Kus DAO have voted AYE (third voting).

✅ Centralized legal support for global teams; streamlined templates & compliance tools.

❌ Concerns over curator qualifications, conflicts of interest, and bounty structure.

💪 Get involved: 🔗 Discord Invite or Telegram Invite

💬 Join the discussion: 🔗 Discussion Thread

~@Pieky

I have uploaded all the unanswered questions of unresolved risks as a PDF to this pinned IPFS address for future reference  https://maroon-autonomous-horse-597.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/bafkreifzxvq7gdcnh4mkg3ag3gcyxhtrdsw6eltyix6dpvzcz724ikrupi

@ltfschoen Summary of the risks associated with the questions that were asked 7 days ago but where no response has been received from Amforc:

❌ Closed web portal paywall.

❌ Future risk of inaccessible/unaffordable to its audience of Web3 startups.

❌ Lack of competitor analysis of existing free and open-source Web3 legal resource hub (knowledge base).

❌ Does not mention what licensing requirements would apply to developed standard contract templates and "additional templates" or whether the standard contract templates will be free and open-source or whether only specific cases of the "additional templates" that are made available for the "broader ecosystem" will be free and open-source.

❌ Does not mention who will have access to audit and update the source code of standard contract templates for vulnerabilities and compliance with the latest laws (whether NDA required, or is only Amforc allowed to make updates when required by paying clients and only in response to project feedback and requirements, and at the exclusion of community open-source developers).

❌ Does not mention how frequently the standard contract templates and "additional templates" will be updated to reflect all the latest relevant laws that apply.

❌ Does not mention what proportion of Amforc's paywall of fees will be given back to the Polkadot Treasury as royalties.

❌ Does not mention what the proposed fee schedule will be (whether it will be similar to Lawpath pricing similar to Lawpath https://lawpath.com.au/pricing).

❌ Risk that the Polkadot Treasury will be effectively funding Amforc exclusively to bootstrap a closed legal service similar to LawPath if they are the single point of contact between the Polkadot Legal Bounty and any of its Outsourced Legal Support.

❌ Risk of allowing retroactive payments even for Web3 Legal Support that should be "flagged" risky work, when retroactive payments should only cover "simple" Web3 Legal Support with demarcations that are predefined (instead after listening to the initial project brief, and finding the right contact, a standardised quote should be provided by the curator that highights any risks, options, assumptions, constraints, and exclusions, and how their legal services will mitigate those risks, and it should be made publicly available for brief potential external DOT stakeholder scrutiny, since it may include "flagged" risky work, and would then be reviewed and approved/rejected by parent curators).

❌ Does not allow for free and open public due diligence through a Child Bounty Change Request being published for brief public scrutiny after the initial legal consultation with a project client, if it determined that their request for legal support will have heightened unnecessary risks (as listed in the spreadsheet) and needs to be "flagged" (e.g. excess spending forecast, similar to the "excessive expenses" were recently incurred by FTX bankruptcy professionals -- funded at the expense of FTX creditors https://x.com/historian_ftx/status/1876837618920427902?t=iFjfBlYjqtkcedLz4eaIfg&s=19).

❌ Does not include examples of any "2. End-of-Month Retroactive Payments:" to show its "Outsourced" curators and Amforc will demonstrate the "value-add" associated with any work delivered and to justify any expenses incurred prior to any end-of-month retroactive payments in order to ensure that the initiative isn't being paid for "excessive" spending and expenses.

❌ Does not mention whether Amforc, the curators and any "Outsourcing Legal Support" legal firm contacts that have been found for use by any projects that have approached the bounty, will be providing a forecasting schedule of their daily availability for the next month that includes names of legal representatives, along with the detailed breakdown of services at hourly levels, along with clear, predefined rates in each of their "2. End-of-Month Retroactive Payments:", which is a risk because the proposal says the Polkadot Legal Bounty and Amforc "will serve as a single point of contact together with Gianni’s law firm", so if Amforc doesn't hire enough junior professionals or there aren't any Amforc junior professionals available who demand a significantly lower rate, then the Polkadot Legal Bounty might be forced to unnecessarily approve retroactive payments for services by the most senior lawyers that demand equivalent approx. CHF 500.- hourly rate for junior work related to "Direct Legal Support", "Generation of Reusable Templates" and "Administrative Costs".

