The Polkadot Foundation released its financial report for the first half of 2024 last weekend. The report shows that the foundation has spent US$87 million (11 million DOTs) in the first six months of 2024, of which approximately US$36.7 million was used to expand the scope of services (approximately 42%) and US$23.1 million was used for development (approximately 42%). 26.7%), and US$15 million was used for the ecological economy (approximately 17.6%).

The most criticized thing among the community is that the Polkadot Foundation invests a lot of resources in the marketing budget, but there is still little news about Polkadot in the market, and there has been almost no discussion in the community in the past six months. Upon closer inspection, it can be found that Polkadot’s marketing budget is mainly used for sponsorship of sports events, such as US$6.8 million in sponsorship of famous football clubs, US$1.9 million in F1 racing sponsorship, etc.

The Polkadot Foundation currently controls US$245 million in assets on three different blockchain networks, of which US$188 million is "illiquid" and cannot be liquidated immediately. According to the official statement, if the cash burn rate is US$87 million in half a year, the annual net loss will be approximately US$108 million (17 million DOT). If the DOTUSD exchange rate remains unchanged, the remaining funds of the Polkadot Foundation will be burned out within two years. .

Additionally, DOT is now continuously released at an inflation rate of 10% per year, with most of it going towards staking rewards. In other words, at a market cap of $10 billion, $1 billion is flowing to stakers every year.

This is a very high security cost for a network that few people are using. Although officials tried to propose a lower inflation rate, it was ultimately rejected by 57% of the votes.

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