#1522 · PolkaWorld Ops and Maintenance proposal：2025.4 - 2026.3
Proponent: 12mP4sjCfKbDyMRAEyLpkeHeoYtS5USY4x34n9NMwQrcEyoh Date: April 8, 2025 Requested USDT: PolkaWorld is applying for 266,652 USDT to support its operations for the upcoming year (April 2025 – March 2026).
Short description: After successfully delivering on Referendum 573, PolkaWorld is excited to submit a new proposal for the next year of operations (April 2025 – March 2026)!
In this proposal, we once again commit to delivering:
- 288 high-quality articles
- 72 livestreams
- 48 educational short videos
- 12 in-depth interviews
- And continued, consistent management of our Chinese and English X (Twitter) accounts
But that’s not all — this proposal also includes a full breakdown of our 573 delivery, as well as additional contributions, such as:
- Nearly 2 million impressions on our English X account over the past year
- Nearly 820,000 impressions on our Chinese X account
- Co-hosting Dr. Gavin Wood’s four-city JAM Tour across mainland China with Pala Labs
- Voting on 54 proposals as a first-cohort DV (Decentralized Voices) representative
- Plus, 45 months’ worth of monthly summary reports documenting our journey
As long-term builders in the space, PolkaWorld has never stopped contributing to Polkadot — in bull or bear markets. In just two months, we’ll be celebrating six full years of building for the Polkadot ecosystem!
We hope to continue receiving support from the community so we can keep bringing real-time updates to Asian users, while also acting as a bridge between Asia, the Americas, and Europe—fostering greater mutual understanding and collaborative growth.
This proposal also comes at a crucial time: as Polkadot Hub and Polkadot Cloud begin to take shape, and interest in JAM grows rapidly across Chinese-speaking regions following Gavin’s recent JAM Tour in China. We believe now is a key moment to strengthen regional engagement and build momentum across the ecosystem.
Let’s keep building — together.
Who We Are
You might already be familiar with PolkaWorld, or perhaps not, but I'd like to share our journey in the Web3 world. In 2017, I (Xiaojie) joined a tech media company in Silicon Valley. Together with my teammate Kiko, we were responsible for the "Blockchain from 0 to 1" online course, a collaboration with Huobi exchange that sold over 200,000 copies online. Through this endeavor, we established one of China's early blockchain communities and nurtured numerous key opinion leaders (KOLs).
In the bear market of 2018, I left the company, and Kiko and I embarked on creating a blockchain education community brand. We collaborated with Dr. Bai Shuo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chao Pan of MakerDao China, and Ben El-baz, head of the ecosystem at Hashkey, to produce a series of blockchain-related courses. These courses received endorsements from key figures like Xiaofeng of Wanxiang Blockchain, MakerDao founder Rune Christensen, and Kathryn Haun, a partner at A16Z.
During this journey, we recognized the immense gap and importance of community education. However, we also realized that broad education didn't generate the cash flow we needed to sustain our team's ambitions. Then we meet Polkadot. On one hand, Substrate's significance at the time and Polkadot's inherent complex concepts made it an ideal platform for community education. On the other hand, we received consistent support from W3F. So, PolkaWorld has been in operation for almost 6 years since its establishment in June 2019.
So, who is PolkaWorld — in short?
The Largest Polkadot Community in Asia Since 2019 The Only Recipient of Web3 Foundation Community Grant Initial Governance Council Member of Polkadot Delegator for Web3 Foundation’s Decentralized Voices Cohort 1 12 Consecutive Approvals of Polkadot Treasury Proposals Dedicated to Polkadot Community Education & Support
• Hosted 50+ Offline Meetups
• Interviewed 60+ Polkadot Ecosystem Projects
• Produced 150+ Educational Short Videos
• Hosted 270+ Live Streaming Sessions
• Published 1500+ Articles in Chinese
• In just 2 months, we’ll be celebrating 6 years of building for Polkadot.
PolkaWorld Is Always Focused on the Polkadot Ecosystem!
What Are We Good At?
As mentioned above, our primary focus has always been on community education. This has ingrained in our team a DNA for content creation, repackaging, and channel distribution. Additionally, over the past 8 years of experience in community education, we have developed a set of core values that also reflect our areas of expertise and strengths:
Long-Term Commitment: We believe that community education is an ongoing endeavor. Regardless of market conditions, bullish or bearish, the Chinese-speaking market always needs access to information about Polkadot.
More than Just PR: We strive for a deep understanding of the ecosystem and the industry at large. Truly grasping the various mechanisms and changes within Polkadot is crucial, and we're committed to continuous learning—not just about Polkadot—to elevate our industry awareness.
Educational Approach: Our community education efforts go beyond merely parroting complex jargon. We aim to understand the logic behind the terminology and convey it in a manner that is accessible and easy to understand.
Opinionated Outputs: We focus on articulating well-formed opinions rather than verbose, unhelpful discourses. This approach provokes thought within the community and keeps the dialogue engaging.
Independence and Decentralization: We maintain our independence and decentralized nature, which allows us to always approach issues from a neutral standpoint.
These core values serve as the foundation of our commitment to the Polkadot community, and they guide each action we take and the proposal we submit.
Delivery Report for Referendum 573 (April 2024 – March 2025)
Content Overview
As of April 2025, over the past year, we have published 324 articles within the WeChat ecosystem—exceeding our original commitment of 288 articles stated in Referendum 573. These articles have generated a total of 232,164 reads, excluding additional distribution from third-party Chinese media platforms (to which we do not have access to analytics data).