❌ Does not mention whether parent curators in the Polkadot Legal Bounty will scrutinise "Outsourced Legal Support" legal firms that they are intending to outsource to, to check they are Web3 aligned (e.g. using Web3 storage, backing up and securing their client data), and performing background checks of any history of "excessive spending".

❌ Does not mention what assessment criteria will be used for selecting eligible teams and whether it will be performed transparently and in detail.

❌ Does not include a prioritised list of known Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem projects that they have you already contacted to ask if they will use the service so an estimate can be made of how many projects they will be able to fund with the given budget and when.

❌ Does not mention how they will prioritise eligible parachains that seek access to the exclusively available legal services to avoid the risk of bribery.

❌ Does not mention what relay chains the parachains need to be connected to in order for legal services to be exclusively available to them.

❌ Does not mention whether the legal services will be exclusively available to Substrate-based chains with a parachain ID allocated but that are not able to assign to it a coretime core to run it because all the cores were sold out, or if they forgot to renew their core.

❌ Does not state clearly in section "9. Litigation and Alternative Dispute Resolution" of the full proposal, whether the litigation services will only be provided if at least one company is in the Polkadot ecosystem.

❌ Does not provide a link with information about Coinstudio, and details about each of their team members, their skills matrix, hourly rates, and whether they are a registered or unregistered DAO.

❌ Does not mention who the team members of Amforc are other than Co-Founder Gianni, and whether Amforc is a registered or unregistered DAO. The proposal should include their skills matrix and hourly rates. There is no information about that at https://amforc.com/about/

❌ Does not specify why Amforc is specifically requesting locked DOT in addition to CHF (Swiss Franc fiat).

❌ Does not specify why it isn't feasible for the Polkadot Legal Bounty team, Amforc, and any "Outsourced Legal Support" to only paid in cryptocurrency (e.g. USDT and DOT or similar from Polkadot Asset Hub) rather than in CHF (Swiss Franc).

❌ Does not mention why the Polkadot Legal Bounty has not considered payment in stablecoin alternatives other than CHF (Swiss Franc fiat) to potentially avoid the additional off-chain accounting services that are proposed to be charged at CHF 80.— per hour to "ensure that all payments are documented transparently and correctly". Stablecoin alternatives that could be used include the CryptoFranc (XCHF) stable coin that is bound to the Swiss Franc on Ethereum, or Frankencoin (ZCHF) on Ethereum, or Swiss Franc stablecoin (VNX) on Stellar. The benefits of using stablecoins is that all payments would be recorded on-chain transparently and it would only be necessary to export it to a .csv file, spreadsheet, or similar, for accounting reporting purposes, at minimal accounting cost.

❌ Does not mention what hourly rate Coinstudio will charge to prepare multisig calls, and whether the cost associated with each multisig call will be explicitely specified in the timesheet they submit for retroactive payment.

❌ Does not mention excluded legal topics that are not provided by the legal support and "Outsourced Legal Support".

❌ Does not mention why Polkadot Treasury should "retroactively" fund connecting projects with at top tier law firms (the most expensive), when in hindsight after the services are rendered, stakeholders could argue that a much lower tier law firm at a much lower cost could have been sufficient, or if the legal advice and support was an unnecessary duplicate response that should have already been standardised and available in the knowledge base.

❌ Does not mention how the Polkadot Legal Bounty and Gianni's law firm Amforc as the "single point of contact" will handle the risk of being overloaded with a backlog of unresolved requests, where it may be necessary for expensive barristers through "Outsourced Legal Support" potentially commanding upwards of an astonishing US$5k per hour or more to be forced to step in just to handle basic "Administration" tasks due to the limited amount of resources available. 

❌ Does not adequately explain why the Polkadot Legal Bounty will not entertain having a "multiple points of contact" where other law firms could be available that could handle clients in parallel that have significantly lower hourly rates and that would also provide and maintain a guarantee of attorney-client privilege, to avoid risks associated with creating a monopoly through Gianni's law firm Amforc being a Swiss law firm with high hourly rates and serving as the "single point of contact" .

❌ Does not include an example of a retroactive payment invoice that would be issueed each month.

