Polkadot incentivizes its community to fight scams through an “anti-scam bounty”

Polkadot, a protocol that connects blockchains, has announced its latest initiative to help its ecosystem fight scams. 

According to the company, relying on security-minded individuals within its community to fight scams has proven to be an effective method of safeguarding its ecosystem. To incentivize the members of its community to continue to do the work, Polkadot consistently rewards them with bounties paid in USDC. 

Polkadot shared that its bounty is currently managed by the general curators, which for now, consists of three community members, and two people from the W3F Anti-Scam department. However, in the long term, Polkadot hopes that the bounty will be eventually managed exclusively by the community. 

As part of the community-led anti-scam initiative, community members are tasked with finding and taking down scam sites, fake social media profiles, and phishing apps, as well as protecting its Discord servers from raids. Additionally, the community will create educational materials for users as well as an Anti-Scam Dashboard to act as the central hub for all anti-scam activities in its ecosystem.

Overall, the initiative encourages participating members to come up with ideas for expanding anti-scam activities to other areas. By decentralizing its anti-scam efforts, the Web3 Foundation and Parity have shifted their decision-making process to the community. 

Related: Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood steps down as CEO of Parity

Polkadot appears to be making the necessary strides to grow and strengthen its ecosystem. On Oct 17, Cointelegraph reported that Polkadot hit an all-time high in development activity. Project developers reported that 66 blockchains are now live on Polkadot and its parachain startup network Kusama.

Since its inception, over 140,000 messages have been exchanged between chains via 135 messaging channels. Together, the Polkadot and Kusama treasuries have cumulatively paid out 9.6 million DOT and 346,700 KSM ($72.8 million total) to fund spending proposals in the ecosystem.