To better understand the relationship between content performance and market conditions, we conducted a comparative analysis between PolkaWorld’s article views and the monthly average price of DOT during the period of April 2024 to March 2025.
1. General Trends
Between November and December 2024, a significant price surge in DOT coincided with a noticeable spike in content views, providing preliminary evidence that market sentiment has a positive influence on content engagement.
Interestingly, from January 2025 onward, although DOT prices entered a steady decline, article views remained high. This indicates that audience interest has started to decouple from token price performance, shifting instead toward ecosystem developments and project-related news.
2. Correlation Analysis
Using the Pearson correlation coefficient, we found a score of 0.55, indicating a moderate positive correlation between DOT price and content engagement.
This suggests that while DOT price increases do positively affect viewership, they are not the sole driver of content performance.
3. Key Takeaways
- Market trends do impact content visibility, but they are not the only driving force.
- The depth of insights, relevance, and timeliness of our content are playing an increasingly important role in attracting attention.
- Maintaining strong engagement levels during a bearish market suggests that our content strategy has developed a degree of resilience to market volatility.
Livestreams
In the past year, we hosted 71 online livestreams, exceeding our commitment of 60 livestreams as stated in Referendum 573. These sessions collectively attracted a total of 39,027 unique viewers.
Educational Short Videos
We produced 48 educational short videos, which garnered approximately 65,000 views within the WeChat ecosystem. You can also find these videos on our YouTube channel.
In addition, our WeChat video channel—which includes a broader range of content such as interviews and highlight clips—has accumulated a total of 153,656 views over the past year.
Interviews
We conducted 13 interviews, which received nearly 24,000 views in total. We’ve observed that Chinese-speaking users show strong interest in this type of content—Maybe we will conside expanding our interview series in the future!
Contributions Beyond the Proposal
X (Twitter) Bilingual Operations
In addition to the deliverables outlined in Referendum 573, PolkaWorld officially launched its bilingual Twitter (X) presence in April 2024. Over the past year, we have consistently maintained a posting frequency of at least 3 tweets per day in both Chinese and English, carefully curating and sharing the most valuable information for our audience.
Here are the results of that effort:
The chart below illustrates the posting and reply activity of PolkaWorld’s English X account over the past year. We maintained a steady content output, with noticeable spikes in May 2024, November 2024, January 2025, and February 2025.
Highlights include:
- 1.9 million impressions, reflecting broad content reach
- 5.5% engagement rate, a strong performance by Web3 standards
- 107.8K total engagements, showing that users not only saw the content, but actively liked, shared, commented, and bookmarked it.
These metrics demonstrate that PolkaWorld’s English X account has become an important and trusted source of information in the Polkadot community.
Additionally, looking at data from the past three months, we’re excited to see that PolkaWorld’s English content is gaining traction not only in China, but also among users in the United States, Germany, Canada, and India!
On the Chinese side, despite having fewer followers and a smaller overall scale, the audience loyalty and quality of engagement on the Chinese account rival those of the English account—and in terms of engagement rate, it actually performs slightly better.
- The account reached a total of 819,500 impressions, which is quite strong within the Chinese content space.
- It achieved a 6.5% engagement rate, higher than the English account’s 5.5%, indicating that the Chinese audience is more willing to interact and engage.
- While the total engagement count (53.3K) is lower than the English account’s 107K, the interaction density is actually impressive given the follower count (3.9K vs. 15.4K).
In terms of content cadence, the posting frequency has remained consistent throughout the year—with a clear uptick starting in November, which was followed by a noticeable increase in metrics. Engagement levels remained steady in the latter months, suggesting that higher posting frequency had a positive impact on overall performance.
Additionally, it’s clear that the majority of our Chinese account’s audience comes from Chinese-speaking regions.
JAM China Tour
One of the most milestone contributions this year was that PolkaWorld, in collaboration with Pala Labs, co-hosted Dr. Gavin Wood’s four-city JAM Tour across mainland China!
It was a tremendous honor for us to welcome Dr. Wood back to China, and we deeply value the trust placed in PolkaWorld to help make it happen.
Here are some key highlights and data from the tour:
- Across the four JAM Tour stops, we received 965 registrations, with 874 attendees confirmed.
- Among them were 300+ students from top universities, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Central University of Finance and Economics, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fudan University, Zhejiang University, Westlake University, Xiamen University, Shenzhen University, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Henan University of Science and Technology, East China Normal University, Nanjing University, and Hebei University.
- Over 250 developers also took part in the events.
Other attendees included representatives from traditional enterprises such as Alibaba, Tencent, Microsoft, Huawei, ICBC Blockchain Research Team, Haier Group, CoinSummer Capital, Zhejiang Commercial Bank HQ R&D Center, Nokia, Zheshang Securities Investment Fund, SDIC UBS Fund Management, CITIC Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, CICC Global Research, and Vertex Ventures.
From the Web3 industry, we welcomed participants from Binance, Wanxiang Blockchain Labs, OKX, AltLayer, Aptos Labs, Axelar, RedStone, Conflux, HashKey Chain, imToken, MEXC, OpenSea, SNZ Capital, and MicroStrategy Capital, among others.
We were also joined by Web3 media outlets such as Odaily, BlockBeats, PANews, Foresight News, Bitpush News, and Decrypt.