❌ Does not include examples in the section "Sample User Journey for Projects" that shows costs including "Generation of Reusable Templates", "Administrative Costs", and other expenses, such as travel, food, and accommodation, and entertainment.

❌ Does not explain how Amforc as the "single point of contact" will avoid duplicating work that a notary public may do, and how costs will be minimised when they are dealing with standard incorporation documents.

❌ Does not mention what percentage (%) portion of each project budget will cover "Administrative" expenses?

❌ Does not mention what Swiss canton Amforc is based in and what percentage of the purchase price determine the notary public fees.

❌ Does not mention whether the Polkadot Treasury funds used in the "Outsourced Legal Support" of the bounty includes "notary public" and "commercial register entry" legal fees.

❌ Inadequate amount of parent curators that could scrutinise all the Polkadot Legal Bounty work since it only includes DonDiego and Coinstudio, since Amforc as a external curator would only be able to scrutinise the work by "Outsourced Legal Support" and excluding Amforc's own work or where there could be an apparent of actual conflict of interest).

❌ Inadequate evidence of oversight of retroactive payments, especially when such high hourly rates of Swiss lawyers are involved.

❌ Future risk of Amforc creating multiple subsequent proposals entitled "Top-up of Proposal 1359 due to DOT price change" similar to this one https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/943 if a black swan event occurs and the price drops from the DOT 7d EMA of 8.554 USD/DOT to ~3.5 DOT/USD by the time it is executed and any bounty payments are made, where if those top-ups are approved they could potential even double the amount of DOT tokens they receive that would be locked for 6 months, where they could say they "did not expect such a level of volatility and our expenses are set in fiat" (i.e. CHF and USD), and "while we did allocate a buffer for the expenses to be incurred, this large deficit does not allow us to fulfil our obligations…".

ChaosDAO would like to provide the following feedback from our community. We offer this feedback voluntarily in the spirit of OpenGov, in order to help teams improve their proposals so we can all build the network together.

1. Some members will like to see a more structural breakdown of the proposal.

2. Some members believe the ask is quite reasonable for the proposed services.

3. Taking costs into consideration, members asked if the proposed structure has to be situated in Switzerland.

4. Members will like to know if there're protections in place against funding shady projects or projects that will not be committed to the ecosystem.

5. Some members questioned whether the treasury should be paying for the legal needs of ecosystem projects.

6. Members who are part of or stand to benefit from the proposal recused to avoid conflicts of interest.

ChaosDAO votes as a collective based on the results of our anonymous internal voting procedures. Our members are not required to provide any feedback about why they have voted in a particular direction. Similarly, to respect our members' right to anonymity, we will not be sharing the names of individuals who have chosen to voluntarily provide feedback. You can find out more about how we vote and how to get in contact with us here: https://x.com/ChaosDAO/status/1762986093316587995

If this proposal passes, I might as well become a football coach. I’ve never played football, but I’ve watched plenty of matches—and according to the logic I’m seeing here, that should be enough! How else can we justify an accountant being appointed as a curator for a legal bounty?
Oh, and I believe Coinstudio is already a curator for a bounty that you proposed (IBP) in April 2024 for more than 4 million USD. https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/649 “The IBP has worked closely with Coinstudio (community member) together since the beginning of the IBP. As our accountant, Coinstudio was in charge of ensuring all payments are documented correctly and of preparing multi-sig calls for the curators. In his role he will also be in charge of yearly auditing members. His support ensures that all expenses of the IBP are properly documented.”

I mean, this ‘legal bounty’ isn’t a bounty at all. A bounty is a clear structure where curators decide whether an application is justified, and the curators are compensated for their work. It’s as simple as that. Oh, and for a legal bounty, I’d expect at least a basic understanding of community agreements. Alice and Bob have already proposed bounty standards and we as community approved this. It’s our responsibility as a community to say no when something doesn’t comply.

We’ve seen this before with funding requests in DOT instead of stablecoins. Many of us have now a default stance: "It’s a no for me for any proposal if they request DOT." Why can’t we apply the same principle to bounties that don’t comply to community-approved standards? I know it’s a bounty and DOT is needed, but I’m referring in this case to ref 1254 regarding the bounty standards.

