This brief guide aims to help newcomers to Politeia (Pi) understand how to submit a proposal that requests support and/or funding from the Decred Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Fee Structure

II. Fairness on Politeia

III. Submitting a Proposal: 5 Simple Steps!

IV. Tips to Engage with the Decred Community

V. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

I. FEE STRUCTURE

For good reason, there are two small fees on Politeia:

Registration Fee is 0.1 DCR. The purpose of this fee is to a) incentivize users to take their participation seriously on Politeia and b) grant eligibility to submit proposals, comments, and make up/down votes on the Politeia web platform. Proposal Fee is 0.1 DCR. The purpose of this fee is to limit proposal spamming. This fee must be paid for each proposal that is submitted.

II. FAIRNESS ON POLITEIA

Statements in proposals must be true and factual.

Decred is a community-directed cryptocurrency that promotes fairness. Each member of our community expects all statements from proposing members to be true and factual. Due diligence on the proposing member will be done by the community. The Decred community always seeks to engage in transparent and inclusive discussions and expects proposals on Politeia to exhibit utmost professionalism. Each proposal must be clearly outlined and organized so that it is easy for members of the Decred community to discuss and evaluate.

III. SUBMITTING A PROPOSAL: 5 Simple Steps!

Step 1: Register for a Politeia account and pay Registration Fee of 0.1 DCR. Sign up here.

Step 2: Decide to submit either a Type 1 or Type 2 proposal.

Type 1 proposals typically do not request funding. Type 1 proposals request support from the Decred community to advance the Decred project in some way. For example: proposing an amendment to the Decred Constitution.

Type 2 proposals typically request funding by creating a budget that aims to fund a new venture or project that will benefit the DCR community and/or the open-source software community at large.

Step 3: Write your proposal. Proposals must answer the following questions:

1) What is the problem that this proposal aims to address or solve?

2) Why does this problem exist? Why it is a good idea to solve this problem?

3) How do you plan to solve this problem? Go into detail with each step you will take.

4) Who are you and why are you best suited to solve this problem?

5) When will you be able to finish this project? Include a thorough project plan and outline, with key dates and funding amounts relative to milestones.

Step 4: Click “Submit” and pay Proposal Fee of 0.1 DCR. Once submitted, proposals are reviewed by community-appointed Politeia administrators before being posted before the community. Proposals that are deemed spam or invalid will be censored. In this case, the proposer would use their proof of submission token to prove their proposal was censored.

Step 5: Engage with the Decred Community about your proposal. After you’ve submitted your proposal, the community will respectfully ask follow-up questions on the Politeia platform. Please take the time to respond to questions and engage with the community both on Politeia and #Proposals in Matrix chat. The discussion period affords proposers a great opportunity to listen to the sentiment of the community and refine details of their proposal to increase the chances it passes. Couple notes of caution here:

1) Don’t get too caught up debating a minor aspect of your proposal with a single community member. Please review proposals that have passed to see how previous proposers have effectively engaged in community discussion.

2) Don’t allow a vocal minority to deter you from arguing for your proposal. If you strongly believe in your proposal, the Decred community will want to hear your voice and hopefully will find a way to support you.

IV. TIPS TO ENGAGE WITH DECRED COMMUNITY

The Decred community is global, and as such, is always around. Feel free to reach out at any time. It is a friendly community that welcomes newcomers every day, so please do not hesitate to say hello!

The best was to get “buy-in” from the community is to approach with humility, and demonstrate a willingness to learn and understand the Decred ecosystem. The Decred project is a global team effort that welcomes newcomers, but it can be skeptical when new members barge in demanding to make sudden changes and shake things up or ask for large amounts of money from their Treasury. The community has been working on Decred for a long time! At first, be open to learning from it, and then over time, it will be open to learning from you 😊.

Twitter Some community members who tweet frequently about Decred: @lefebvre_dustin, @noahpierau, @_CheckMatey_, @Michae2xl, @degeri_crypto, @DecredDragon, @RichardRedOx, and many more…

Matrix Chat https://decred.org/matrix/

Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/decred/

Politiea https://proposals.decred.org

V. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs)

What is Politeia? Politeia is the official project management proposal system for Decred’s (www.decred.org) budget and policy. Politeia facilitates the submission, discussion, and consideration of proposals aimed to benefit both the Decred ecosystem and open-source software development.

Why are there fees on Politeia? Please note that the registration fee and proposal fee is very small. The Decred community wishes there were no fees at all! In general, the DCR community dislikes rent-seeking behavior. With that said, the DCR community must provide incentive for bad actors and/or bots to not spam the Politeia platform with comments, likes/dislikes, and proposals.

How do I get initial input in order to draft a Proposal? If you have an idea, but are not sure whether or not the community would be in support, the best method is to introduce your idea in the appropriate https://decred.org/matrix/ chat room. The community will provide you with preliminary feedback to inform your proposal, and discuss with you whether or not you should make one. In the past, people have also queried the community on https://www.reddit.com/r/decred/, but the input there can easily be gamed.

In what denomination is the cost? When submitting a proposal, you must denominate costs in USD, but they will be paid in DCR per the average daily rate for the month prior to submission of invoice.

How do I prove that my proposal was submitted? When proposals are submitted, they may be censored and hence not immediately posted on the Politeia platform, but owners can still prove that their proposal was submitted. Upon submitting, members will be issued a censorship token. Please use this token to prove that your proposal was submitted.

What makes a proposal valid and approved to be seen by the Decred community? A valid proposal is one that meets the standards of the community-appointed Politeia administrators by appropriately answering the questions of what, why, how, who and when (as described above). Valid proposals will be displayed on the Politeia platform, where they can be viewed and discussed by all members of the Decred community.

What do UP votes and DOWN votes mean on Politeia comments? Please note that UP votes and DOWN votes do not affect proposal passing/funding decisions — these votes are simply soft signals that determine display order on the platform. UP/DOWN voting is not anonymous, but the UP/DOWN voting history of Politeia accounts are public information.

I’ve submitted my proposal and it has posted on Politeia. When does voting start? After a proposal is submitted and passes screening by Politeia administrators, it will be displayed on Politeia for discussion purposes only. Voting will not open immediately. The proposer has discretion to participate in discussion with Decred stakeholders and make edits to the proposal, then decide when to trigger the ticket-voting interval. When voting is triggered, edits to the proposal can no longer be made. The discussion period follows a natural progression, by which it dies down after a certain period of time and all questions have been answered by the proposer. This tends to be 1–2 weeks, and it is not recommended to open for voting with under one week of discussion.

When will I receive payment? You will receive payment from the Treasury in DCR after work has been completed in the average daily market rate for the previous month. If there are milestones in your proposal, or if it is simply a monthly fee, you may bill for them along the way. Payments tend to go out 2–4 weeks into the next month.