including any cooperation/sponsorship of sports events, advertising, or even sponsoring concerts? ? Cooperation with KOLs? ? Wait, this is meaningless! Let's focus on how to cultivate powerful ecological applications, and let us spend money on the exposure of these products!

Keep DOT holders stable, we can win! The prerequisite is to get rid of those scammers who are taking advantage of us first!

Oneblock+: I don’t understand Polkadot’s refusal to “give developers too high rewards”

Today at 21:23, the Polkadot community and DV Oneblock+ posted on X:

Recently, two Polkadot hackathon proposals for the Asia-Pacific region in 2024 were applied for on OpenGov, hoping to bring Polkadot hackathons to Singapore and Bangkok in the second half of 2024. Funds are allocated for hosting, prizes, and organizing Polkadot hackathons in Singapore and Bangkok in 2024. Oneblock+ claims that its costs are transparent: 30% is used for operating expenses and 70% is used as rewards for the winning team.

However, its proposal was opposed by many node representatives and DOT big holders on the grounds that the bonus they set for the winning development team was too high. The fact is that Oneblock+'s proposal fee is lower than that of other hackathon organizers, and the high bonus is to attract more developers to join the Polkadot ecosystem and continue development, rather than wasting money on event organization.

As the only Polkadot DV representative in China, Oneblock+ does not accept the reason of "giving developers too high rewards" to reject proposals. The bonuses of hackathons such as Solana and Ton exceeded $500,000.

Odaily personal experience

In addition to the above-mentioned institutions speaking out, Odaily itself has also experienced setbacks in its Polkadot ecosystem proposals.

As one of the few Chinese media that has been following up on the Polkadot ecosystem for a long time and organizing many events, in February this year, after communicating with the Polkadot team, we submitted a proposal on market promotion on the Polkadot governance system OpenGov based on their needs. The proposal outlined Odaily’s long-term proactive follow-up support for Polkadot, as well as future content and event support plans. The application amount was 10,458 DOT, which was approximately US$80,000 at the price at the time (now it has fallen to US$64,000).

The proposal was supported by 28.3 million DOT votes, mainly in the Chinese-speaking area. The Polkadot Chinese community also recounted Odaily’s many years of contribution on the website. However, when the voting was about to close, a large number of votes against it appeared, which just slightly exceeded the votes in favor (more than 32 million against).

According to an insider in the community, most of those who voted against the project were “big players and nodes in Europe” who “did not understand the Chinese area.” We tried to communicate with the official team but received no feedback, so the project was ultimately abandoned.

With the recent disclosure of Polkadot’s financial report, we can see that Polkadot’s treasury is more willing to spend $53,000 to make an animated logo on CoinGecko (limited time only… CoinMarketCap seems to have spent more); $200,000 to spray an icon on a European private jet to increase Polkadot’s exposure to high-net-worth groups; $1.6 million to hold a conference for croissants; and more real money to inexplicably sponsor various sports activities that have no conversions…

In just a few years, we have witnessed step by step how Polkadot has gone from a king-level project to its current state. The spiritual leader is indifferent to worldly affairs, the team members are engaged in politics, the outstanding Chinese practitioners of Web3 Foundation and Parity have all resigned, the once high-quality projects have left one after another, and the Chinese Builders and the once ambitious big investors have left in disappointment...

It's a pity that such a good game ended up like this.