Polkadot ERI team has published this article, with the claims that it was an in-depth evaluation and well received by the community. While it is lengthy I don't really see a lot of depth in there, I certainly wouldn't call it a research article it's more like an opinion piece if anything. It's mostly a summary of a lot different projects and other events in the blockchain industry with a few sentences about each on how they relate to Polkadot but it's the opposite of in-depth in my opinion so this brings me to question their other work.

Since they've been involved in the community for quite a while but the community growth doesn't seem to be there, could this be the time for introspection of their methods to build a community in the region around Polkadot? They do have an impressive number of articles with a lot of words in them but at the end of the day the objective shouldn't be to produce X amount of articles with Y word count, the metrics I would hope for is community growth and engagement which I fail to see here. Hopefully the team can respond to some of these questions, in the meanwhile my first vote would be NAY.

Dear @The Ionian ,

Thank you for your feedback.

I would like to first ask whether the in-depth report you mentioned requires a large number of charts and data. It's important to note that in-depth reports come in various types. The strategic report we propose focuses more on operational direction adjustments. Its value lies in translating industry experience into an actionable roadmap, rather than pursuing formal depth for its own sake.

As the saying goes, "There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes." Our content has received positive feedback from developers, users, and institutions alike. In fact, this article was recommended to official internal forums and read by many members of the Parity and Web3 Foundation, who spoke highly of it. Therefore, we have full confidence in the report's credibility.
Additionally, the report's core emphasis is on presenting feasible operation strategies—these are insights distilled from years of industry experience, which are not easily quantifiable through data or charts. However, those with practical project operation experience will find our content highly relatable.

Regarding the issue of community growth: as a team that has been building on Polkadot since 2019, we have witnessed many community members holding DOT when its price was above $50, $40, or $30, only to hold through declines to $5, $4, or $3. During this period, many became disheartened and left due to severe losses, while others expressed anger and frustration. Maintaining community retention under such circumstances—while continuously providing confidence—has been no small feat. As a research organization, our primary focus is on producing high-quality content and offering solutions for the ecosystem. We also strive to make Polkadot's complex technical developments accessible to ordinary users through our interpretations, thereby contributing to its growth.

That said, we have also expanded into overseas markets. Our Twitter account has grown significantly over the past year, evolving from a small profile to one with visible traction. The content we produce also garners substantial readership: I personally translate some of our in-depth reports into English and share them on Twitter, where they often attract thousands—sometimes even tens of thousands—of views: https://x.com/Zou_Block/status/1911363611798520160.

In this fiercely competitive landscape of public blockchains, the Polkadot ecosystem needs constructive ideas rather than abstract theoretical debates. The best way to predict the future is to build it. Let us focus on actionable steps together and create tangible breakthroughs for Polkadot during this critical window of 2025.

I want to add some background stories about us.

Our Polkadot Ecology Research Institute is a research institution foucus on the research and analysis of the Polkadot ecosystem development.

The original intention of our establishment can be traced back to 2019. At that time, we learned about Polkadot through Xiaojie from PolkaWorld and Guanghua from ChainX. After studying the Polkadot white paper at that time, we were deeply attracted. And, Dr. Gavin also came to China for the first time in 2019 and organized four events in different cities. We were the co-organizer of one of the cities. This offline meeting further strengthened our belief in Polkadot. Taking this opportunity, we also helped PolkaWorld establish an early Chinese community of Polkadot and provided some Polkadot-related content. At that time, there was very little content about Polkadot in the Chinese community. We also wrote the first in-depth Chinese analysis report on Polkadot, which received a large number of reposts and reads.

In 2020, as Polkadot's technology became more and more mature, we knew that Polkadot's technology was more complex than general technologies, and the Polkadot ecosystem would be a much larger one. Just understanding the progress of Polkadot was not enough for more users and investors to feel its potential. Therefore, in 2020, together with some early participants and investors in the Chinese Polkadot community, relying on years of in-depth involvement in the blockchain industry, we established a professional research and content production team and founded our research institute, focusing on Polkadot research and presenting complex technical content to readers in an easy-to-understand way.

