Hey,

I'm sorry to tell you, but you need to hear this early. You can't just pop out of nowhere and propose a 1m DOT spend for a project like this. This will get declined.

Don't be discouraged. It's a great idea and you will have an easy time finding private investors to fund it. Which will be even more profitable for you.

Thank you for playing! Goodbye!

PS: If done correctly, the reading time can be cut down to 3 minutes.

PolkaWorld votes NAY

While we acknowledge the ambition behind Polkalotto — combining decentralization, education, and philanthropy — at its core, it appears to be a commercial platform seeking to bootstrap a self-sustaining revenue model through Treasury subsidies. The proposal relies on locked DOT and perpetual staking yields as a long-term monetization strategy.

In our view, initiatives of this nature would be better suited for traditional funding avenues such as private investment or grants, rather than relying on the Polkadot Treasury.

The Treasury was designed to support:
• Public goods that serve the ecosystem broadly, such as infrastructure, developer tooling, and educational resources;
• Efforts that enhance network sustainability, development experience, protocol maturity, or user onboarding.

We also have serious concerns about the incentive structure and transparency in this proposal:
• 100,000 DOT (currently valued at ~$500,000) is allocated to the team with no lock-up, no performance criteria, and no disclosed governance framework;
• This effectively asks the Treasury to provide a seed round to a project without any of the safeguards typical of VC funding — such as oversight, equity dilution, or accountability.

This sets a dangerous precedent: any commercial team could claim to promote “adoption” and request funding, without needing to undergo audits, offer transparency, or accept checks and balances.

The requested budget is exceptionally high and far exceeds our risk tolerance:

•	1,000,000 DOT (~$5 million USD at current prices) — one of the largest asks in Treasury history;
•	A significant portion is earmarked for Spotify ads ($630,000) and legal/infrastructure costs (~$840,000);
•	The team has no proven track record or verifiable past deliverables to justify such an investment.

Funding a high-budget project of this scale with no prior delivery undermines the core principles of responsible Treasury governance.

You can view our full feedback [here].