Applications are now open inviting curators for three separate bounties:
This is clearly the first big step towards applying the 10m DOT Wish-for-Change Referendum (which was PASSED), requesting a substantial 10 million DOT from the Foundation to "fulfill the commitment of allocating 1% of genesis DOT to Kusama, provide support for bleeding-edge building including ZK innovation, and transition Kusama away from being purely Polkadot’s canary network."
I wonder at what point a Marketing & Campaigns Bounty will be considered. Perhaps it is more pragmatic to install the three initial bounties, but I feel it will be important to encourage a co-ordinated marketing approach, perhaps learning from errors previously made in the ecosystem regarding marketing, and to install a really solid, transparent structure so we can concentrate and maximize collective marketing efforts for the new Kusama.
Thoughts?
As a curator myself, I'm very much in favor of such a newly established bounty.
Working on a bounty is an immense amount of work that requires dedication to think through everything from end-to-end, as well as investing the time for proper due diligence when reviewing proposals or making sound decisions about investments in new partners and their ideas.
Besides that, I'm convinced Kusama can be a great entry point for cypherpunk tinkerers who are enticed by Erin's ideas about what to do on Kusama.
The current positioning of Kusama is something that should be doubled down on with it's edgy, cypherpunky, anti-establishment and (quoting Shawn T) fuck the banks (!!) narratives. Mainly because Polkadot would never be as authentic to the original Web3 values, as it has to cater to a broader audience, and BD teams are working on bringing banks on-chain to win the TVL and market valuation game.
Indeed, there would be some guardrails from the foundation, but in general, we could break the current rulebook and try out more experimental and daring projects. Making Kusama an accelerator for builders and new founders.
I suggest that the curator's team should be small, comprising 4-6 people. Not sure if they should be anon or doxxed to the public (or just to each other + W3F).