Dear community,

I present this proposal on the authorization of the curators of bounty 31.

This proposal seeks to continue funding of Public RPC Providers for the period of one year plus an additional two month's contingency. Funding is issued to bounty 31 which awards vendors for RPC services on the Polkadot relay-chain as well as its system parachains. The total cost for such provision is USD$209,733.60 which represents a decrease from $265,703.76 (pro-rated) compared to the last request, without contingency and administrative expenses.

A further request of $160,000.00 for the provision of ETH RPC services to support Polkadot Hub. The first allocation would be assigned by the Polkadot Hub - Go To Market (GTM); who would select a vendor, the bounty's curators will facilitate the payments into the bounty structure for transparency and continuity.

Bounty 31 adopts an tender based procurement model in which service providers bid on requirements as set-out by the curators. The tender requirements are aligned to ecosystem needs and can scale up/down depending on usage. Tenders are scored and the highest scoring providers receive funding. Attention is also being placed on quality of service and should service providers fail to meet said quality-standards they will be penalized or lose funding altogether.

This approach has seen a reduction with independent funding proposals for such services and steering of providers to a "market rate".

Further details and a complete breakdown of the budged request including curation and contingency can be found here

Kind Regards,
Will | Paradox | ParaNodes.io