And of course, many Polkadot ecosystem teams participated as well, including PolkaWorld, OneBlock+, Bifrost, Acala, Mimir, OpenSquare, PAKA Fund, Darwinia Network, Harbour Industrial Capital, and Lollipop. It was an unforgettable tour that showcased the growing energy, interest, and collaboration within the Chinese Web3 and Polkadot community.
Decentralized Voices (DV)
Finally, over the past year, we were honored to be selected by the Web3 Foundation as a DV (Decentralized Voices) representative in the first cohort.
While we only voted on 54 proposals, this was a conscious choice. As a first-cohort DV, we took our responsibility to the community seriously and remained aligned with community interests by focusing only on proposals in areas we truly understand—marketing, community, and media.
Being a DV isn’t just about typing in a password and blindly voting on-chain. It requires extensive English reading, Telegram discussions, Google Meets, and publicly sharing key information with the community. It’s demanding work—but meaningful.
At PolkaWorld, we believe this is a critical way to amplify Asian voices in OpenGov. We’re grateful and excited to share that we’ve been selected again for the 4th DV cohort!
This time, we’re taking things further—we’re inviting more members, builders, project teams, and developers from across Asia to join PolkaWorld and help shape a Polkadot Asia DAO that actively participates in OpenGov.
Curious about our philosophy? Click here to learn more.
Monthly Reports from the past 45 month
Since receiving funding from the Polkadot treasury starting in 2021, we have been publishing monthly work summaries. If you're interested, you can check out our reports covering the past 45 months:
Goals, Key Results, and Timeline Overview for this Proposal
Workscope & OKR Breakdown: April 2025 - March 2026
After discussing with the community and reworking our proposal logic, we’ve defined three core objectives that will guide how we measure our impact in increasing Polkadot’s visibility in China:
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Reach & Visibility: We aim to expand the reach of Polkadot content within the Chinese WeChat ecosystem. For example, in our previous proposal, the average article view count was around 700. This year, through refined content strategy, we aim to raise that average to over 1,000. (This is a target we’re striving for, though we recognize the market is influenced by many external factors.)
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Content Quality & Timeliness: PolkaWorld has always been known for its timely, high-quality, and easy-to-understand content. In this proposal, we will continue to uphold that standard.
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Ecosystem Development & Resource Building: PolkaWorld has already established media and university connections in China. We will continue nurturing those relationships and organize more livestreams to help these partners stay updated on Polkadot’s progress.
Based on these goals, we’ve broken down our work into the following categories:
1. Content Creation & Marketing
OKRs for the 12 months of this proposal:
- Publish 288 articles related to Polkadot and its ecosystem on the PolkaWorld WeChat Official Account
- Given that we're currently in a bear market, we'll do our best to disseminate each article in a way that garners over 1,000+ reads.
- Distributing all content across the 4 largest blockchain media outlets in China
Todo each month:
- Produce 24 articles per month related to Polkadot/Kusama, rollups, eco-projects, Substrate, general Polkadot news, and weekly reports with a frequency of at least one article per day, 6 days a week.
- All articles will debut on the PolkaWorld official WeChat account and will subsequently be distributed across our various channels, including chat groups, WeChat Moments, X, Telegram, as well as four other blockchain media outlets!
2. Live broadcasts & Management
OKRs for the 12 months of this proposal:
- We will host a total of 72 live streams, covering both Chinese and English audiences. Overall, the live streams will be organized into 6 main series:
Ecosystem Show: Inviting rollup teams to share their latest developments and engage directly with the community.
Polkadot 101:Aimed at newcomers, this series breaks down the fundamentals, key mechanisms, and latest concepts of Polkadot—serving as a gateway for more people to understand and enter the ecosystem.
Ecosystem Perks: Sharing ongoing incentive programs and other community-beneficial campaigns happening across the Polkadot ecosystem.
OpenGov Updates: Providing regular updates on the latest proposals within OpenGov, helping the Chinese-speaking community better understand key ref on the Polkadot/Kusama networks and continuously encouraging broader participation in governance.
Meet New Friends (English livestream): A casual livestream series hosted on X, where we connect with builders across the Polkadot ecosystem—exploring what they’re working on, how they’re contributing to the ecosystem, and how Polkadot is supporting their growth.
Monthly Community Call (English livestream): A monthly roundup on X Live where we invite active ecosystem builders to review and interpret the month’s key developments—technical progress, major proposals, active projects, highlight metrics, and more.
- Our primary platform for live streaming will be the X Video Channel.
- All recorded live streams will be uploaded to PolkaWorld's YouTube channel.
- Select highlights from the live streams will also be transcribed into text and published as articles.
Todo each month:
- Host 1 Ecosystem Show(Chinese)
- Host 1 Polkadot 101(Chinese)
- Ecosystem Perks(Chinese)
- Host 1 OpenGov Updates(Chinese)
- Host 1 Meet New Friends(English)
- Host 1 Monthly Community Call(English)
- Design a poster for each livestream
- Edit and publish key clips from the livestreams on X and PolkaWorld’s video channel on WeChat
- Translate important content or summarize key points from selected livestreams, and share them as articles or X threads
- All livestreams will be archived on PolkaWorld’s YouTube channel
3. Educational Videos Production
OKR for the 12 months of this proposal:
- making 48 educational videos
- Topics cover the latest Polkadot trends, major updates, technical explainers, popular projects, data analysis, and more — all presented in a simple, easy-to-understand way with engaging visuals to help users stay informed about what’s happening in the Polkadot ecosystem.