After half a year of working for free, we finally passed the strict treasury review, gained the recognition of the Treasury Councils, and started receiving support from the Polkadot treasury. Up to now, we've received treasury support for eight times. This is our ninth application, which means we're among the first batch of those who got treasury support and we've been getting it continuously until now.

I want to answer the polkadotters' concern.

I have to say: At present, the mainstream application method for the Treasury has always been advance payment, a practice that has been used up to now since the Governance 1.0 era. We have not yet encountered other mature alternatives, but we are more than willing to try new approaches if they emerge.

Additionally, we initially provided high-quality content for free for six consecutive months before gaining official recognition and passing the Treasury Council's review, at which point the advance payment funding model was confirmed. Since then, we have secured Treasury support eight times in a row, each time successfully fulfilling our commitments. If you examine the timeline of our applications, you will notice the duration has gradually increased from one month to three months, six months, and now 12 months. This progression reflects the Council's growing recognition and trust in us, and we were actually guided by Parity's Raul to consider extending the application period.

Therefore, there is currently no better-established mechanism in place, and our delivery capability has been validated eight times over. We would genuinely appreciate understanding what your core concerns are.

Next, I will respond to W1ZSPR3, EzioRed, and Jose_TwoPebbles, as their questions primarily focus on learning more about our tangible outcomes.

Traditional companies can measure results through product sales revenue, but in the Web3 industry—where user participation is voluntary—we can track on-chain activity and new account creations. However, it is challenging to directly attribute user acquisition or retention to our efforts. That said, the growth in our Twitter followers and traffic demonstrates rising user interest in Polkadot.

In the Chinese-speaking region, during Polkadot's peak popularity around 2021, our articles frequently garnered tens of thousands of views on major Chinese blockchain platforms, with some even featured on homepages and banner sections (typically reserved for paid content). While market downturns have reduced attention on the Polkadot ecosystem, a recent article we published on Polkadot's projected 2025 performance achieved over 5,000 views—several times our average—indicating that users are merely dormant, not disengaged. When Polkadot shows signs of growth, they are quick to resonate. For context, official Chinese WeChat articles for SUI averaged only a few hundred views during the same period, yet our third-party content consistently outperforms them by multiples. We are confident that when Polkadot's application ecosystem ignites through Polkadot Hub, we will rally to drive significant traffic and potential users to the network.

Beyond the content volume reported in our development updates, we have undertaken long-term ecosystem-building efforts, including creating educational materials for projects, assisting with fundraising and strategic consulting, supporting developers in applying for Grants/Treasury funds through hackathons, and collecting feedback from retail and institutional users for the official team.

Our most recent strategic development report (Part of this report has been published as a thread on Twitter, which can be viewed here) was even shared on Parity's internal forum, where it was read and highly praised by many Parity and Web3 Foundation members. While these efforts are difficult to quantify, we have compiled some of their testimonials, which you can review in the final section of our application proposal.

Furthermore, from an operational perspective, content operations are a tedious yet essential task that requires consistent effort. It involves not only maintaining user confidence during market downturns but also providing more engagement opportunities during upswings. Critically, many tasks cannot wait for event milestones—content operations often serve as the first movers. For example, when preparing for the official launch of EVM contracts on Polkadot Hub, we need to backtrack from the event timeline to initiate content preheating, guidance, and education weeks in advance, which are vital preparatory steps. After the launch, we must continuously uncover hot topics to amplify momentum. Thus, content operations span the entire project lifecycle. A sudden reduction in this investment would be keenly felt by users, risking perceptions that the Asian market is being abandoned—a major blow to confidence. Conversely, aligning with official timelines to deliver timely content can achieve exponential results.

We believe that with the launch of JAM, Polkadot stands at a new starting point. The Asia-Pacific market is critical to Polkadot's future, as it was even the backbone of Polkadot's early growth (evident in the fact that six of the first ten winning parachain projects had core teams from the Asia-Pacific region). Therefore, Polkadot's future development requires institutions like ours to focus on building within the Asia-Pacific market. To our knowledge, we are the only global institution specializing exclusively in Polkadot ecosystem research—an indispensable role, as nearly all major public chain projects (Ethereum, Solana, etc.) have dedicated research institutions supporting their ecosystems.