After the financial management chaos, a number of Asian projects broke out again Polkadot "discrimination" scandals

Author: Azuma, Odaily Star Daily

Today, the news about Polkadot’s “$87 million six-month expenditure, treasury only enough to last another 2 years” has sparked widespread discussion within the community.

With the intensification of community sentiment, many Asian background projects including Manta Network, DIN (formerly Web3 Go), Oneblock+, etc. have successively spoken out, pointing directly at the serious internal political struggles and discrimination within the Polkadot ecosystem. Asian projects have long been unfairly treated, with funding applications repeatedly frustrated, while some high-value and ambiguous applications from other regions can easily pass, indirectly leading to the forced outflow of many high-quality projects.

Below is a compilation by Odaily based on the statements made by various parties (including Odaily’s own experience of applying for Polkadot funding proposals).

Manta Network: Polkadot is toxic, run fast!

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

As the founder of the project with the largest TVL and market cap / fully diluted value (excluding DOT) in the former Polkadot ecosystem, I have to say that we really don’t want to have any more contact with the Polkadot ecosystem and its team.

This ecosystem is highly toxic, with no real value to Web3, and it simply doesn’t care about user adoption. We are too busy to reveal the many discriminatory facts that Asian founders suffer in this ecosystem (a common feeling among all Asian founders).

The Polkadot team is not competent and has not truly achieved decentralization. If they are willing to make some meaningful efforts to support ecosystem builders, we would not be so disappointed as we are now. Many community members have asked us about the roadmap for our Atlantic (Polkadot parachain) project. I want to say that there is no roadmap, and we are now fully focused on Manta Pacific because the entire Polkadot ecosystem is basically dead.

As for the accusation of discriminating against Asian developers by the Polkadot team, you can compare how much funding European/American projects have received compared to Asian projects, and you will understand.

DIN (formerly Web3 Go): The deeper the love, the more disappointed.

Today at 18:09, DIN (formerly known as the Web3 Go, a Polkadot ecological data analysis platform) founder Harold posted on X, saying:

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

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

As a result, although the technology and vision of the Polkadot ecosystem are still impressive, we are gradually moving away from Polkadot.

The deeper the love, the harsher the criticism.

PolkaWorld: Drive Away the Scammers Who Clip Coupons

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

As a DV (governance voting delegate) during the first half of the year, PolkaWorld opposed most of the proposals that aimed to increase the exposure of Polkadot. Polkadot is currently not lacking in so-called advertising exposure, and money should not be spent on advertising exposure that has no conversion. Any advertising and exposure should be based on the product, otherwise it is ineffective exposure and ineffective spending.

PolkaWorld added that there is a fundamental problem in the Polkadot ecosystem that has not been addressed - how to deal with Whales? Especially when the intentions of the Whales are not aligned with the interests of the entire community, what can the community do… Why can a proposal worth millions of dollars, without any detailed explanation, transparent budget, and financial reports, still be approved by the community in the face of strong opposition? Why does a proposal requesting tens of thousands of dollars, which would be very helpful to the community, face tens of millions of opposition? In the past six months, how many controversial proposals have been approved on Polkadot?

Currently, what the Polkadot community needs most is: 1. Empower teams that have already built great products, provide them with liquidity incentives, and attract users to use these great products; 2. Continuously cultivate and explore new teams, new products, and new applications; 3. Only when a user-friendly unicorn application emerges can it attract a large number of users to the Polkadot ecosystem and stay in the Polkadot ecosystem.

Finally, we want to call on all DOT holders. The Polkadot community should no longer support proposals for more advertising exposure, including partnerships/sponsorships with sports events, advertising placements, or even sponsoring concerts with KOLs, etc. This is meaningless! Let’s focus on how to cultivate strong ecological applications and spend our money on exposing these products!

Steady DOT holders, we can win! The premise is to get rid of those scammers who are clipping coupons first!

Oneblock+: Do not understand Polkadot’s refusal to give developers ‘excessive rewards’

At 21:23 today, the Polkadot community and DV Oneblock+ posted on X, saying:

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

However, its proposal has been opposed by many node representatives and DOT large investors, on the grounds that the bonuses set for the winning development team are too high. In fact, the proposal cost of Oneblock+ is lower than that of other hackathon organizers, and the high bonuses are aimed at attracting more developers to join the Polkadot ecosystem and continue development, rather than wasting money on event organization.

As the only representative of Polkadot DV in China, Oneblock+ does not refuse proposals on the grounds of ‘giving developers excessive rewards’. Hackathons such as Solana and Ton have prizes exceeding 500,000 USD.

Odaily Personal Experience

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

As one of the few Chinese media outlets that have been following and reporting on the Polkadot ecosystem for a long time, and have organized multiple events, in February of this year, we submitted a proposal on market promotion on the Polkadot governance system OpenGov, according to the needs of the Polkadot team. The proposal outlined the continuous support and coverage of Polkadot by Odaily, as well as the future content and activity support plan. The requested amount was 10458 DOT, which was approximately 80,000 US dollars at the time (now fallen to 64,000 US dollars).

The proposal received support from the Chinese community, mainly 28.3 million DOT votes. The Chinese Polkadot community also described Odaily’s many years of contribution on their website. However, towards the end of the voting period, there were a large number of opposing votes, which slightly exceeded the supporting votes (over 32 million opposing votes).

Insiders in the community revealed that most of the ‘large investors and nodes on the European side’ who cast their votes against ‘do not understand the Chinese community’ and ‘we did not receive any feedback even after attempting official communication, so we can only let it go in the end’.

And with the recent disclosure of Polkadot’s financial report, we only see that the Polkadot treasury is more willing to spend $53,000 on a moving logo on CoinGecko (or even more on CoinMarketCap, it seems); spend $200,000 to spray an icon on a private plane in Europe to enhance Polkadot’s exposure to the high net worth community; spend $1.6 million to organize a conference only for croissant eaters; sponsor various sports activities for no reason with more real money and silver…

In just a few short years, we have witnessed Polkadot’s journey from a top-tier project to its current state step by step. The spiritual leader does not care about worldly affairs, and the team is struggling with politics. All outstanding Chinese practitioners of Web3 Foundation and Parity have resigned, and once high-quality projects have left one after another, Chinese builders and large investors who were once full of ambition have left in disappointment…

It’s a pity that such a good game of chess ended up with such a board.