- increase the reading volume of each video to more than 1000 views.
- Upload all videos on YouTube and WeChat Channel
Todo in each month:
- Produce 4 educational short videos each month
- Design a custom thumbnail and add outro animation for each video
- Upload all videos to the WeChat Video Channel and YouTube, and distribute them on Twitter (X)
- Below are some screenshots from our backend data, showcasing the performance data of these short videos within the WeChat ecosystem.
4. PW Interview with Rollups & People in Polkadot ecosystem
OKR for the 12 months of this proposal:
- Conduct a total of 12 interviews, either online or in person. We typically schedule interviews around major conferences, aiming for roughly one interview per month.
- We will upload each interview video to the PolkaWorld WeChat official account, aiming for over 1000 views per video. Additionally, we will sync the videos to the PolkaWorld YouTube account, making them accessible to international users.
- How we chose people/projects we interviewed: Polkadot and Kusama rollups, influential KOLs, thought leaders, or builders in the Polkadot ecosystem.
- Upload all videos on YouTube and WeChat official account
Todo in each month:
- Conduct 1 interview per month
- Edit each interview video and create a custom thumbnail
- Add Chinese subtitles to the video, if needed
- Publish the interview in article format, if necessary
- They will premiere on PolkaWorld's WeChat official account and video channel, and will also be simultaneously published on PolkaWorld's YouTube channel and Twitter!
5. Continuous Operation of X (Twitter) Channels in Both Chinese and English
OKRs for the 12-month proposal period:
- Post at least 720 tweets in Chinese via @polkaworld_pro
- Post at least 720 tweets in English via @polkaworld_org
- Content in Chinese and English will not necessarily be identical; we will tailor posts based on audience preferences to deliver the most relevant information
- Adjust content strategy monthly based on data, aiming to consistently improve impressions and engagement
Todo in each month:
- Post at least 3 tweets per day, with content scheduled for a minimum of 5 weekdays per week, totaling at least 60 tweets per month
- Maintain this posting frequency for both Chinese and English accounts
- Analyze performance monthly and adjust strategy accordingly to aim for continuous growth in exposure and engagement
6. User metrics
1. Key Metrics: followers on WeChat official account/X and impression & engagement on X. While we aim to improve these metrics, we cannot guarantee specific figures, as traffic in Web3 is influenced by a wide range of factors beyond our control. 2. marketing means:
- Publish a Polkadot-related article every day to attract users to follow the WeChat official account.
- Host 1 online live broadcast per week and transfer the user from the broadcast room to the WeChat official account&X.
- Include a follow method at the end of all our videos.
- Occasionally release our own custom-designed Polkadot swags to attract users to follow Polkaworld's official account and share articles to increase article views.
- Each month, we collaborate with one ecosystem project to launch small user growth activities, such as DeFi liquidity provision, staking, gift giveaways, and airdrops. These are specifically designed events that require close coordination with the eco teams.
7. Reporting
Publish a Monthly Review and Report on Polkassembly on the last day of every month, including performance data and all activities and materials created, to be shared with the Direction channel and comments on our original proposals for regular updates.
Proposal Budget
Based on the budget in the above table, we apply for USD 22,221 per month, which is USD 266,652 in total (from April 2025 to March 2026) for the Chinese community operations and event costs.
Please note:
- All calculations are based on the latest exchange rate of 1 USDT = 7.2 RMB.
- Some in-person interviews may involve travel and filming costs, but these are not included in this proposal. Attending conferences is also a valuable learning opportunity for us, so we plan to cover these expenses ourselves.
Contact
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding this proposal, feel free to reach out to us via email ([email protected]) or Telegram (https://t.me/xiaojie_web3world).
@14x5RbyJxD6KvNyncbJQuJJJ3zHinXg57YKwhJ7q9T9aJq4n
Thanks for the comment, Max! I completely agree with you — supporting alternative media outlets that are native to Polkadot is so important. If you’ve had a chance to check out our proposal, you might have seen from our X data that PolkaWorld’s English content is gaining traction not only in China, but also among users in the United States, Germany, Canada, and India! We’re really excited to see PolkaWorld’s content reaching more people across different regions!
PolkaWorld is one of the most pragmatic and dynamic blockchain communities I have ever seen. Not only do they promptly relay Polkadot ecosystem updates with exceptional information sensitivity, but they have also built a bridge from scratch connecting Chinese developers and users with the global Polkadot network. Whether through regular in-depth AMAs or continuous efforts to discover and nurture high-quality projects, they always prioritize the community, genuinely transforming countless Chinese developers and teams from participants to contributors within the Polkadot ecosystem. The thriving Polkadot community and developer base in China owe much to PolkaWorld's sustained efforts since 2019. They are an indispensable organization for Polkadot's growth in China.
I hope everyone can take a deeper look into Polkadot's Chinese market to better understand PolkaWorld's significance. After all, even Binance cites their content as an information source. So, please consider carefully—if such a vital organization fails to receive support, Polkadot's influence in Asia could suffer a significant blow.
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It's not the largest community at all, not even a community at all. Because they haven't invested any time in operating the community
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Just for the sake of salary, so their quality is lower
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Just for Gavin's work, not the community, they focus on pleasing Gavin
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The core members are not focused on the Polkadot ecosystem, but also work for many other ecosystems
Given the above situation, this cost is too high I suggest cutting the fees by 2/5 to match their work quality.