So, my question is - why are we still debating the Legal bounty? The bounty rules are there for a reason. If a proposal doesn’t respect them, it’s a no. Period. I mean, let’s stay consistent and try to live to the standards that we all voted and agreed on.

How are you selecting legal firms to work with (specifically in the US)? I have plenty of firms who would be interested in participating.

Please try to answer the 32 questions in this spreadsheet, and kindly prioritise the questions that are categorised as high risk:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1H7f9a4tfoOVj2I35emvVPxQUnAqpPYlvwWVGv7GcqVw/edit?usp=sharing

Kus DAO have voted ABSTAIN (second voting).

✅ Streamlined global legal support, transparent retroactive payments, and curated assistance for projects.

❌ Concerns include conflicts of interest, unclear curator qualifications, and non-compliance with bounty standards.

💪 Get involved: 🔗 Discord Invite or Telegram Invite

💬 Join the discussion: 🔗 Discussion Thread

~@Pieky

Hi @MarioSchraepen ,

Happy to address your points also here following the discussions on Discord as there still seem to be some misunderstandings.

A bounty is a mechanism on-chain that allows to delegate oversight. Which is exactly what we are doing by having two additional curators which serve as a security and control function. The goal is rather to reduce unknown unknowns and to reduce legal burdens. There will be careful curation on who gets how much, for example established projects will get much more than a “random PBA graduate”, who would still benefit in a scalable way by getting access to templates. It's about increasing efficiency and making time to market faster. We want to prevent such cases that happened couple times where teams brought their own legal teams and a service was overpaid by a ridiculous amount.

Community oversight is also ensured by the bounty structure, and as stated in the proposal itself, the retroactive payments will be accompanied by a fully transparent and detailed breakdown of services at hourly levels to ensure clarity and fairness in billing. We will communicate openly regarding all aspects of the bounty while still providing some privacy for recipients through attorney-client privilege.

Regarding our current curator set, as mentioned in other comments, we are open to suggestions for qualified additions to the curator set. That being said, both DonDiego and CoinStudio are well-known in the Polkadot community (as we're sure you're aware) and demonstrably have the appropriate expertise on the legal/accounting side to fulfill their curator duties with the highest standards.

@Saxemberg Governance

Thank you for your feedback and for highlighting critical aspects of curatorship and industry-specific legal and regulatory challenges.

Our proposal is designed to comprehensively address these issues while strengthening the Polkadot ecosystem. Regarding the limited choices for legal support in general, we plan to leverage our already established global network of law firms that have undergone our due diligence and have been reached out to for an indicative willingness to support us with third-party services. This should help to ensure projects in Polkadot get the high quality legal advice they deserve.

The proposal also aims to mitigate legal risks by supporting informed decision-making about jurisdictions, for example, and to prevent potential compliance and regulatory pitfalls that could arise from choosing unsuitable jurisdictions. Many projects have substantial ties to their home countries, making it impractical or at least complex to relocate to “crypto-neutral” jurisdictions without facing significant legal and operational challenges. By offering expert legal advice, the proposal ensures that projects can make jurisdictional decisions that align with their specific circumstances while remaining compliant.

We agree regarding curators and support new qualified additions to the current curator set. Suitable curators can reach out to us directly or feel free to suggest them to us given they have the required expertise to increase the quality and output of the legal bounty.

We appreciate your support and look forward to further advance Polkadot as a leading platform for innovation and growth.

Dear @Amforc,

Thank you for your proposal. Our vote on this proposal is NAY.

The Medium Spender track requires 50% quorum and simple majority according to our voting policy. This proposal has received three aye and five nay votes from ten members, with two members abstaining. Below is a summary of our members' comments:

> The referendum faced mixed feedback, with significant opposition focused on concerns about the structure of the bounty. Critics highlighted potential conflicts of interest with Amforc acting as both curator and executor, as well as critical grey areas that rely on subjective curator decisions. Many suggested a broader curator set, including legal professionals, and a restructuring to allow startups to propose their own legal firms for reimbursement. Supporters emphasized the need for legal support, particularly for smaller teams, viewing the proposal as worth exploring but requiring close monitoring. A few abstained, citing uncertainty about demand or discomfort with the concept. Overall, concerns about governance and structure dominated the discussion.

