Today, the Community Treasury Board published its Season 3 Strategy.
This document outlines how the CTB intends to direct and govern capital deployed into the Polygon ecosystem through the end of 2025.
In alignment with recent reforms implemented in PFP-2, CTB Strategy documents will now be published on a semiannual basis.
Learning from Seasons 1 & 2
Community Quick Links:
- CTB Season 1 Strategy
- CTB Season 1 Impact Report
- CTB Season 2 Strategy
- (Coming Soon!) Season 2 Impact Report
In each prior season, the CTB awarded grants to eligible projects in predefined categories over a three-month period. To help support the distribution of tens of millions of POL, the CTB also elected grant allocators to structure programs and fund participants within them.
While seasons 1 and 2 were successful at bootstrapping Treasury processes and funding hundreds of teams within the Polygon ecosystem, a few key gaps began to emerge.
Specifically, both the CTB and Polygon ecosystem contributors began to call attention to the limitations of grants as a sole funding mechanism and uncertainty around the long-term impact of deployed resources.
The Season 3 Strategy was designed to address these emerging limitations, ensuring that Polygon Treasury resources are delivering long-term, sustainable, and high-value impact across the network.
Summary: CTB Season 3 Strategy
In Season 3, the CTB intends to allocate a maximum budget of 80 million POL.
Through a series of key strategic and operational shifts, the CTB will to allocate its largest budget ever while provably increasing community transparency and POL-for-POL impact and accountability.
These shifts include:
- Empowering new forms of investment. No longer limited by grants, Treasury Funds can now be invested in a variety of ways. Aggressive capital deployments can now be executed in a manner that is secure, high-impact, and transparent. Investment terms can be negotiated to support the long-term sustainability of the Treasury, and to ensure that it’s impact is felt as value returned directly to the Polygon ecosystem.
- Introducing a tiered governance model. By introducing Funds and Programs, Treasury resources can be allocated in a manner that is both more decentralized and more accountable. This structure enables the CTB to shift from approving each and every grant to operating as an executive oversight body that can efficiently scale its level of spend up or down.
- From ‘Grant Allocators’ to ‘Program Directors’. With a mandate to invest Treasury funds in a variety of new ways, Program Directors will be nominated inviduals who are vetted, highly skilled, and firstly responsible for the impact and allocation of Program Funds. This change will allow the Treasury to further decentralize without sacrificing fund accountability or scalability.
- Mandatory, public reporting standards for all Funds. All ongoing Treasury funding is now dependent on governance and public reporting standards having been met. If a program director fails to report or meet their own ROI benchmarks, program funds can be paused or reallocated.
tl;dr - An aggressive, sustainable funding model that is more decentralized, more accountable, and more impactful.
Detailed information can be found in the Strategy PFP.
Change Management
The Season 3 Strategy represents an investment and governance -focused pivot from prior seasons. It was designed by the CTB with an eye towards provable impact for the entire Polygon ecosystem, as well as in recognition of the network’s commitment to progressive decentralization.
Shifting CTB and Treasury operations to support the ambitious goals of Season 3 remains an ongoing process. As a part of this process, we would like to disclose a few programmatic inconsistencies and requirements that were necessary to support this shift and execute the Strategy in 2025:
- Role of Polygon Labs - As always, Polygon Labs provides a limited number of staff (including myself!) to support CTB operations.
- To ensure Season 3 could execute in 2025, all three Program Directors were sourced from different teams within Polygon Labs. They were selected as pilot Program Directors who could safely and efficiently navigate the inclusion of new forms of Treasury investment deals. This includes identify deals and allocating funds, but also clearing the legal, financial, and other newly emerging operational challenges.
- The CTB remains primarily responsible for drafting its Strategy and is fully and independently in control of its Treasury wallet. It remains fully able to suspend or restrict Treasury allocations at any time.
- Season Length - In Seasons 1 & 2, seasons lasted three months. As we transition to a new investment model in Season 3, the CTB seeks to set Seasons as 1) six-month periods, which are 2) directly contiguous (i.e., there is no gap between seasons, and spending can always happen). Given timing and operational requirements, Season 3 will run through the end of 2025 (approximately 5 months) and Season 4 (beginning January 1, 2026) will run for a full and complete six-month period.
- Community Requests for Funding - As always, the CTB remains in full control of its budget, and has the ability to adapt its strategy or spending as needed. The introduction of Funds and Programs is designed to drive strategic focus and a high-bar for impact. Nevertheless, the CTB will continue to hear and assess any ad hoc requests for funding which are raised in the Forum.
- Season 4 Planning - Going forward, Strategies for upcoming Seasons will be published well in advance, ensuring ample time for public review and feedback. As such, the CTB will begin planning for Season 4 in mid-Autumn. Any questions, comments, or suggestions for inclusion can be submitted via the Forum; more info to come!