I have concerns regarding the effectiveness of PolkaWorld’s marketing efforts. Based on available data, much of their output appears to focus primarily on translation work. While translation has value, it does not constitute a comprehensive marketing strategy.
It’s also worth noting that WeChat metrics can be easily inflated, making it difficult to assess true engagement. Despite several years of operation, their X
YouTube channels have shown minimal growth in terms of subscribers and viewership — which raises further questions about long-term impact.
Additionally, to my knowledge, the team is not exclusively dedicated to the Polkadot ecosystem and is also involved in operations for other networks. This may explain the size of the team, but it also suggests a lack of singular focus and long-term commitment to Polkadot’s growth.
Overall, the cost-to-impact ratio appears unfavorable. Given these concerns, I recommend voting NAY on this proposal.
@12KQ...Y6De Thanks for your thoughtful feedback!
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It’s true that there’s already a lot of great English content in the ecosystem. But if you’ve followed PolkaWorld’s WeChat account, you’ll see that our translations come from a wide range of sources — interviews with Dr. Gavin Wood, conversations with The Kus, live sessions from Parity and Polkadot’s official X accounts. These are timely updates and important perspectives that we believe deserve more attention, especially for the Chinese-speaking community. That’s why we translate them. And it’s not easy — most of these are long-form English videos that take a huge amount of time and effort to go through. That said, translation is just one part of what we do. We also produce original articles, weekly summaries, short videos every week, exclusive interviews, and daily posts on both our Chinese and English X (Twitter) accounts. So if you look at our work holistically, translation is only one piece of the puzzle. And even in the months where translations take up a larger share, that’s only because the content is valuable and worth sharing more broadly with the Chinese community.
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At PolkaWorld, we’ve always been committed to sharing real data — the good and the bad. Our reports have never shied away from showing when performance wasn’t ideal. We operate in a highly volatile industry, where attention is often captured by hype and memes. We’re doing our best to keep people informed about Polkadot, but as everyone knows, it’s not easy to compete with viral narratives. If you take a closer look at our reports, you’ll see that our English X account has only been actively operated for less than a year. While the account itself was created earlier, we didn’t really start building it out until we saw more users shifting to X. Before that, our focus had been almost entirely on WeChat. Even so, in less than a year of active operation, our English account reached nearly 2 million organic impressions — all without any paid promotion. As for YouTube, it’s never been a primary focus for us — we use it mainly as a place to store videos, most of which are shared on WeChat Video. This has been clearly explained in several of our previous reports.
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To clarify: since 2019, PolkaWorld has been solely focused on the Polkadot ecosystem. You can see this clearly in our monthly reports — we’ve published 45 of them so far. Because we’re genuinely passionate about Polkadot, we’ve consistently overdelivered on the goals outlined in our past proposals. In fact, beyond fulfilling all the deliverables in Proposal 573, we’ve also done the following additional work:
- Nearly 2 million impressions on our English X account over the past year
- Nearly 820,000 impressions on our Chinese X account
- Co-hosted Dr. Gavin Wood’s four-city JAM Tour across mainland China with Pala Labs
- Voted on 54 proposals as a first-cohort DV (Decentralized Voices) representative
But thanks again for raising these points — we welcome the conversation and appreciate the opportunity to clarify our efforts.
We've been working with the Polkaworld team for the last 3 years. They are one of the early supporters of Polkadot and have greatly helped raise awareness of Polkadot in the Chinese and APAC markets. I fully support the Polkaworld team with this proposal. Ryan | SubWallet
@12s7...MiBk Thanks for the support, Ryan! The past few years have been tough, with so many competing narratives drawing attention in the market — but we’ve stayed committed and kept contributing all the way!
This proposal is really concerning, with all due respect to your work. I lay down my concerns below:
**1. Salary/Task Double-Counting - ** The proposal allocates $22k/month for both: Salaries (5 full-time roles at $3.4k-$4.1k/month each) Deliverables (24 articles, 4 videos, 6 livestreams/month)
This creates redundancy. Why are so many people being paid salary while also getting others to write articles and pay for them? Salaries should inherently cover labor costs for these outputs. The current structure effectively charges twice: once for staff time, and again for deliverables they produce during paid work hours.
2. High Per-Unit Costs Articles: $925/article ($22k ÷ 24) vs. standard Chinese market rates: Freelance writers: $100-$300/article (Upwork, Fiverr) Professional agencies: $300-$500/article (ChainNews, BlockBeats) Video Editing: $868/video ($3.4k ÷ 4) vs. typical rates: Basic editing: $50-$150/video (Taobao freelancers) Premium editing: $200-$400/video (Bilibili creators) ** 3. Unjustified "Media Distribution" Costs ** $8.3k/month allocated without: Proof of third-party partnerships Performance metrics for external platforms
I would appreciate if someone did a competitive study about the value PolkaWorld is providing from a media perspective to the ecosystem and compare it with other chinese platforms like ChainNews, BlockBeats etc...
The PolkaWorld proposal exhibits systemic financial mismanagement and questionable value delivery.
I took the time to look through the March report and here are some observations:
March 2025 Performance Shortfalls
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Underwhelming Engagement Articles: 26 articles → 25,533 total views (~982/article) Top article: 7,512 views (29% of total monthly traffic) 72% of articles received <1,000 views despite $925/article cost.
