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Polkascan Foundation Social Contract

This document is written by Polkascan Foundation (Stichting Polkascan) - a Dutch not-for-profit organization. Polkascan Foundation aims to make multi-chain data accessible and understandable through various activities including: the development of tools and libraries, the operation of platforms, governance and education. This Social Contract aims to serve as an agreement between Polkascan Foundation on one hand and blockchains communities on the other hand. The Social Contract should be viewed as an off-chain coordination mechanism to advance the relation between a blockchain community and an external service provider (such as Polkascan Foundation).

1. Context

At Polkascan Foundation we believe that a public block explorer is part of critical ecosystem infrastructure. We believe that on-chain governance and on-chain treasuries are key instruments in sustainably financing public infrastructure (such as block explorers). In Relay Chain Podcast Episode 5, Emiel discusses 'the roadmap to paid services' and 'DAOs as customers' with the show's hosts Joe Petrowski and Nicole Zhu.

2. Problem statement

There are a number of problems we try to address and aim to solve with this Social Contract. The following list cover non-exhaustive set of problems we have been thinking about.

  1. Financial considerations
  • What is the operational cost of a multi-chain explorer?
  • How can we sustainably fund a multi-chain explorer?
  1. Legal considerations
  • Can you have a contract with a Blockchain, Treasury or DAO?
  • Is it legal to receive funds from a Blockchain, Treasury or DAO?
  1. Moral cosiderations
  • How should we deal with taxes?
  • Can we have a reciprocal trust-relationship a Blockchain, Treasury or DAO?
  1. Practical considerations
  • How do we deal with illiquid assets?
  • How would we receive funds from a Blockchain, Treasury or DAO?

3. Objectives

The objective of this document and the proposed next steps is simple:

Arrange a situation in which a Blockchain Treasury can sustainably fund the services it requires on polkascan.io. Arrange a situation in which users of Polkascan Foundation services maintain assurances that services are neutral and do not serve any interests of external parties, investors, advertisers, et cetera.

The Social Contract's key contribution is twofold:

  1. Provide a solution to sustainably fund external service providers by a Blockchain, Treasury or DAO, taking financial, legal, moral and practical considerations of the relationship into account.
  2. Create a process to develop and mature a Social Contract for the reciprocal relationship between a Blockchain, Treasury or DAO and its ecosystem service provider.

4. Proposals

Currently Polkascan Foundation serves various Blockchain communities with a Social Contract. Details can be found here:

  1. KUSAMA NETWORK: Social Contract between Kusama Network and Polkascan Foundation (link.)
  2. POLKADOT NETWORK: Social Contract between Polkadot Network and Polkascan Foundation (link.)

5 Continuous improvement

One of the conclusions we have reached is that it is really hard to have a contract with an entity such as a Blockchain, Treasury or DAO. There are all sorts of difficulties to reach a form of concensus on the content of such contract. In addition to the financial, legal, moral and practical difficulties, our use-case has a number of additional difficulties we will need to find creative solutions for. In general would like to use our future relationship to follow a path of continuous improvement. Polkascan Foundation's initial Social Contract sets a baseline. Collectively a a community we can mature this Social Contract. We look forward to your contributions.

6 Questions and answers

In general we feel that our Social Contract addresses the financial, legal, moral and practical difficulties we face at Polkascan Foundation. We invite the Community and the Council of the blockchains we serve to contribute to the Social Contract by adding questions as issues in this Github Repository. We will try to answer those questions to the best of our ability and move this initiative forward.