The full discussion, along with individual members' votes and comments, can be found in our internal voting.

Kind regards,
Permanence DAO

With regards to this a +1 for the enhanced compliance with the discussion and socialization and WFC (ours is a position of vote is law as many WFC cannot be really enforced however). With respect to the fact that recipients are curators we still have not been able to make that separation efficiently on other bounties so this is technically correct but other bounties do the same to some extent. Though, with respect to the fact that many legal services base their work on pre-ensambled rigs and work upon them, it usually makes sense for an industry such as ours which is perceived as high risk by many jurisdictions and entities. It also works for other industries like gambling and adult. Global Networks like Logion obviously help but legal specificity and high degree of choice in a broad number of jurisdictions is something we, as an industry even outside of Polkadot, don't have the luxury to enjoy yet. Even within jurisdictions that are crypto friendly and crypto neutral, finding such services and custom approaches in person is a really challenging process. This comes from our own experience to engage with legal providers on a crypto neutral jurisdiction that many incorporations base their operations at. This is the main concern if we want to see it operate efficiently. What would there be alternative approaches if not this one? would be our counterquestion to this comment.

https://discord.com/channels/961984944656236574/1319256536299864095/1325416970232795267

The solution seems to be an update to a proposed curator set more or less that can be done in a latter referendum for time sake (the curator approval referendum), that could be done as they seem to be open for new curators but no applications have been published yet. We'll be waiting for the proposers and commenter answer.

Is Legal Advice for Startups and Businesses Valuable? Absolutely! That’s why most people instinctively lean toward a “yes” vote for this proposal. We all know how expensive legal advice can be. But in its current form, this proposal is a hard NO. I hope the initiators will use my advice to revise it, and that those who voted “Abstain” will switch to “No.” Let me explain in detail why this is justified:

This is NOT a Bounty.
A true bounty involves experts chosen by the community to evaluate specific, submitted proposals. It allows the community to delegate responsibility to curators and avoid voting on every detail. However, this legal "bounty" is a hybrid bounty, with an external service provider (Amforc). This creates a major conflict of interest:

• If this is a bounty, its purpose is to serve the ecosystem by judging proposals and/or invoices and give them funding.

• If this is a service proposal, it must be presented separately and judged independently. This could be used for creating legal templates etc.

Non-Compliance with Standards approved in Referendum 1254 by Alice&Bob
This proposal does not comply to the bounty compliance standards set by the community. https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/1254. For example:

• Discussion Period
  Standard: Funding requests must be discussed on governance platforms (for at least 2 weeks.
  Reality: No evidence of such discussions exists. For a legal bounty, which requires understanding Polkadot’s governance, this oversight raises concerns.
• Curator Transparency
  Standard: Curators must have verified on-chain identities and declare conflicts of interest.
  Reality: 
  — Amforc, DonDiego (is this Andréa Vistoli? ) , and Coinstudio have no verified identities mentioned.
  — There is no clarity about who DonDiego or the people behind Coinstudio are.
  — Amforc is both curator and service provider, violating the rule that curators cannot approve payments for their own work (except curator fees).
• Public Communication
  Standard: Bounties must maintain public communication channels, overview pages, and regular progress reports (monthly and quarterly).
  Reality: This proposal lacks any mention of public communication channels, leaving transparency and accountability unaddressed.

Lack of Community Support
The legal experts within our community, such as Lorena and Wario, have already expressed opposition. This is worrying. If we need trusted legal advice, why not involve credible entities like Logion (https://logion.network/), which has a global network of legal officers and proven expertise? (David Schmitz is the CEO, and a Polkadot veteran, in his board he has the secretary of the international union of legal officers ! )

In general, this proposal raises several critical concerns:
• How much of the budget will go to reusable templates, legal setup, or the knowledge hub?
• Why does it lack transparency, governance discussion, and identity verification for curators and recipients?
• How can Amforc act as both curator and executor without creating a conflict of interest?

Therefore, I propose splitting this proposal into two:

1. Legal templates for the Community: Begin with delivering templates and other resources as a standalone service proposal.
2. True legal Bounty: Once trust is established, create a separate legal bounty with fully compliant curators, transparency, and community oversight. Because, as it stands now, this proposal cannot and should not be approved. It fails to meet our community standards, raises too many red flags, and lacks transparency. The Bounty Standard literaly says "we suggest OpenGov denies funding requests if proper scoping and transparency criteria are not fulfilled" Therefore, I urge the community to vote NO. 