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Video ROI Failure 4 educational videos: 4,403 total views (~1,101/video) Cost: $3.4k/month for editing/uploading → $0.77/view
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Social Media Decline English X: Impressions ↓33% | Engagements ↓19% Relies heavily on 1.2K verified followers (7.8% of total)
Chinese X: Engagement rate ↓3.6% despite** "quality over quantity" claims**
Vote "No" to uphold responsible treasury spends. Please
@Max_HIC However, the return on investment is simply too low — it’s just not worth it. With the advancement of AI, translation work is no longer a high-value task, and we should prioritize treasury efficiency and reduce unnecessary spending.
This proposal is really concerning, with all due respect to your work. I lay down my concerns below:
**1. Salary/Task Double-Counting - ** The proposal allocates $22k/month for both: Salaries (5 full-time roles at $3.4k-$4.1k/month each) Deliverables (24 articles, 4 videos, 6 livestreams/month)
This creates redundancy. Why are so many people being paid salary while also getting others to write articles and pay for them? Salaries should inherently cover labor costs for these outputs. The current structure effectively charges twice: once for staff time, and again for deliverables they produce during paid work hours.
2. High Per-Unit Costs Articles: $925/article ($22k ÷ 24) vs. standard Chinese market rates: Freelance writers: $100-$300/article (Upwork, Fiverr) Professional agencies: $300-$500/article (ChainNews, BlockBeats) Video Editing: $868/video ($3.4k ÷ 4) vs. typical rates: Basic editing: $50-$150/video (Taobao freelancers) Premium editing: $200-$400/video (Bilibili creators) ** 3. Unjustified "Media Distribution" Costs ** $8.3k/month allocated without: Proof of third-party partnerships Performance metrics for external platforms
I would appreciate if someone did a competitive study about the value PolkaWorld is providing from a media perspective to the ecosystem and compare it with other chinese platforms like ChainNews, BlockBeats etc...
The PolkaWorld proposal exhibits systemic financial mismanagement and questionable value delivery.
I took the time to look through the March report and here are some observations:
March 2025 Performance Shortfalls
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Underwhelming Engagement Articles: 26 articles → 25,533 total views (~982/article) Top article: 7,512 views (29% of total monthly traffic) 72% of articles received <1,000 views despite $925/article cost.
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Video ROI Failure 4 educational videos: 4,403 total views (~1,101/video) Cost: $3.4k/month for editing/uploading → $0.77/view
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Social Media Decline English X: Impressions ↓33% | Engagements ↓19% Relies heavily on 1.2K verified followers (7.8% of total)
Chinese X: Engagement rate ↓3.6% despite** "quality over quantity" claims**
Vote "No" to uphold responsible treasury spends. Please
@15a9...ro2b You’re absolutely right — their actual output isn’t very high, and the impact is limited. Livestream participation is often very low, and it’s clear that many people are simply not interested in their content.
I also find it rather surprising that they treat submitting proposals as part of their “work.” They previously became a Decentralized Voice (DV), which already comes with compensation. As for their so-called “community,” the team is only five people — yet they control significant voting power, worth hundreds of thousands of DOT. That’s quite something.
Their community group is also mostly inactive, with very little discussion or engagement from real users.
I have concerns regarding the effectiveness of PolkaWorld’s marketing efforts. Based on available data, much of their output appears to focus primarily on translation work. While translation has value, it does not constitute a comprehensive marketing strategy.
It’s also worth noting that WeChat metrics can be easily inflated, making it difficult to assess true engagement. Despite several years of operation, their X
YouTube channels have shown minimal growth in terms of subscribers and viewership — which raises further questions about long-term impact.
Additionally, to my knowledge, the team is not exclusively dedicated to the Polkadot ecosystem and is also involved in operations for other networks. This may explain the size of the team, but it also suggests a lack of singular focus and long-term commitment to Polkadot’s growth.
Overall, the cost-to-impact ratio appears unfavorable. Given these concerns, I recommend voting NAY on this proposal.
Ah, the classic ‘But China is expensive now!’ deflection. Let’s clarify:
Geography ≠ Argument: My critique isn’t about East vs. West salaries, it’s about PolkaWorld vs. ChainNews/BlockBeats rates in the same region. If PolkaWorld’s "quality" costs 3x competitors, show us the receipts (or the 3x ROI).
Monopoly Math: "No alternatives" ≠ justification. If PolkaWorld’s been the only option for years, maybe it’s time to ask: Why? Healthy ecosystems thrive on competition, not loyalty programs.
Transparency Theatre: For $266k/year, we deserve more than "trust us, we’re quality" especially when March’s top article had 7.5k views (roughly $123/view). Even Netflix gives us watch-time metrics.
Keep calm and compare apples to apples. 🍎🔪🍏
In my opinion Polkaworld has been a great voice in the ecosystem and especially they are covering such an important market for Polkadot. I saw how they took care of people in IRL events, and their dedication for the ecosystem.
AYE from me!
Thank you for your support, Cris!!
Yeah, we were really excited to host Gavin’s JAM China Tour over the past few months, which brought together 874 attendees across four events — including over 300 students and 250 developers.
Yes, we’ve always had a deep love for Polkadot🥰
In my opinion Polkaworld has been a great voice in the ecosystem and especially they are covering such an important market for Polkadot. I saw how they took care of people in IRL events, and their dedication for the ecosystem.
AYE from me!
@16ap6fdqS2rqFsyYah35hX1FH6rPNWtLqqXZDQC9x6GW141C
A member of the SubWallet team just reached out to ask me for the original link to this article — a perfect example of what Lurpis mentioned: that most Chinese media regard PolkaWorld’s content as an official source of information.
Polkaworld is undoubtedly the largest and most influential Polkadot community in China. Before 2024, it focused on producing Chinese content and media, with most Chinese media citing Polkaworld's content as the official information source. However, as Web3 information sources gradually migrate to X (formerly Twitter), Polkaworld will also place greater emphasis on developing X content after 2024. It will simultaneously produce content in both Chinese and English and gradually gain more attention and influence in English content. A lot of progress has been made.
I support this proposal and hope to collaborate with Polkaworld to amplify the voices of DOT holders in Asia and enable them to participate in OpenGov discussions, proposals, and voting.
@Lurpis Thank you, Lurpis, for the kind words and for recognizing PolkaWorld’s shift and ongoing efforts — it really means a lot and gives us great encouragement! Let’s keep working together to grow Polkadot’s influence in Asia and bring more Asian DOT holders into OpenGov participation!
IDK why they put their proposal behind a Google form that makes you request access. Here is a copy of it for anyone who would like to view it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VVGIKr0DWQsrtlTDDPRdvRhX3YsM3lMvJ82X6pbcGEE/edit?usp=sharing
@0xTaylor Just a personal thought — we believe this could contribute to the broader discussion around transparency in OpenGov. For example, being able to see how many people actually clicked to view a proposal (even without knowing who they are) could offer useful insight into the ratio between readers and voters. Right now, this kind of data seems to be missing in the ecosystem. So this is just a small experiment — while it may not capture the full picture, we hope it can offer the community a new perspective.
Polkaworld is undoubtedly the largest and most influential Polkadot community in China. Before 2024, it focused on producing Chinese content and media, with most Chinese media citing Polkaworld's content as the official information source. However, as Web3 information sources gradually migrate to X (formerly Twitter), Polkaworld will also place greater emphasis on developing X content after 2024. It will simultaneously produce content in both Chinese and English and gradually gain more attention and influence in English content. A lot of progress has been made.
I support this proposal and hope to collaborate with Polkaworld to amplify the voices of DOT holders in Asia and enable them to participate in OpenGov discussions, proposals, and voting.
IDK why they put their proposal behind a Google form that makes you request access. Here is a copy of it for anyone who would like to view it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VVGIKr0DWQsrtlTDDPRdvRhX3YsM3lMvJ82X6pbcGEE/edit?usp=sharing
Seems not cool to collect deep analytics from the people who view that docsend link. I'm not sure why you need IP addresses and other deep analytics for people who want to review your proposal. Quite an overstep IMO.
This proposal is really concerning, with all due respect to your work. I lay down my concerns below:
**1. Salary/Task Double-Counting - ** The proposal allocates $22k/month for both: Salaries (5 full-time roles at $3.4k-$4.1k/month each) Deliverables (24 articles, 4 videos, 6 livestreams/month)
This creates redundancy. Why are so many people being paid salary while also getting others to write articles and pay for them? Salaries should inherently cover labor costs for these outputs. The current structure effectively charges twice: once for staff time, and again for deliverables they produce during paid work hours.
2. High Per-Unit Costs Articles: $925/article ($22k ÷ 24) vs. standard Chinese market rates: Freelance writers: $100-$300/article (Upwork, Fiverr) Professional agencies: $300-$500/article (ChainNews, BlockBeats) Video Editing: $868/video ($3.4k ÷ 4) vs. typical rates: Basic editing: $50-$150/video (Taobao freelancers) Premium editing: $200-$400/video (Bilibili creators) ** 3. Unjustified "Media Distribution" Costs ** $8.3k/month allocated without: Proof of third-party partnerships Performance metrics for external platforms
I would appreciate if someone did a competitive study about the value PolkaWorld is providing from a media perspective to the ecosystem and compare it with other chinese platforms like ChainNews, BlockBeats etc...
The PolkaWorld proposal exhibits systemic financial mismanagement and questionable value delivery.
I took the time to look through the March report and here are some observations:
March 2025 Performance Shortfalls
-
Underwhelming Engagement Articles: 26 articles → 25,533 total views (~982/article) Top article: 7,512 views (29% of total monthly traffic) 72% of articles received <1,000 views despite $925/article cost.
-
Video ROI Failure 4 educational videos: 4,403 total views (~1,101/video) Cost: $3.4k/month for editing/uploading → $0.77/view
-
Social Media Decline English X: Impressions ↓33% | Engagements ↓19% Relies heavily on 1.2K verified followers (7.8% of total)
Chinese X: Engagement rate ↓3.6% despite** "quality over quantity" claims**
Vote "No" to uphold responsible treasury spends. Please
@15a9...ro2b Your comment that Chinese salaries for video editing and content production should be cheaper than in the West is absolutely inappropriate or outdated at best. The size and importance of the Chinese market mean that Chineses salaries for QUALITY content production nowadays often exceed those in the English-speaking world.
Polkaworld has been a leading voice when it comes to community building and media in China and beyond. Their content is informative and timely and brings in a variety of different voices. I think a big problem of Polkadot in the past has been that media spending has been too focused on one single outlet. Rather, alternative Polkadot-native media outlets should be embraced wholeheartedly. Having a native Chinese outlet is incredibly important, given that this is arguably the country with the biggest developer community which we need to reach if Polkadot is to be successful in the long term. And while Polkaworld is a leading voice in the Chinese market, it should no longer be considered restricted to this jurisdiction, as the wealth of new English language content has shown.
why autorization is need to view the full proposal?