@1eGtA_qy31j 

Yes, thank you!

Hi Lorena,

Thanks for your questions and comments. Hope our clarifications help:

1. The services are provided by a law firm. The legal bounty is not the service provider.
   The setup also ensures that only those parties that are able to do so and meet the legal requirements provide services.
   In addition, we only work with law firms that have undergone due diligence. The risks you mentioned are therefore unlikely in this setup.
2. There is no focus on Europe. The legal bounty aims to assist teams and projects all over the world.
3. The service is provided by a specialist in each case. However, the aim of the legal bounty goes even further. The proposed setup stands for cost efficiency, time savings, consistency, knowledge hub/transfer etc.
4. We are confident that the curators will be able to understand an invoice even if they are not lawyers (same idea as a jury in the United States). However, we welcome applications from lawyers as curators.

Hope this helps.

Hi @Lily_Mendz ,

Thanks for asking. Our clarifications:

1. If it is approved, we will choose similar distribution channels as for the IBP - outreach through X (formerly Twitter)/direct channels with teams through e.g. Telegram/availability through contact form.

2. The bounty would be in DOT. Part of the payout for non-third parties would be in locked DOT to highlight our commitment to Polkadot.

3. We trust our curators to bill their work honestly and would certainly open the discussion if billed hours are excessive. The exact amount depends on the overall workload and interest coming to the bounty.

4. Yes. The cap for projects is generally 96 hours per year. External hours would count pro rata towards this limit; if the charge by external partners exceeds the maximum cost per hour mentioned in the bounty (CHF 290.- plus 28 DOT), it will be converted to an equivalent (higher) number of delivered hours so the costs are never exceeding expectations by the community.

5. Regarding educational resources, yes we plan to create a Knowledge Hub on legal topics to make this as easy and useful long-term for the Polkadot ecosystem as possible.

6. Templates will only be accessible to projects within Polkadot to prevent external projects from freeloading off the support of the treasury.

Hope this clears up your questions!

It’s an interesting proposal; I have some questions:

1. If this bounty is approved, how do you plan to make it publicly known that it’s available so interested teams can consult it?

2. Why are payments in DOT included alongside stablecoins? Could everything be paid in stablecoins instead? (for calculation purposes).

3. The hourly payment for curators is reasonable, but it’s missing the maximum number of hours per week that can be billed to the bounty.

4. Is there any mechanism to limit expenses for third-party services?

5. Could more emphasis be placed on educational resources and tools? This would allow projects to prevent legal issues in the future and reduce the need for constant legal interventions.

6. Will the templates be freely accessible, or will projects require additional assistance to use them?

Hello team,

The initiative looks very interesting and promising because the proposal includes regulatory advice, compliance, templates/wiki, etc.

Said that, I consider some points of failure:

1.- ¨One single point of contact (guaranteeing attorney-client privilege) and leverage a large international network of lawyers to obtain the best possible support, from choosing the right setup structure to helping with legal issues, such as contract and corporate law, IP law, data protection, regulatory issues and supervisory law as well as providing legal templates".

I believe that the concept of bounty is distorted because legal services are being provided by a ¨bounty¨ that is not a law firm or company dedicated to providing legal services and is prohibited by the law of many countries. It could be considered illegal practice in the legal profession.

I understand that the bounty should not be providing legal services, it should be curating the services of the projects with the lawyers who have the projects and not provide legal services.

In addition to that, the contingency for Polkadot is huge in case of conflict of interests, misconduct, corruption, lobbying, insider trading, violation of IP etc. of the curators or the lawyers/legal firms.

2.- The full legal service coverage is focused on lawyers based in Switzerland and their extensive network.

Polkadot is a world blockchain with projects all around the world and the service should consider different perspectives and not focus on Europe and its regulations.

3.- Costs of the services

The applicable hourly rates depend on the experience and seniority of the involved professionals and start at CHF 120.- plus 8 DOT up to CHF 290.- plus 28 DOT (DOT locked for 6 months).