@TheMvp07 This is a little experiment. We wanted to track how many people would actually open the document to check the proposal. However, based on feedback from community members, we’ve switched to another document tool. Feel free to click again to view it.
why autorization is need to view the full proposal?
This proposal is really concerning, with all due respect to your work. I lay down my concerns below:
**1. Salary/Task Double-Counting - ** The proposal allocates $22k/month for both: Salaries (5 full-time roles at $3.4k-$4.1k/month each) Deliverables (24 articles, 4 videos, 6 livestreams/month)
This creates redundancy. Why are so many people being paid salary while also getting others to write articles and pay for them? Salaries should inherently cover labor costs for these outputs. The current structure effectively charges twice: once for staff time, and again for deliverables they produce during paid work hours.
2. High Per-Unit Costs Articles: $925/article ($22k ÷ 24) vs. standard Chinese market rates: Freelance writers: $100-$300/article (Upwork, Fiverr) Professional agencies: $300-$500/article (ChainNews, BlockBeats) Video Editing: $868/video ($3.4k ÷ 4) vs. typical rates: Basic editing: $50-$150/video (Taobao freelancers) Premium editing: $200-$400/video (Bilibili creators) ** 3. Unjustified "Media Distribution" Costs ** $8.3k/month allocated without: Proof of third-party partnerships Performance metrics for external platforms
I would appreciate if someone did a competitive study about the value PolkaWorld is providing from a media perspective to the ecosystem and compare it with other chinese platforms like ChainNews, BlockBeats etc...
The PolkaWorld proposal exhibits systemic financial mismanagement and questionable value delivery.
I took the time to look through the March report and here are some observations:
March 2025 Performance Shortfalls
-
Underwhelming Engagement Articles: 26 articles → 25,533 total views (~982/article) Top article: 7,512 views (29% of total monthly traffic) 72% of articles received <1,000 views despite $925/article cost.
-
Video ROI Failure 4 educational videos: 4,403 total views (~1,101/video) Cost: $3.4k/month for editing/uploading → $0.77/view
-
Social Media Decline English X: Impressions ↓33% | Engagements ↓19% Relies heavily on 1.2K verified followers (7.8% of total)
Chinese X: Engagement rate ↓3.6% despite** "quality over quantity" claims**
Vote "No" to uphold responsible treasury spends. Please
@15a9...ro2b Please take a careful look at our proposal and make the appropriate calculations. Thank you!
IDK why they put their proposal behind a Google form that makes you request access. Here is a copy of it for anyone who would like to view it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VVGIKr0DWQsrtlTDDPRdvRhX3YsM3lMvJ82X6pbcGEE/edit?usp=sharing
@0xTaylor This is a little experiment. We wanted to track how many people would actually open the document to check the proposal. However, based on feedback from community members, we’ve switched to another document tool. Feel free to click again to view it.
This proposal is really concerning, with all due respect to your work. I lay down my concerns below:
**1. Salary/Task Double-Counting - ** The proposal allocates $22k/month for both: Salaries (5 full-time roles at $3.4k-$4.1k/month each) Deliverables (24 articles, 4 videos, 6 livestreams/month)
This creates redundancy. Why are so many people being paid salary while also getting others to write articles and pay for them? Salaries should inherently cover labor costs for these outputs. The current structure effectively charges twice: once for staff time, and again for deliverables they produce during paid work hours.
2. High Per-Unit Costs Articles: $925/article ($22k ÷ 24) vs. standard Chinese market rates: Freelance writers: $100-$300/article (Upwork, Fiverr) Professional agencies: $300-$500/article (ChainNews, BlockBeats) Video Editing: $868/video ($3.4k ÷ 4) vs. typical rates: Basic editing: $50-$150/video (Taobao freelancers) Premium editing: $200-$400/video (Bilibili creators) ** 3. Unjustified "Media Distribution" Costs ** $8.3k/month allocated without: Proof of third-party partnerships Performance metrics for external platforms
I would appreciate if someone did a competitive study about the value PolkaWorld is providing from a media perspective to the ecosystem and compare it with other chinese platforms like ChainNews, BlockBeats etc...
The PolkaWorld proposal exhibits systemic financial mismanagement and questionable value delivery.
I took the time to look through the March report and here are some observations:
March 2025 Performance Shortfalls
-
Underwhelming Engagement Articles: 26 articles → 25,533 total views (~982/article) Top article: 7,512 views (29% of total monthly traffic) 72% of articles received <1,000 views despite $925/article cost.
-
Video ROI Failure 4 educational videos: 4,403 total views (~1,101/video) Cost: $3.4k/month for editing/uploading → $0.77/view
-
Social Media Decline English X: Impressions ↓33% | Engagements ↓19% Relies heavily on 1.2K verified followers (7.8% of total)
Chinese X: Engagement rate ↓3.6% despite** "quality over quantity" claims**
Vote "No" to uphold responsible treasury spends. Please
IDK why they put their proposal behind a Google form that makes you request access. Here is a copy of it for anyone who would like to view it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VVGIKr0DWQsrtlTDDPRdvRhX3YsM3lMvJ82X6pbcGEE/edit?usp=sharing
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