The costs of the services are based on payments in Switzerland and it looks unnecessary that the treasury allocates funds to pay an intermediary in Switzerland plus the cost of local lawyers, plus curators.

4.- The legal bounty does not include lawyers?

The curators will receive 80 CHF per hour.

How could the curators curate the work that performs the lawyers and the costs of the services if they are not lawyers?

The legal bounty must include lawyers and the cost should be in hours only to review the performance of the work but should avoid providing legal firms or recommend lawyers.

For that reason, I will vote NAY

Lucky Friday have voted ABSTAIN. Please consider this a temporary notification after our vote has gone on chain. If you would like additional feedback on our rationale for this vote, please join our OpenGov Public Forum on Telegram here: https://t.me/+559tyPSfmGg0NzUx

Lucky Friday provides feedback once per week (Fridays) if specifically requested in our OpenGov Public Forum, and we respectfully ask that all proponents of referenda interact with us here for the sake of transparency. Please tag our Director of Protocol Relations “Phunky” with your referendum number so that he can gather the relevant commentary from our internal deliberations.

@Amforc Appreciate the additional clarity and thoughtful approach here 👍

Dear @wario, thank you for your appreciated feedback.

Curators: We agree on the lawyers as curators point for ensuring the highest standard. Hence, how we structured the current suggested curator set which we are happy to extend with good fits on that side and appreciate any suggestions there.

Payout Calculation: Good point. The proposal states for example that a company formation will cost around USD 1,700 excluding third-party costs. Legal health check packages will also be offered for teams and projects in the Polkadot ecosystem. These shall cover various topics, such as corporate law (shareholders' agreement etc.), trademark/IP law (IP strategies, strengths and weaknesses, IP protection and monitoring, to dos etc.), data protection and possibly even a general regulatory and tax check. Each component in a standard version will be around USD 1,000 to 2,000. However, fees may vary depending on the jurisdiction and special requests. It is therefore difficult to estimate a fixed fee for all possible enquiries, and we will provide fee quotes if an enquiry is beyond the usual range.

Locked DOT: We are strongly committed to the Polkadot ecosystem and wanted to emphasize this by making part of the fee dependent on the development of the DOT price. The proposal aims to boost the Polkadot ecosystem by making it more attractive and to strengthen the projects and teams in the Polkadot ecosystem.

Dear @Flez Thank you for your comment.

We agree with you. It is crucial that each team and each project gets the appropriate lawyer. A US case will be advised by a US lawyer. However, the bounty wants to achieve more and can offer several benefits, particularly within and for the benefit of the Polkadot ecosystem:

• Cost Efficiency: By addressing legal questions centrally, repeated legal fees for similar or identical issues can be avoided. Instead of each team paying a lawyer individually, standardized answers and solutions for common questions could be provided centrally.
• Time Savings: The bounty can support teams more quickly with answers and resources, as it is already familiar with recurring problems and can provide tested solutions.
• Consistency: Centralized legal advice ensures that teams can rely on consistent and reliable information, which is particularly beneficial for areas such as taxation, data protection, regulatory law, labor law, or corporate law.
• Knowledge Transfer: The legal bounty shall act as a knowledge pool, drawing on the experiences of other teams and projects (and still guarantee confidentiality and attorney-client privilege). This makes it easier to share best practices and legal strategies.
• Focus on Innovation: By reducing the administrative and legal burden on teams, especially startups, they can focus more on their core innovations.

Good idea but coverage needs to be split up by geo... e.g., US based startups should be represented by a US based law firm, etc.

This is a great idea, but in my opinion, it needs to be polished further. Here are my comments:

Lawyers as Curators: Since you’ll be curating legal work, having lawyers is essential. This should be non-negotiable to ensure the credibility and quality of the curation.

Payout Calculation: The pricing mechanism seems a bit tricky. To make it more efficient, I suggest exploring packages specifically designed for team collaborations (not by hour) and without locked dot.

From your proposal, I can see that you have the necessary knowledge to drive this forward. However, this still seems like a grey area with some uncertainties. What’s your opinion on this discussion?

https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/post/2628

shut up and take my money!

Interesting initiative, it would also be an excellent bridge between any initiative requiring legal advice and any contracts to be submitted to the PCF.